Artistic Director | Choreographer
By Cate Barry
As a tap dancer, Alexis is a percussionist and jazz musician who lives in a world where dance and music are one. She enjoys playing with time and rhythm by juxtaposing meter-less soundscapes and melodies with specific time signatures. Her work, which also employs original poetry or text and contemporary dance, often explores questioning identity, our relationships with our physical vessels and how that affects how we interact with the world, and family legacy.
Alexis Robbins (she/her), originally from Wakefield, RI (US), is a New Haven, CT based choreographer, performer, producer, storyteller, jazz musician, improviser, educator, writer, and dance advocate. Robbins received her B.A. in Dance and B.S. in Exercise Science from Hofstra University and is an alumna of the Tap Program at Jacob’s Pillow. As the Artistic Director and Choreographer of her project-based dance and music company, kamrDANCE, Robbins has shown her work throughout NYC, New Jersey, and New England, and created five dance films. kamrDANCE has produced many sold-out, evening length performances and split-bills, and continues to push boundaries with works that combine tap dance, contemporary dance, text, physical theater, and live music. kamrDANCE is currently creating The Mercy Velvet Project, a full-length, multidisciplinary rock opera with dance and live instrumentation.
Robbins has received choreographic commissions from Artspace New Haven, Hofstra University, Kehler Liddell Gallery, and Arc Dance Collective. Robbins is a 2022 and 2024 grant recipient from the Connecticut Office of the Arts for her community performance project Rooted in Dance & Music, and was a 2023 Artist in Residence at the Kirkland Art Center in Clinton, NY. Robbins has been a guest teacher at the Yale Schwarzman Center, Hofstra University, Springfield College, Rhythm and Sound (Toronto), CT Tap Intensive, Elm City Dance Collective, Hartford Dance Collective, MixT Co, and STAMP Long Island, and has been an adjunct tap dance professor at Hofstra University and Connecticut College. Robbins has been a teaching artist at Neighborhood Musical School in New Haven for over six years where she has helped spearhead free, educational jazz jam sessions for musicians and dancers of all levels and worked alongside Jesse Hameen II to incorporate tap dance into the Summer Jazz program for the first time in 2024. Robbins is the owner of kamrDANCE Studio LLC, which is the only place in Greater New Haven that offers adult tap classes that are drop-in, pay what you can, open to all levels, and focused on the roots of the form.
As a collaborator and performer, Robbins has worked with artists Rebecca Pappas and Cara Hagan. Robbins also performs as a jazz musician alongside many collaborators and is a member of the jazz trio Click Tracks which has performed throughout Connecticut. Also a writer and presenter, Robbins has written for the New Haven Arts Paper, and presented her talk How Tap Dance Belongs in Higher Education at Connecticut College’s Igniting Emancipatory Possibilities within African Diaspora Dance Conference. Most recently, Robbins was a featured soloist in The Bang Group’s Tap for Today at The Dance Hall in Kittery, ME and is a 2025 New England Dance Fund Awardee from the New England Foundation for the Arts.
PRESS:
Collaborators & performers
Christie Echols (she/they) (Musical Director of The Mercy Velvet Project) is a performer, composer, and creative artist located in Hartford, CT whose work highlights complexities of contemporary performance through the mediums of upright and electric bass, vocals, electronics, film, poetry, theater, and dance. Their music encompasses elements of free improvisation, singer-songwriter, avant-garde, EDM, jazz, contemporary classical, performance art, and funk to create versatile performances of unconstrained artistry and diverse timbres. She has been commissioned by Hofstra University, MIRACOR FILMS, Bassists with Boobs Ensemble, and others. Echols’ prioritizes collaboration with dancers, animators, and poets to create multi-disciplinary projects. Their recent collaborations include Obscure familiar (2023) with choreographer Alexis Robbins, Melodies of Certain Damage Opus 6 (2022) with performance artist Naama Tsabar, and The Modification of Oneself: for bass, vocals, electronics, and multimedia (2022) with poet Luisa Caycedo-Kimura. As a performer, Echols’ has been featured at the International Society of Bassists, Make Music Day Hartford, the Buttonwood Tree Center, FREE CENTER, New Haven Underground Jazz, and the Women’s Composers festival of Hartford. As a bassist they perform frequently with Playhouse on Park, Goodspeed Opera House, New Britain Symphony Orchestra, and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Likewise, she has recorded for NAXOS, Space Camp, Into the Light Ensemble and Cassie's Crutch.
www.christieechols.art
Sarah Robbins (she/her) is a poet and vocalist from Wakefield, Rhode Island and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Sarah began performing with kamrDANCE in 2015. She graduated from Hofstra University in 2019 with a BA in English Publishing and Religion. Her writing is primarily centered on Jewishness and identity struggles, sexual assault and the nature of forgiveness, and meaningful connections with other women. She currently works as an editorial assistant at Abrams Books. Two of kamrDANCE’s most recent works, hard to swallow and Everything is taken care of, are set to Sarah’s original poetry and music.
PAST COLLABORATORS AND DANCERS
Alice Halter, Allison Ward, Andrew Cashin, Aryanna Aronson, Briana Giordano, Ginny Mottla, Joan Bradford, Julia Neto, Karli Scott, Luiza Karnas, Meghan Carmichael, Shaina Schwartz, and Tyler Cutler.