The Original Grin

Alexsa Durrans (b. Vancouver, BC, 1994) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Choreography and Integrated Media. She creates site-specific movement landscapes and sculptural video installations by shifting movement into digital, site-specific and non theatrical environments, using already built infrastructures to explore visual hierarchies coded into bodies and spaces. She employs techniques of gestural choreographies and activates everyday technologies such as the iphone to articulate the nuances of the Post-Internet body. Alexsa’s choreography has been shown at the Centre national de la Danse, Paris (2022), Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022) Murmurs Gallery, Los Angeles (2020), Pieter Performance Space, Los Angeles (2019), AALA Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2019) and Untitled Art Fair, Miami (2017). Her video work has been included in group exhibitions such as, You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow at Fellows for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2024), The Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Banff, Alberta (2023), and Tense Renderings at the Reef, Los Angeles (2022).

Chantel Murphy, originally from Santa Cruz, California is a dancer based in Los Angeles. She recently earned her BFA in dance at California Institute of the Arts. Mainly focused on improve, ballet, hip hop, and contemporary techniques has been taught by Cheryl Mann, Glen Eddy, Julie Bour, and many more. She has worked with the company LA(Horde) in Marseille, France and attended intensives in New York City, San Francisco, and Amsterdam. She has been in many pieces some including “Occurrence #6” Donald Byrd, “Lickety-Split” Alejandro Cerrudo, and “Falling Upright” Mike Tyus and Luca Renzi. On top of her career as a dancer, Chantel has been apart of short films and has modeled for figure drawings at FLAGS. She fancies the idea of opposites attract along with dramatized fight scenes in her movement.