Ali Schwartz is a queer-feminist freelance artist, contact improvisation dancer, choreographer, performer, curator, activist and relationship therapist based in Leipzig, Germany. Motivated by visions of social, gender, climate and health justice, Ali is committed to embodied emancipatory practices.
Ali has been working since 2017 as part of the intersectional performance collective POLYMORA Inc. with “relaxed performance”, installations and workshops – often including simple language, audio description and sign language.
As a therapist Ali works predominantly with the BiPoc and LGBTQIA+ community members, having initiated the award-winning community building project POLYRHYTHMS for queer refugees that combines TaKeTINa rhythms therapy with Systemic therapy.
Ali´s intercultural and interdisciplinary work is shaped by having lived in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Stockholm, Barcelona, the US and many international theatre and dance group collaborations, including the theatre academy in Tehran/Isfahan, the Freedom Theatre in Jenin or Mazovia Institute of Culture in Warsaw.
Further, Ali teaches inclusive contact improvisation within the Tanzlabor dance education program, communication in artistic collaboration at SAE Institute in Leipzig, where she also co-facilitates queer-feminist girls* camps with VHS Grünau and has initiated the regular Contact Improvisation Consent Jam.
Ali has curated the “Walls Down Festival” with refugees in Würzburg (2015), the “Radical Contact Meeting for Contact Improvisation and Body Politics” in Gothenburg, Sweden (2014/15) and co-directed YANTE – Community Dance Palestine in Ramallah, West Bank (2015).
Ali holds a DGSF-diploma for Systemic therapy from GST Berlin (2022) and a teaching qualification for Philosophy/Ethics/Theologies, English and Physical Education (2012) from the University of Würzburg. Extensive contemporary dance training include professional dance scholarships at Broadway Dance Center, NYC (2005) and Vertigo School of Dance, Jerusalem (2014). Further education includes trauma informed resilience training, LGBTQIA+ psychotherapy, Non Violent Communication, Restorative Justice Circles and the Wheel of Consent (Betty Martin). Ali is currently training as NARM* practitioner, a bodypsychotherapy for treating attachment and developmental trauma (*Neuro affective relational model).