BIOGRAPHY

Trained classically in voice and theatre at RADA (London) and Vassar (NY), Ali is an American singer-of-all-trades, performance artist, researcher and teacher. After working as a puppeteer in Dublin as well as making her recording debut there with a collection of jazz standards entitled The Very Thought of You, she relocated to the UK, where she now resides.

She holds an MA in Performance Studies from Aberystwyth University and is currently undertaking practice-based PhD research. Her projects Ten Cents a Dance and SERVUS! have featured at festivals such as Green Man (Wales), Electric Picnic (Ireland), and venues including Arnolfini (Bristol) and PSI #18 (Leeds). The PhD interrogates how we value artistic (and, more generally, immaterial) labour and how a one-on-one performance dynamic might trouble entrenched notions of capital.

Her show Eve Speaks has toured to Project Arts Centre (Dublin), Hatch: MASS (Nottingham), Brighton Festival Fringe, Bristol Old Vic (Mayfest launch), Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival, and to a burlesque club in London. With storyteller Peter Stevenson, she has also performed at the Watershed (Bristol), St. Paul's Crypt (Bristol), and was recently a resident artist at Ennis Street Festival in Ireland. 

She teaches Performance Writing in collaboration with Dr. Heike Roms at Aberystwyth University and leads seminars and lectures there on subjects ranging from dramaturgy to contemporary performance practice.

She also sings with a gypsy jazz/French chanson outfit by the name of Chocolat.