Alec Stoddard

Who am I?

I’m a genderqueer trans performance artist exploring themes of identity construction, body sovereignty, and kinesthetic strategies of queer survivance through the spectacular body. Since 2020, I’ve investigated the relationship of performer to object, using my body in various stages of modification and its changes in response to outside forces, both tangible and intangible, organic and systemic.Self portraiture, 2024
A soft, pink-toned headshot of Alec, a light skinned queer person, looking directly into the camera with a neutral facial expression and sporting a silver septum ring. Chains drape over the hand resting on his shoulder. The other hand crosses the first and reveals their arm, hand, neck, and face tattoos. His brown hair is styled in a curly mullet, the sides closely shaved.

How do I approach teaching?

Soft boy approach to the hard apparatus.Whether hung as double loops, vertically, asymmetrically, etc, chains offer a wealth of weight and support that can feel kinesthetically different in phrasing than other apparatuses and performance objects. Students will find my approach to teaching is founded in orientation to movement as a centrally valuable skill that takes time and focused training to develop. Just as learning aerial-specific skills like inversions can be a life-long journey, so can developing vestibular, proprioceptive, balance, timing, and weight-sharing skills that are chain-specific. What individuals uncover through their own exploration is infinitely more interesting than any syllabus I could impose. My belief is that the simultaneous agency and deeply connective practice with the apparatus creates a space ripe with possibilities and expansion of understandings of bodies, minds, movement, and circus itself.Photography by Stuart Polkinghorne, 2024
A light-painting collaborative portrait of Alec's kneeling form in amber tones. One large swath of warm light shoots downward between the two hanging chain loops and cascades down Alec's back, illuminating his upturned face, pleading arm shape, hair, and extended back leg. They're wearing only tight black shorts and all of their tattoos are visible in the orange glow.

Where can you find me?

Six Week Chains Series The Aerial House, Los Angeles, California, USA / Sundays January 12 - February 16Spectrum Performance Club Fugazi Theater, San Francisco California, USA/ February 24 -25Scratch Performance Denver, Colorado, USA / March 22Denver Circus Collective Denver, Colorado, USA / March 23, teaching chains and bullwhipsPrivates available in-person in Los Angeles, California or remotely (including asynchronous) via contact form belowPhotography by Rowan Littell, Haphazard Imagination, 2023
A live performance photo of Alec kneeling beneath the two chain loops circling over head. His face is turned away from the audience with one arm reaching forward to draw into the crouched shape and the other lifting back. The cool blue lighting illuminates their dark costuming and light, tattooed skin.

• Workshop Offerings

• Join my Patreon

Why chains?

I was drawn to work with chains in 2016 because of the support and weight elements. Being hung in two independently swiveling loops allows them to support my body, and their weight provides excellent proprioceptive feedback. Over time, I realized these elements allow me to create movement using a bottom-up process, leading with individual tactile and equilibrative cues toward a broader shape or phrase. I was tasked with creating from sensation, rather than syllabus, maintaining the potential of unconditional pleasure decoupled from normative expectations. Put simply, it centers me and my desires.Photography by Mercy Wolfe, 2024
A live performance photo of Alec balancing on one of the chain loops while the free one circles him. They are supported upright on one hip, with their head thrown back dramatically and locked between the two sides of the loop. His arms are open wide in an expansive gesture and the lighting reflects amber tones off of the chains, his black costume and mask.

What is my work about?

With a diverse onstage background ranging from concert bassoonist to fetish artist to finally aerialist in 2013, my work has consistently straddled the worlds of low-brow underground and contemporary fine art. My sensation-based partnership with looped chains approaches circus as a physical thinking exercise and the acrobatic body as a contemplation for euphoria-led guidance, where I can examine states of vulnerability, exposure, surrender, and the resulting transformation. My current work in progress, QUIET, is a multidisciplinary collaboration intersecting queer survival themes of disguising risk and code-switching with bliss-centered body autonomy and transgression as a mode of liberation. QUIET reflects on the idea that our selfhood is in the becoming, in the desire, in the search.Photography by Anna Cicone, 2023
A studio portrait of Alec from the side, draped face-down over aerial chains. He is wearing dark red pants and a cream-colored shirt, and their bodyweight is supported on one hip in a looped chain and his chest in the other. Their face is turned toward the camera with downcast eyes and hands rising up to frame his face. With knees bent and feet flexed, they contract over the chains in a ball shape, meeting elbows to knees.

• Click for CV

• Join my Patreon