Hamilton’s Alyssa Nedich is moving dance forward
- Michael Kras
- 22 Mar 2020
The first time a piece of dance moved me to tears, it was because of Alyssa Nedich.
A young, talented choreographer with an endless well of passion and enthusiasm for her work, Alyssa had created a short piece of contemporary dance, titled Communal Solace, for Hamilton’s site-specific arts festival Frost Bites a few years ago.
Expressively interpreted by a half-dozen mesmerizing movers, the 20-minute dance piece was totally wordless and yet, somehow, felt extremely personal. Even though Alyssa and I have been friends and collaborators since doing theatre together in high school, Communal Solace showed me a side of her I’d never seen before.
Not bad for someone who, as a child born and raised here in Hamilton, almost didn’t end up pursuing dance at all.
“I got my start in dance at a local studio in Hamilton called That’s Dancing. When I was very little, I took class for about two weeks and then quit and told my mother I’d never dance again,” she tells me with a laugh.
Luckily, Alyssa rejoined the community a few years later to take dance classes with her friends and ended up falling completely in love with every aspect of that world. Now, years later, she has established herself as one of the city’s most in-demand and prolific dance teachers, choreographers, and adjudicators.
It’s not hard to see why, either. Alyssa shines in the studio as she leads the way, working with dancers of all ages and experience levels, deftly balancing joy and lightness with discipline and rigour. Her teaching style expects professionalism and work ethic, but leads with the philosophy that dance is nothing if not fulfilling and fun. Believing deeply that dance is for everyone, Alyssa puts inclusivity and community at the forefront of her practice.
Alyssa’s skills and creative versatility have taken her all over Canada, working as an adjudicator and educator at dance competitions nationwide on top of choreographing for everything from stage musicals to feature films, and music videos for Canadian artists like Of Us Giants and The Geoff Hudson Band. Knowledgeable and adaptable, she’s well equipped to rise to the particular needs of pretty much any project.
“If I am working on theatre choreography, especially musicals where I know I will have a lot of dancers, I spend a ton of time pre-setting my work before heading into rehearsals since time is usually quite limited,” she explains.
“With my competitive dancers, I tend to go in with loose ideas after binge-listening to a song, and as I set choreography, I make sure it fits just right for them. I find if I go in with too much structure, the work can end up looking forced rather than something that plays up the dancer’s skills.”
Those qualities certainly come out in Alyssa’s choreography; her work doesn’t feel cookie-cutter. Dancers move with precision, presence, complicity, and breath, but each performer is given room to interpret the choreography in their own unique bodies and physical vocabularies. The results are riveting to watch and deeply human.
Though the demand for Alyssa’s work regularly takes her out to the farthest reaches of Canada, her roots are planted firmly in her hometown Hamilton, where she is a bona fide leader in the city’s dance community.
Walking downtown, you can still find Alyssa’s headshot prominently displayed on a streetlight banner as part of the city’s ‘I Am An Artist’ campaign, and her company To the Point Dance Project, which she artistic-directs alongside local dancers Cassandra Bowerman and Sarah Dowhun-Tompa, is one of Hamilton’s foremost collectives presenting and promoting dance as a key part of our local cultural identity.
As Alyssa’s thriving career moves into the future with no signs of slowing, she’s quick to express that Hamilton will always be a big part of that future.
“Hamilton is special to me and I want to continue to invest artistic work in the city that invested in me,” she says. “The connections I’ve made with other artists here have been incredible. Hamilton has talent and heart, and it deserves to have the artistic community here continue to be developed.”
Photos by Ashley Ciona
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