Alex Ketley is a choreographer and the director of The Foundry, a contemporary dance company based in San Francisco. Formally a classical dancer with the San Francisco Ballet (1994-1998) he performed a wide range of classical and contemporary repertory including the work of William Forsythe, James Kudelka, and George Balanchine in San Francisco and on tour throughout the world. In 1998 he left the ballet to create The Foundry in order to explore his deepening interests in choreography, improvisation, mixed media work, and collaborative process. With The Foundry he has been an artist-In-residence at many leading art institutions including Headlands Center for the Arts (2001 and 2007), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2002), The Yard (2003), the Santa Fe Art Institute (2004 and 2006), the Taipei Artist Village (2005), ODC Theater (2006), and the Ucross Foundation (2007). The company has produced fourteen full evening length works that have received extensive support from the public, funders, and the press, as well as a number of single-channel video pieces that have screened at international video festivals. As a choreographer independent of his work with The Foundry, Alex Ketley has been commissioned to create original pieces for companies and universities throughout the United States. For this work he has received acknowledgement from the Hubbard Street 2 National Choreographic Competition (2001), the International Choreographic Competition of the Festival des Arts de Saint-Saveaur (2004), the National Choo-San Goh Award (2005), the inaugural Princess Grace Award for Choreography (2005), the BNC National Choreographic Competition (2008), two CHIME Fellowships (2007 and 2008), and two Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Residencies (2007 and 2009). In 2009 his work "To Color Me Different" won an Isadora Duncan Award for Best Ensemble Performance and was considered one of the Top Ten Performances of the Year by both Voice of Dance and the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2009 he received one of six prestigious Gerbode Hewlett Choreographer Commissioning Awards and created the new work Please Love Me which premiered for The Foundry in May of 2010 and was performed extensively throughout the year in California. For 2011, he is the sole artist to receive the National Eben Demarest Award, which he plans to use to engage a new project that explores remote regions of the American West. In addition to his direction of The Foundry and his independent projects, in 2004 he helped co-create The San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and organization where he still serves as an advisor, teacher, and the Resident Choreographer. Stemming from a classical foundation, the school is deeply invested in advanced students learning and growing though the engagement of new choreography and a vast array of contemporary dance forms and ideas.