The Foundry

The Foundry is a dance-based performance company collaboratively directed by artists Christian Burns and Alex Ketley. The company has been creating and presenting work in the Bay Area since its inception in 1998. The work is driven by an intense desire to look at how process is applied and challenged in the creation of dance work. Much of the work is interdisciplinary in nature, stemming from a long interest in the fine arts, most significantly video and sculpture. In the past five years, The Foundry has created 11 full-length works, numerous video pieces, and three video installations.
In 1999, the JennJoy Gallery presented The Foundry’s performance video installation Saltwater, which was the culminating work of their 1998 exploration on how the application of environment affects the creation of movement. Also in 1999, their video piece Jealous Guy was screened in The Netherlands at the Impakt Festival, as well as on the Dutch National Television program A.L.M.A.N.A.C. The following year, Alonzo King’s LINES Contemporary Ballet commissioned Sea Green and Blue Already Rising, which opened the LINES Ballet season at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In 2001, they became Artists in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California. During this residency they created Capacity from Shallowness, which was dubbed by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Top 10 Dance Events of that year. In that same year, they won the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago 2 National Choreographic Competition creating Trace Fulfillment, which is still in the active repertory of that company and currently being toured throughout the United States. Also during this year, they were awarded the 2001 Paula Citron Choreography for Camera Award from the Canadian Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film and Video. In 2002, The Foundry created Kid Thunder, for a performance at the Headlands Center for the Arts, which was reviewed again by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Top 10 Dance Events of the Year. Later that year, they were Wattis Artists in Residence at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where they presented The Fleshing Memory for two sold-out shows in the Center’s Forum Theatre, and created a video installation for the center’s Bay Area Now 3 retrospective. For 2003, Alex Ketley was commissioned to create a second piece for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago 2, which premiered for the main company’s annual Inside/Out program. The Foundry had a three-week residency in August at The Yard in Chilmark, Massachusetts where they created the evening-length piece Within Once. Company directors Christian Burns and Alex Ketley returned to the Bay Area to create Joygame, a full-length video piece that was presented at the Headlands Center for the Arts in September 2003.
Current projects include Christian Burns teaching and creating a new work with Kirsti Simson at the Laban Center in London, England. Alex Ketley is working with choreographer Charles Moulton on a work that goes to White Oak, as well as setting Trace Fulfillment for Florida State University as a choreographer from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.