About Me

I’m Alicia Chesser. My life in dance began with training in ballet under Moscelyne Larkin and high school years spent learning and performing Ballets Russes classics as an apprentice with Tulsa Ballet. After majoring in English and philosophy at the University of Tulsa, I worked in New York City as a magazine editor, a freelance writer, and a dance critic. My writing about dance over more than a decade has appeared in such publications as the Dance Insider, Dance Teacher, and the Village Voice. I was named a finalist for a 2012 Great Plains Journalism Award for my dance writing in Urban Tulsa Weekly and won the top feature awards in 2018 and 2019 for stories in The Tulsa Voice. I co-directed Tulsa Modern Movement from 2012-2016 and curate the EXCHANGE Choreography Festival for Bell House Arts, with which I also collaborate as a performing artist. I appeared in Soluna Performing Arts Group’s film “Vision Field,” directed by Geoffrey Hicks, which won the Collaborative Challenge prize at the 2011 Oklahoma Dance Film Festival. My work has appeared at the XVIII Contemporary Dance New Genre Festival, the Exchange Dance Festival, Soulful Sundown, Mixology in Oklahoma City, the eMerge Dance Festival, the {254} Dance Festival, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Tulsa Ballet’s Creations in Studio K, Dances Made to Order, and many others. I teach ballet at Jasinski Academy and offer coaching, workshops on dance writing, and other ways of bringing the arts of movement and writing to their full power.

Miss Larkin loved to quote a Native American saying, that “dance is the breath of life made visible.” Thank you for stopping by to explore with me the many dimensions of what that means. I look forward to hearing your thoughts here on the blog or at aliciachesser -at- gmail -dot- com.