The Ailey School

Sonya Speizer started her dance training in ballet at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts in Chicago, under the direction of Victor Alexander and Dolores Long. Additionally, she trained at La Escuela Nacional de Ballet in Cuba and attended intensives at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and The Ailey School. She is currently a senior in the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in Dance where she is double-majoring in Dance and Anthropology. She has performed in the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program Benefit Concert and Fall Concert, working with Dance Magazine's Top 25 to Watch Rebecca Margolick, “Call for Creation” alumnus Madison Hicks, and former Netherlands Dans Theater (NDT) company member Alexander Anderson. She has spent summers dancing at Dance Italia, Orsolina 28, Hubbard Street, New Dialect, and Gaga Lab New York. She was selected twice to participate as a dancer in the New Directions Choreography Lab (NDCL), where she worked with Nattie Trogdon, Hollis Bartlett, Annie Rigney, Babacar Top, and Marla Phelan. Sonya has found her artistic flame in improvisation and movement generation. While at the Ailey School, she created an independent archive of movement via TikTok, where she continues to share her work and connect to her purpose. Sonya combines aspects of her spirituality with her creative nature, endeavoring to dance and create from a place of inner peace and presence. She believes that the stillness and quiet she finds in her movement is natural to the human experience, and she brings this into her work as a means of fostering connection.