Alex Bush is a storyteller: a dance artist, photographer, designer, and writer. She is currently serves as Social Media Manager for the University of Iowa, where her strengths as a storyteller and content creator intersect to engage a broad community of students, alumni, faculty, and Hawkeyes across the globe. She loves being part of the top social media team in higher education!
Alex previously worked in the University of Iowa Department of dance, where she taught choreography and dance technique, served as Associate Director of UI Dance Company, the department’s resident repertory company, and served as engagement coordinator for the department. Prior to that, she served as adjunct instructor of dance technique, theory, and history at Penn State.
Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, she received her early dance training at the Flint School of Performing Arts. She holds an MFA in dance with an emphasis in choreography from the University of Iowa, and a BFA in dance from Florida State University. As a graduate student at the University of Iowa, she taught ballet, modern, and dance theory; she was also on faculty at the University of Iowa Youth Ballet, a community dance program. She has worked with choreographers Charlotte Adams, Lindsay Fisher, Jennifer Kayle, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Cassie Meador, and Patricia Kenny, among others. With Alex Bush Dance, a collaborative group of dance and performing artists, she has presented work at the Dance Shorts Film Festival (Tampa, FL), Detroit Dance City Festival (Detroit, MI), and the Movies by Movers Film Festival (Boone, NC). From 2006-2008 Alex served as Artistic Director of summerdance Contemporary Dance Company in Flint, Michigan, and from 2009-2012 she worked as a dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist with Circle of Dance Repertory Company (now Patricia Kenny Dance Collection) on Long Island. Her creative research involves the use of dance and media to create work that connects individuals and communities beyond personal and geographical borders.
Alex's creative research unfolds through collaborative, interdisciplinary practices, to connect individuals and communities across personal and geographical borders. A major focus is using movement and the body to investigate issues and themes relevant to underrepresented communities and experiences. Her MFA thesis work examined The American Dream through the community of Flint, Michigan and that city's social, cultural, and racial politics and history. Her most recent research endeavor contends with womanhood and motherhood as an experience lived in and through the body, and works to deconstruct social norms as they relate to motherhood, creativity, and the body.
Alex currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa with her family/collaborators: her husband, Eric, and their five-year-old son, Brecken.
