Elijah Richardson is from San Jose, California where his first exposure to movement was watching figure skating at 5 years old. Throughout his performing arts public schooling, Elijah immersed himself in classical choir and theatre arts, where he was cast leading roles in Avenue Q, Hello Dolly!, Aladdin, The Drowsy Chaperone, and Spamalot to name a few. His skating and theatre backgrounds have led him to explore those combined passions in embodied storytelling. He started his formal dance training at Chapman University studying ballet, modern, jazz, improvisation, and choreography. He proudly graduated cum laude with a BFA in Dance Performance and History minor in 2018. 

​

Attending Chapman on scholarship, he has been a featured soloist in original faculty works by Ido Tadmor, Sean Greene, Nancy Dickson-Lewis, Brandee Lara, and Dale Merrill. He also had the unique opportunity of performing the solo "(D)ancestors" by Julianne O’Brien at the inaugural Dance Studies Association Conference (formerly CORD/SDHS) at Ohio State University, while absorbing knowledge from lectures, panels, and workshops from inspiring dance scholars. Elijah loves to collaborate within artistic disciplines of dance, music, theatre, and film. At Chapman, he was a founding member ofChaptones A cappella, performed in Dodge College student film productions, facilitated a dance-music improvisation classwith the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music, and had his dance film The Bathroom of Seville screened in New York and Arizona.

​

Honing in on contemporary concert dance, his supplemented training include intensives at BODYTRAFFIC, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (Summer '17-'18), and San Francisco Conservatory of Dance (Gaga); learning excerpted repertoire by Ohad Naharin, Jiri Kylian, Alejandro Cerrudo, Crystal Pite, Peter Chu, Alex Ketley, and Bobbi Jene Smith. He has guest performed with Anaheim Ballet, Jess Harper and Dancers, and Backhausdance as a trainee for their 2017-2018 season. Elijah recently accepted a company position with Danceworks Chicago and is looking forward to dancing, teaching, and creating in Chicago.