Studio Stories: CANDY BOX Dance Festival special with Alexandra Bodnarchuk of Doma Dance Theater - Season 17, Episode 178

Under the direction of Alexandra Bodnarchuk, Doma Dance Theater creates dance works for the stage and screen that explore the body as a tangible site of culture. 

Doma, the Carpatho-Rusyn word for “at home,” cultivates a sense of belonging, curiosity, and exuberant self-expression for its performers and audiences. Doma’s cross-cultural approach creates powerful contemporary dance works that examine shared experiences of diaspora and displacement. 

Informed by Bodnarchuk’s pan-Slavic cultural upbringing in Pittsburgh, PA, Doma’s work incorporates cultural influences, circular spatial patterning, and intimate partnering. As the first Carpatho-Rusyn American choreographer to make contemporary work with a folk lens, Doma’s works blaze a trail for Slavic representation in contemporary dance, demonstrating the enduring necessity of unearthing the cultural legacies each of us carry.

Founded in 2024, Doma represents an evolution of Alexandra Bodnarchuk Dance Projects (ABDP), founded in 2017. Building upon Bodnarchuk’s past focus on body identity and societal expectations of womanhood, Doma continues to unfold the embodied experience in an ongoing search for the elusive feeling of home.

Doma’a inaugural season includes performances at Candy Box Dance Festival, and Thistle & Rose at Celtic Junction. For more information visit domadancetheater.org or follow them on Instagram @domadancetheater. 

Doma Dance Theater’s new work for the 2025 Candy Box Dance Festival is set against an aural backdrop of Carpatho-Rusyn folk songs from the Šambron and Poloniny regions of Eastern Slovakia. Featuring dancers Alexandra Bodnarchuk, Non Edwards, Odessa Rain, and Yukina Sato accompanied by Mila Vocal Ensemble, the women weave in and around each other in syncopated harmony.