What is behind Alley Ink/George Alley Dance?

My motivation to create work stems from an interest to provide a forum where individuality is both acknowledged and promoted. My work gazes beyond the normal scope of gender, race, sexual orientation and class, and instead delves into the psychological makeup of the characters I create. These characters are individual, and are made from fragments of subtext I find within myth, multi-media and my personal experiences.

It is through the phenomenological process that I have been able to embellish upon the fragments of information that I slowly collect when beginning a new artistic endeavor. By conducting interviews, coding text, creating maps and charts, and keeping a journal, I am able to create a work that is both reflective of my process and studied in subject.

The synthesis of my studies in dance, theatre and multimedia art has been the creation of a corporal language. While I have created a framework to develop a vocabulary from, this framework is not a codification of movement styles. While it draws upon many influences, the style I create is not a deliberate fusion of different techniques.

This language I generate is specific to each project I choreograph for and more similar to a director’s approach to creating a film. The tools Hitchcock created may have always been identifiably his own; yet his stylistic choices in terms of language, location, and plot structure were unique to each film he made.

To create a unique language for each project, I often first use improvisational techniques, which allow me to explore different avenues and alternatives. I am continuously fascinated by improvisation's ability to retrieve unconscious thoughts and desires and reveal them in a physical form. Improvisation has the unique ability to harness both our cerebral and emotional selves.

In addition to improvisation, choreographically I often draw upon my studies in modern dance and movement techniques such as Nikolais, Graham, Yoga and Release. In addition I have studied with several noted Post-Modern choreographers I am heavily influenced by the techniques and methodologies used by Judson Church luminaries such as Yvonne Rainer and David Gordon.

Because I choose to both work and teach via a phenomenological process, I find that my methodology is open-ended, it allows for different perspectives and methodologies to be told simultaneously through the theatrical and academic terrain.