Alex Ketley is an independent choreographer and the director of The Foundry. Formally a classical dancer with the San Francisco Ballet (1994-1998), he performed a wide range of classical and contemporary repertory including the work of William Forsythe, James Kudelka, and George Balanchine in San Francisco and on tour throughout the world. 

In 1998 he left the San Francisco Ballet to co-found The Foundry in order to explore his deepening interests in choreography, improvisation, collaboration, and mix media projects. As a choreographer independent of his work with The Foundry, Ketley has been commissioned to create original pieces for companies and universities throughout the United States and Europe. For this work he has received acknowledgement from the Hubbard Street National Choreographic Competition, the International Choreographic Competition of the Festival des Arts de Saint-Saveaur, the National Choo-San Goh Award, the inaugural Princess Grace Award fro Choreography, the BNC National Choreographic Competition, three CHIME fellowships, three Maggi Allesee National Center for Choreography Residencies, the Gerbode-Hewlett Choreographer Commissioning Award, and the National Eben Demarest Award.

For 2011, in addition to commissions from Ballet Leipzig and the Juilliard School, his AXIS Dance Company work "To Color Me Different" was presented on national television through an invitation from the show So You Think You Can Dance. With The Foundry in 2012, he was deeply engaged in a new project entitled No Hero, which explored what dance means and how it is experienced by people throughout more rural parts of the American West. The video projections Alex created for No Hero was nominated for a 2012 Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design.

in 2103 he was awarded a MANCC Media Fellowship, which he is using to work on a collaborative project with Miguel Guiterrez exploring rural communities throughout the Deep South.