Carole Alexis
Director, Choreographer, Producer, Curator, Master Teacher
Short Bio
Carole Alexis is a choreographer, artistic director, producer, educator, and cultural leader of French and Martinican heritage. Founder and Artistic Director of Carole Alexis Dance Theatre — Ballet des Amériques, she has built an internationally oriented artistic organization rooted in the cultures of the Caribbean, the African Diaspora, and the Francophone world.
Founded in 2011, Carole Alexis Dance Theatre — Ballet des Amériques is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization encompassing a professional dance company, a pre-professional conservatory, and educational and community programs. Under her leadership, the organization has developed a distinctive artistic identity and a sustained presence in Westchester and New York City, presenting original work throughout the United States and internationally.
Alexis’s choreographic language emerges from her multicultural experience and encompasses Classical and Contemporary Ballet, West African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, Modern Dance, Modern Jazz, Contemporary Movement, Music, Theatre, and Storytelling. Her work moves between the atmospheric, the visceral, and the dreamlike, drawing on memory, history, human experience, and the imagination. Rather than prescribing a single interpretation, she approaches choreography as a proposition—an invitation for each audience member to enter the work through their own experience, perception, and consciousness.
The name Ballet des Amériques reflects this artistic perspective, nourished by the cultures of the Caribbean, Africa, the Americas, and the Francophone world. Her work does not seek to artificially merge cultures, but to create from the lived experience of their coexistence.
Since October 2024, Carole Alexis Dance Theatre — Ballet des Amériques has served as the resident dance company of Teatro LATEA in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In 2026, Alexis conceived and created the inaugural Fête de la Francophonie at Teatro LATEA, bringing together dance, music, theatre, visual arts, film, and cultural exchange.
Her artistic leadership extends beyond performance to the creation of platforms for cultural dialogue, artistic exchange, and cross-cultural understanding. Alexis regards the arts as a powerful form of artistic diplomacy—a means of connecting people and cultures, creating dialogue, and building relationships across geographic and cultural borders.
Her many distinctions include Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic, the ArtsWestchester Artist Award, the ArtsWestchester Advancing Equity Award, and the Caribbean Media Exchange Leadership Award.
Through her leadership and artistic practice, Carole Alexis continues to position dance as both a creative force and a vehicle for cultural diplomacy, building bridges between people and cultures through art.
Biography
Carole Alexis received her dance training from some of the most renowned master teachers. She trained extensively with Russian Imperial Ballet and Vaganova technique master teacher Nikoloz Makhateli, a former principal dancer of the Kirov Ballet who holds a master's degree as a teacher and repetitor of choreography from the illustrious Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg, served as director of the National Ballet of Georgia and the Vaganova School, and was himself a student of the great Soviet teacher Vakhtang Chabukiani, who is considered to be one of the most influential male dancers in history. At the Mudra School of Maurice Béjart, Alexis studied French-Cuban technique with the legendary Cuban choreographer, dancer, and teacher Jorge Lefebre, who was a soloist with Maurice Béjart, served as director of the Ballet de Wallonie and danced with the famed Alicia Alonso and Alberto Alonso. In addition to Russian Imperial and French-Cuban technique, Carole Alexis studied French technique at the Académie Internationale de Danse de Paris and the famous Golovine School in Paris, which trained many leading dancers of the Paris Opéra Ballet. Later, she danced and toured extensively as a featured company member and soloist with Rick Odums Dance Company, Compagnie du Corail, Ballets Jazz de Paris
, and Ebène Dance Company. Alexis also was frequently contracted to work as a solo dancer, choreographer, and singer for live performances and videos with renowned recording artists and bands; held highly sought-after commercial contracts choreographing for Disney and The Citrus Bowl, and choreographed and performed both as a dancer and singer at New York City’s most renowned performing arts venues, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center...
In addition to being an accomplished choreographer, Carole Alexis is a master ballet teacher and coach of extraordinary teaching skills and pedagogical knowledge rarely found even in the most prominent ballet schools. The Conservatory of Ballet des Amériques, which she created to help students reach the highest levels of technical and artistic achievement in dance, stands apart from other institutions through its exemplary nurturing of each individual student to reach his or her highest potential, a well-rounded curriculum and adherence to humanistic principles. Providing rigorous training that embraces the full scope of dance education, the conservatory brings to light the powerful interconnectedness of various art forms and enables students not only to become world-class dancers but also highly cultivated, independent, confident, and exemplary members of society. Students of Carole Alexis have been accepted regularly to the prestigious programs at Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Netherlands Dans Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet, Ballet West, Atlanta Ballet, English National Ballet and Juilliard. Before founding and directing Ballet des Amériques, Alexis served as Artistic Director of the Bronx Dance Academy in New York City, a charter school for academics and ballet that thrived immensely under her leadership along with her friend and colleague Doreen Santos.
In Westchester, Alexis also held the position of Associate Director and Head of the Lower School at the Greenwich Ballet Academy — training innumerable students from absolute beginner level to a level exemplifying readiness for professional coaching, creating programs utilizing her unique teaching methodology, and quickly multiplying enrollment in the school from 20 students to 120.
Carole Alexis is shattering the barriers of societal stereotypes and prejudices as an indomitable female choreographer, director, and master teacher of mixed ethnic background while facing herself such prejudices too often.
Like her childhood dance heroes — dance icons such as Claude Bessy, Virginia Johnson, Noëlla Pontois, Yvette Chauviré, Debbie Allen, Carolyn Carlson, Maya Plisetskaya and Judith Jamison — she is a groundbreaking female pioneer in the field of dance. Alexis holds a deep appreciation of the underlying unity of humanity in its diversity since it is exemplified in her own personality and heritage, and she naturally embraces the principles of diversity and inclusion in her search for the best talent in dance. Her eclectic choreography bears her unique signature and vision — rooted in her impressive, wide-ranging expertise in dance, her personal experience, and her multicultural background. Never satisfied with audiences drawn solely from the “dance scene,” Alexis builds audiences that comprise the whole of humanity — the taxi drivers, teachers, surgeons, judges, and gardeners — she creates engaging, eye-opening dance for the whole of society, reinvigorating “ballet” and breaking barriers for new audiences and dance connoisseurs alike.
Carole Alexis’ professional company Carole Alexis Ballet Theatre/Ballet des Amériques – the “Ballet of the Americas” – represents a marriage of North and South America via the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. The company’s international orientation transcends the frontiers of human cultures through mutual exchange, enrichment and the creation of new perspectives.
Alexis believes that art expresses the infinite possibilities of humanity and – as a kind of universal consciousness – art involves reflection on social change. Inspired in part by the teachings of the three founders of the Negritude movement, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas, she embraces dance as a universal language that can inspire hope, freedom, mutual recognition, and reconciliation. Having lived and trained in Martinique, Brittany, West Africa and Paris, Alexis draws inspiration for her choreography from different social political contexts as well as music, nature, history, and human interaction. Rooted in the rich heritage of Europe, Africa and the Americas, Alexis possesses an unparalleled command of the dance forms of these various cultural landscapes and their history and meaning, enabling her to expand the language of ballet with keen insight and powerfully propel this venerable art form towards its greatest purpose in the 21st Century.
Additional information:
Carole Alexis studied with: Maurice Béjart, ballet and choreographic intensives; Nikoloz Makhateli, ballet; Bertrand Pie, ballet; Jorge Lefebre, Director of the Royal Ballet of Wallonie, ballet and choreographic work; Solange Golovine, ballet; Jaqueline Fyneart, barre au sol; Larrio Ekson, modern dance and choreographic intensives; Julien Jouga, music; Goris, Théâtre; Doudou NDiaye Rose, percussions; Cheikh Tidiane Niane, Traditional African dance; Jacqueline Rayet, Opéra de Paris, ballet; Savitri Nair, Bharata Natyam; Rick Odums, jazz and modern jazz; Peter Goss, modern Jose Limon based; Jay Allen Augen, ballet; Andrej Glekovski, ballet; Yuriko Kikuchi, Director of the Martha Graham Company; Bruce Taylor, modern dance, modern jazz and choreographic work; Jean-Claude Zadith, ballet, barre au sol, modern dance and choreographic work; Nina Valery, ballet; Germaine Acogny, African dance and choreographic work; Ray Phillips, modern Graham technique; Jaqueline Scott Lemoine, theater; Roger Robinel,
theater; Jean-Claude Lamorandière, contemporary and Afro-Caribbean; Josiane Antourel, improvisation.
Carole Alexis won numerous merit scholarships. Her image has graced several magazine covers and she has been featured in many newspaper articles magazines, and books including the Encyclopédie de la Femme Antillaise. A documentary entitled Come Dance With Me, directed by Jean-Paul Césaire, portrays the early career of Carole Alexis when she was discovered by Aimé Césaire