Heidee Lyn Alsdorf

About

she/her

BFA Dance, MFA Physical Theatre

Springdale, AR

Taurus

I am a collaborative performance artist and educator with a background in dance, physical theater, and somatic experiencing*.

I work from the assumption that cultivating conditions for strong social and personal experiences is a key part of devising excellent works of art and building resilient arts ecosystems. In addition to performing and teaching, I like to curate, host, and produce arts incubators in my home (inHabit 2023–24, The Rental Home 2025) that support artistic exchange with intimate audiences in Northwest Arkansas (NWA). In 2024, I received the Community Activator Award from Mid-America Arts Alliance to lead On Our Way, an interactive dance-game activating public space along the Razorback Greenway Trail (photos below).

I’ve created works spanning from concert dance and theatre to site-specific, experimental, durational performance and improvisation. Some of my collaborators include RumWolf Productions, Flyover Dance Collective, Arkansas Classical Theatre, TheaterSquared, Classic Flow, and independent artists including Jessica Hale, Danielle Hatch, Craig Coloriusso, and Blake Worthey. I’ve had the pleasure of presenting works at Inverse Performance Art Festival (2023/2024), COLLIDE (2023), DanceChanceNWA (2022,2023), Rockin’ for the Ribbon (2022), and the Fayetteville Movement Festival (2025). Internationally, I collaborated on projects with Broken Jump Theatre (Italy), Spazio Seme (Italy), and Divadlo Continuo (Czech Republic) and with choreographers such as Giorgio Rossi (Ci Sono, 2016), Nicole Nigro (SIMER, 2017), and Isabel Lewis (O.C.E.A.N.I.C.A., 2021). My work, We’ve Got This was presented at the Venice Biennale in May of 2025.

I hold a BFA in Dance Performance from UALR, an MFA in Physical Theatre from Accademia dell’Arte and Mississippi University for Women, a certificate in Embodied Social Justice from Transformative Justice, and certification in Elemental Body Alignment System Level I (Scott Puttnam).

*I subscribe to a tradition that sees somatics as both an embodied practice and a theory about how change happens in humans; it includes awareness of our bodies, our relationships, the environment, and communities; it's about building and breaking habits for being more choice-full in life and on stage.

On our Way (2024)

Destination: OverThere (2023)

Go to Portfolio

in the press…

Democrat Gazette

October - November 2023

The Rental Home

The Rental Home

why a house party?

Because in order to have community we have to have connection and trust that can only come thru shared experiences and understanding.

Also, why not?? Take your shoes off. What's been going on with you? Did you try the dip? Wow, I've never heard someone play a flute like that. We've got this. Let's dance!

House Rules

  1. People live in this house. Clean up after yourself and don't be foolish.

  2. Smoking is allowed on the front and back patios, not in the house.

  3. Please NO shoes in the house

  4. No requests. Trust your DJ.

Personal Integrity

My work as an educator, collaborator, and artist is an ongoing commitment to ethical practice, embodied respect, and collective sustainability.

I understand learning as an interdependent, collaborative process, and I do my best to facilitate processes where shared knowledge, dialogue, and mutual accountability are valued. Grounded in the pedagogical philosophies of bell hooks and Paulo Freire, my teaching positions students as active contributors to collective inquiry rather than passive recipients of expertise.

I teach devised theatre and ensemble-based creation, centering collaboration as both an artistic and ethical practice. I guide students in developing physical awareness, relational sensitivity, and embodied responsiveness as foundations for developing original works of dance and theatre. Students learn to move fluidly between movement and text, improvisation and form, cultivating ensemble compositions that are shaped through listening, negotiation, and shared authorship.

I currently teach and make work in the region that has been called a “dance desert,” where professional opportunities are limited and exploitative practices are normalized. My role in this context moves beyond technique and aesthetics to include labor literacy. I guide my students to think of their work as labor — skilled, corporeal, and deeply human — and to see professional work as paid work not exposure, prestige, or gratitude. I teach transparency, boundary-setting, and collective care as professional skills.

To my students and peers, I share a simple tool: Project, People, Pay. If at least two of these are not in alignment, say no.