Alicia Cutaia

Guest Masters

Alicia Cutaia is a celebrated dancer, instructor, choreographer, fire dancer, and harness aerialist based in Portland, Oregon. She also is Co-Director and Founder of ARC in Movement LLC, an innovative performance creation company that creates one of a kind acts and shows combining aerial, dance, and fire. Cutaia teaches and choreographs throughout the Portland area as well as around the world.

She earned her BFA as a double major in Classical Ballet and Jazz with honors from Point Park University in Pennsylvania. Cutaia’s training was furthered as a scholarship recipient at Hubbard Street Dance, North Carolina Dance Theater and River North Dance Company. She has worked with and performed pieces by many renowned choreographers from all over the world including Lauren Edson, Jamey Hampton, Ashley Roland, Ron De Jesus, Gina Patterson, Lar Lubovitch, Louis Falco, Michael Foley, Keisha Lalama-White, Joel Hall, Lou Conte, Daniel Gwirtzman, Lynn Taylor-Corbett, Daniel Ezralow, Choo-San Goh, Alan Hineline, Harrison McEldowney, Kevin O’Day, Frances Patrelle, David Storey, Margo Sappington, Christian Holder and Bianca Sapetto.

Cutaia has spent over 15 years touring internationally with professional dance companies, acting as rehearsal director, costume manager and company dancer with Eisenhower Dance Detroit, as well as a company dancer with Hubbard Street Dance (Chicago), Giordano Jazz Dance (Chicago), and BodyVox (Portland). Along her journey, she fell in love with circus performance and became a professional fire dancer and harness aerialist, which she moved on to perform both locally in Portland and around the world.

Cutaia is also an established Instructor and choreographer. Her work has been showcased at many choreographic festivals including Jazz Dance World Congress, Maggie Allesee New Choreography Award showcase, Michigan Youth Arts Festival, Dance Chicago, Harvest Contemporary Dance Festival, Kaleidoscope Dance Festival, Midwest RAD Festival, and the NSAL Mid-Michigan Chapter showcase, to name a few. Her choreography for competition and ballet schools has won many national awards including Youth American Grand Prix ensemble award winner, W.B.A.C Grand Prix contemporary solo award winners and US Prix de Ballet contemporary solo award winners. Ms. Cutaia has taught at Lou Conte Dance Studio, Oakland University, American Ballet Theatre, Dance Theater of Harlem, Eisenhower Center for Dance, BodyVox Dance Center, Sultanov Russian Ballet Academy, The Portland Ballet, Rose City Rhythmic and many others across the country. A number of Ms. Cutaia’s students have been accepted on scholarship to many prestigious summer and college dance programs along with continuing on to professional dance careers.

In addition to teaching ballet, jazz, contemporary, tap, and improv dance, Cutaia teaches specialized classes for aerialists, acrobats, prop manipulators, rhythmic gymnasts, and figure skaters that focus on dance and movement creation through the lens of each respective style. These classes focus on artistry and clean lines while utilizing exercises to help the student create new movements and methods for performance. These specialized classes are taught regularly by Cutaia at The Circus Project, BodyVox, Portland Skaters Association, Pacific Fire Gathering, Rose City Rhythmic, where she also was program director, and many more. She also teaches private lessons to many dance, flow, and circus artists.