Alysia Michelle James was born in Las Vegas, NV. She moved to Los Angeles, CA with her mother when she was nine years old and started training ballet, hip-hop, diving and synchronized swimming. She attend Orange County School of the Arts for five years majoring first in commercial dance until she entered 9th grade, then switching conservatories to the creative writing program. She started composing original music in her piano class at age 14 and later attended UC Santa Barbara for a BA in Music Composition.

AMJ started training aerial acrobatics in 2008 at the Aerial Classroom while she was in college. She continued to train privately with Autumn Lotus and Michael Lipari in the following years. In 2011, she started teaching at Elite Kids USA, where she was employed until she left for graduate school in music in 2017. Her time at Elite Kids USA was the most important time in her aerial career as she gained so much knowledge and experience of aerial arts. She has a special disposition for teaching circus arts to kids and continues to do so at Pali Mountain summer camp in the summertime.

She began performing with the Earth Harp Collective under the direction of inventor/artist/musician William Close in 2011 when she composed a piece for the earth harp titled "Mathematical Earth." AMJ has traveled the nation performing aerial, as a musician on piano, on the earth harp itself and on other auxiliary harps invented by William Close with the Earth Harp Collective.

In 2014, she was hired at Pirates Dinner Adventure. During her five years at PDA, she held the contract aerialist position, worked as the assistant manager, aerial coordinator and lead acrobatic trainer. She trained acrobats in partner aerial silks, neck-to-neck spins on silks, swinging trapeze, ankle spins, aerial hoop, dance lifts and character acting. In 2017, she became the resident aerialist at Teatro Martini, where she performed several nights a week up until its closure due to the pandemic.

In 2016, she began working at the Queen Mary's Dark Harbor, where she is one of only three aerialists to receive a Hall of Fame award for her portrayal of Beezlebabe, the sexy/gross undead aerialist. She started working as a character performer around this time and has performed at ComicCon in the Blade Runner 2049 installation, as a character in the Fallout 76 installation at E3 and as a consultant for Mycotoo for future installations.

In 2019, during her graduate studies at Cal State Long Beach, she premiered a new opera titled "13 Fruitcakes" for the Stonewall riots 50th anniversary. She composed one piece which was performed by the LA Lap Top Collective along with the original operatic pieces by composer Gihieh Lee. She graduated with a Master's of Music Theory and Composition in 2020 then shortly began lecturing the course "Music for Dance" at UC Santa Barbara.

In 2022, AMJ entered a PhD program for Music Composition at UC Santa Barbara. Her research is in the connection between dance/movement/performance and music. She is a currently an Artist in Residence at the Santa Barbara Center for the Arts, Science and Technology.

Biography