Alyson Abriel

Alyson has over 40 years of experience in ballet and modern dance. She trained throughout New England as a child, and later on in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco.

She earned an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in NYC in 2001. She was a Designer/Multimedia Specialist at the American Museum of Natural History (NYC) and the Exploratorium (SF). In parallel,  Alyson danced professionally with José Mateo Ballet Theater in Cambridge, MA, The DanceWright Project (SF), Labayen Dance/SF, and the Santa Clara Ballet. Alyson was the lead teacher for the younger summer dance campers at Shan-Yee Poon Ballet School for two summers and also held her own adult ballet classes in the city, and private lessons over Zoom since 2020. She has designed and constructed costumes for PUSH Dance Company and the DanceWright Project.

For the past decade, Alyson has been raising her two children in Oakland and has been serving on multiple Boards of Directors and committees in OUSD. She’s been hands-on in the realms of special education and disability justice as a parent advocate. She identifies somewhere within the spectrum of neurodivergence and is bringing this awareness to deepen her ballet practice through mindfulness and somatic explorations.

Alyson hopes to present two dances at the end of this residency. A group work will explore a “decision”. One made through a slow steady, resolve. A solo work will explore the concept (and act of) “tending to”.

Photos courtesy of Alyson Abriel & Andrew Faulkner for Labayen Dance