Part 1
[00:00:00] In this episode, I'm joined by Alexandra Beller. This is part one of a two part series where Alexandra share a deep embodied perspective on creativity, meaning making, and personal transformation through art. In this episode, we discover how risk and challenge in art making mirror personal growth and why creativity is an act of spiritual self-trust.
We cover. How everyday choices are creative acts and how recognizing this can expand your sense of self-expression. And we explore how to move past perfectionism and decision fatigue through intuitive, embodied creative practice.
So today I have Alexandra Beller with me. Alexandra is a celebrated choreographer, director and educator with over 25 years of experience in dance, theater and creative process. Her book, the Anatomy of Art, is a field guide for artists. A powerful blend of poetic insight, practical tools and embodied wisdom that challenges [00:01:00] makers to disrupt their habits, trust their instincts, and reimagine how they create, whether in the studio or on the page.
She brings clarity, rigor, and deep care to the messy, beautiful work of making art. So welcome, Alexandra. Thanks so much. So today we're gonna, be exploring the power within the creative, process and the power within art making itself, but with a slightly different perspective from my listeners, embodying Alexandra's creative passions in theater and dance.
So first, let's just start with your journey. Alexandra, tell us a bit about your creative life journey and how you've ended up here talking to me. I knew I was a dancer from a pretty young age. pretty quickly in my first dance class, uh, at about eight years old. I felt like I had found myself and home and I.
You know, at an age, you know, 10 or 11 when people were like, what do you wanna be when you grow up? I would say, oh, I'm already doing it. I'm a dancer. So I danced, and even though I got a lot of [00:02:00] pushback from teachers, because I had a non-traditional body for a dancer mm-hmm. I just didn't feel like I had any other real choice.
And I don't mean that in a bad way, just felt like inevitable. so I. Went to college and got my undergrad in dance and also in English because I was, simultaneously a nerd. And then I left and I had a performance career. turns out those teachers were wrong and I got into a big dance company and was lucky enough to travel the world for about seven years with Bill t Jones Arnie Zane Dance Company, where I had a lot of, amazing vantage to watch, uh, him create.
And he was quite a genius creator. I got a. A lot of feeling towards, the idea of making my own work while I was in the company. And I left when I was almost 30 to start my own dance company, which I ran for 16 [00:03:00] years. And it was really a dance theater company. There was a lot of speaking, a lot of text.
My English degree and my dance degree were definitely fertilizing each other. and so it was a lot of times teaching dancers to speak, to act, to write. To create. and I was collaborating with composers and you know, of course lighting designer costume set. Projection video design, and really in love with all of it.
During that time, I was also teaching, teaching dance choreography. got my MFA along the way and then got a degree in something called Laban Movement Analysis. Okay. And Bartenieff Fundamentals, which is basically a way to analyze human movement for meaning. And to look at the anatomy and biomechanics of the human body towards efficiency.
All of that brought me into theater, like the real theater world, and allowed me to start collaborating with actors to help them make physical choices that would deepen their meaning and their [00:04:00] communication, and to stage and choreograph for plays. So I've been doing that. For years. And that work, the Laban Bartenieff of work, also allowed me to work individually with people on what we might call healing.
Okay. But healing through movement. Okay. I don't have a dance movement therapy license, but essentially, you know, what I'm doing with private clients is using movement towards healing, which is what dance movement therapy does as well. so right now I see private clients. I've written two books, which are both, about to be published.
one about Laban and Bartenieff for conductors. So I'm, I'm dealing with, the movement of the body. Particularly in conducting. Okay. And this one that you mentioned, the anatomy of art, which is, uh, like a very comprehensive deep dive into what goes into our creativity. Mm-hmm. So, those are the two that are coming out and I'm seeing private clients and teaching [00:05:00] classes and still choreographing.
so. What I'm getting from you as you're kind of explaining all of that to me, is that you are a meaning seeker, in terms of like, you your creativity and your art to, to have some real meaning and to really kind of propel you forward in terms of finding more and more meaning.
That's what I'm getting from you have I summarized that correctly. I think that feels right, and I think we are all, whether we consider ourselves creatives or artists or not. I think we are all chockfull of desire and meaning and a, a way that we experience and take in and metabolize the world and our life.
And, that experience of our life's meaning comes out through our bodies. Mm-hmm. Whether we want it to or not. So learning about the way in which we communicate our inner meaning to the world mm-hmm. Only just gives us choices. It doesn't have to mean we have to be an artist with a capital A. Yeah. [00:06:00] But we are all communicating our inner meaning all the time, and I'm interested in helping coach and guide people to find the subtle ways in which we narrate our lived experience to the world.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, you know, in that context then, you know, how has your relationship then with creativity and art making changed over your, you know, your, your years so far? It's changed a lot. I will say one of the, the most profound changes wasn't even about art. It was having children. Okay. And having my sense of like what the stakes are in art.
they, they lowered a little bit. Okay. So meaning once you've sat up all night with a sick kid and worried about whether or not you had to go to the er, uh, going into the theater for Tech week and finding out that they bought the wrong color gel, or the costumes didn't turn out the way you wanted it to [00:07:00] suddenly felt much lower stakes.
Yeah. Okay. And that. Was actually a relief. Mm. That made me feel like, actually, you know, one fixed way that I saw it in my head is not the only way. There's. Always, you know, uh, the axiom, you know, necessity is the mother of invention is something we might take for granted. But the truth is, problem solving is the most common use of our creativity.
Mm-hmm. You go to make dinner and you realize, you know, you were making X, Y, Z and you're out of X. Yeah. And what should we do? And that moment where you're like, oh, I've gotta figure this out, my. Bus didn't come, or this letter didn't arrive, or I don't have enough money for whatever it is. Yeah, whatever the obstacle or the problem is, that's usually the moment we're the most creative.
So in our actual creative life, when we're trying to fertilize our creativity, one of the. Best things we can do is provide obstacles that help us get out of habit. Right? We can't just do [00:08:00] things the way we always do them. We have to overcome a hurdle, solve an obstacle creative problem solve. Mm-hmm. Our bodies and brains are trained to do this.
We do it all the time. Mm. We do it all day long. Mm. There's a, you know. there's an obstacle in the path. We go around the obstacle. There's a, you know, somebody, their dog is peeing and there are leashes across the sidewalk. I'm going to make this little, uh, you know, sidestep around them. Yeah. We're always adapting to things that we're not expecting in our environment, so we are very well trained to do that.
We just need to bring that into our creative life more. Yeah, and I would say that's one of the biggest things I've learned is that expectation and assumption are the enemy of creativity. Yeah. Okay. And actually, you know, I mean the creative process and showing up for your art, you know, it really teaches you how to take risks as in, in life as well.
Right? It's a risk taking thing [00:09:00] too. As you hit those hurdles and those barriers, a lot of people give up because actually it's just a bit too hard and what's the point? And like, it's just, you know, it's just art. But actually, if you can learn to step into the power of risk and challenge. Um, it actually then has a ripple effect into the rest of your life.
Would you agree with that? Absolutely. I would definitely agree with that. And I also think that like we, we call something real life and then we call something art with more of a capital A, but through the same thing. Yes, your art is in your life. Your life is in your art, your body is making whatever you're making, whether it's a.
Physical art or not. You know, even when I'm writing, it's my body that's doing the writing and you know, it's in my head. Once it's out of my head, it's come through my body in some way. I've spoken it, I've written it, I've moved it. but my lived experience comes through my body out into the world, and that is my creativity.
And we can get so frozen in making decisions [00:10:00] we can get. So decision fatigued. And so risk averse. Yeah. That making any choice feels so high stakes that we make no choice. So that's stagnation. Mm. Yeah. And I think that probably when people are really learning to embrace creativity for the first time, particularly if they haven't, you know, had a love for dance since the age of eight, you know, you know, I think it is quite separate.
And then over time, I think, it can become very intertwined in your everyday life. You know, where it becomes more of like the way that you live and the way that you function and the way that you nurture yourself and heal yourself, and the way you step into your power. but I think that it can, it is separate at the beginning and it's a, it's a learning process, you know, in terms of learning how to do that.
Yeah. And I think one process to let those two roads begin to merge is to notice how often you make creative choices without it feeling like it freezes you up. So you know you are [00:11:00] making soup and you're like, taste it. Some things missing. What is it? I think a little more salt. Put salt in. Hmm. That's it.
But I need a little more. And then you take one. Taste of it and you're like, Ooh, I hid it. I nailed it. That's it. And you know in your body, I found it. And we do that all day long. Where should the couch go in my new apartment? you know, what top should I put on with this bottom? And sure, sometimes we get stuck in even those.
Decisions. But I think for the most part we are used to making creative decisions all day long. Mm-hmm. We just need to notice that that's what we're doing. So then when we pick up a colored pencil and a journal, it doesn't feel like something that's so, you know, such an outlier. Strange to our daily life.
Yeah. Make a line. Make a circle. Yeah. Draw shape, do anything. Yeah. Put that to the page. Just the way you put salt to your soup. And then that process, that line, that mark, that shape, that color, [00:12:00] that can evolve into something else as you grow. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it gives you an opinion too, right?
Like it gives you, I'm a firm believer that we can't have opinions about things that are in our head. We can only have opinions about things that are in the world because, and it's. When it's in our head, it doesn't actually exist. Yeah. Once we've put it out there, we have a sentence on a page. We have a line on a page, we have a movement in space, then we can say, oh, I like it, or, oh, I don't like it.
Oh, I'd like it if, yeah, I like it. But you know, and then we have somewhere to go, but we, until something's out of our brain, there's no momentum because nothing really exists. Dunno, unless you try. Right. okay. So what was kind of the, the trigger, I guess, for the curiosity you have around exploring the creative process and going really deep with it, you know, was it part of a spiritual awakening or a spiritual deepening for you?
Like what, what was [00:13:00] that about? What, what was the trigger? Well. On a pragmatic level, I was working with a lot of artists on their art. So I was trying to help people find their own voice, their vision, be more themselves. and that was, you know, in part, uh, work that I fell into. I think in retrospect, that actually is very deep and spiritual work for me because I am trying to support people.
Some, some of whom I, I will never meet. In, being truthful, you know, from their body out into the world and saying, this is what the world feels like to me. Yeah. Does anybody else feel like this? It's a very existential, deep communication to the world when we make art. Yeah. And I found myself really in love with helping other artists do that.
A lot of people who give feedback to artists and coach creativity. [00:14:00] Really are just trying to make their own art through other people's bodies. Yes. I find it non-consensual, you know? Yeah. I, I would like it better if this, I think it should look like this. I suggest you do that. Well, you go do that then, or follow my steps, right?
Yeah. Follow my process, follow my steps. Make it look like mine. Yeah, exactly. No, you do yours. You, you go make your own art. Yeah, absolutely. This person's trying to make something else. I can work with artists whose art is not a genre that I like. Yes. In life. Right. I love this. I love this. I love this. I, I mean, I really, aligns very heavily with the work that I do as well.
And what you just touched on there in terms of like, it's. For me, it's a connection to your deep truth and finding safe, authentic ways to express that. And you know, so the truth part is the spiritual part in terms of your kind of, you know, how you figure out the world and how you make it all make sense.
And the creative [00:15:00] part is the expression. You know, the expression of that truth. So I think it's so powerful that you have just explained literally that, that exact thing. So thank you. Yeah. For reframing it. Yeah. So beautifully. Yeah. So what do you believe it means to trust yourself in the creative process?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. One chapter in the book is about faith and. I think there are different things that we can trust, and I do think we sometimes default, especially as artists, to feeling like what we trust has to be some, uh, part of ourselves. I don't always trust myself, but I do trust movement to communicate.
Mm-hmm. I trust bodies to be meaningful. I trust space to be resonant if I can. F form, form things in it in the right way. I [00:16:00] trust, time to be an incredible narrator. So, you know, something done slowly is gonna say something, something done quickly is gonna say something. Mm-hmm. Something done with repetition is gonna say something along.
Duration is gonna tell us something. So I trust time to be narrative and I trust space to be, Aesthetic and, uh, uh, a meaningful frame. Mm-hmm. So there are things I trust about, I trust physics. I trust, the anatomy of the body to give me clues and, and, breadcrumbs towards, beautiful imagery.
So there are things that I trust that are not necessarily up to me. And that's useful because we all have days when our self-trust, self-esteem, even self knowing feels hard to find. Yeah. So I don't think it always has to be self-trust. How. [00:17:00] Do I? How have I learned to trust myself? There's that difference between faith and belief, and I think trust for me lives somewhere in between belief and faith.
So for me, belief is like I. I have seen myself do this many times, and I've never come out of the other side feeling like that was an absolute failure. Mm-hmm. I've hit this moment in my creative process when I'm like, I really think I don't know what I'm doing, and this is gonna be really bad. I hit that moment in every single thing I make.
Mm-hmm. So part of my. Belief system is, oh, are you there again? Yeah, you always are there. And it always turns out, you hit this moment where you're like, I don't have enough time to finish this. This is not gonna get done. And yet it's always gotten done. So that's a certain kind of belief. Mm-hmm. That for me, requires evidence.
And I can look at my past and say. You always think of something to say when the time comes. Mm-hmm. Or [00:18:00] you know, you, you've never had a situation in which you got to opening night, you didn't have a show. So that's a certain kind of belief. The faith is something else, and that is often not. In myself, but in these bigger ideas of creativity.
Mm-hmm. You know, time, space, I think relationships are so meaningful. I think when you put more than one person on stage, we instantly start to story tell. I don't have to do that. I don't have to make up every part of it. Yeah. The human brain is there in the audience and I know certain things about how that brain works.
If I get bodies that are behaving really authentically on stage in a play, I know enough about neurology to say the mirror neurons in the audience are gonna be firing and they're gonna be in their own embodied experience watching this. I. If somebody does a quick jerk away or a slow reach [00:19:00] in the bodies and the audience are gonna recognize those moments and have emotional associations.
I don't have to paint every dot of every color, but its energy. Right. It's an energy exchange between the audience and the performer in that case, right? Yeah. It's just energy. So I get to have faith in that, like mm-hmm. I, I know that that's there, that's just out there for me. I don't, that doesn't require me.
So part of my. Trust is recognizing that I'm not responsible for every part of the outcome. Yes, there, you know, the receiver is more than half of the outcome. certain fundamental ways that we create meaning as human beings are always available to me and. All I have to do is continue to be willing to make choices, which as you said is risky.
Mm-hmm. So I've gotta be willing to engage in risk. And so I, I would say the very long journey to the short answer to your question is I, [00:20:00] uh, engage in faith through, repetitive observation and the willingness to take risks. Yeah. Beautiful. Love that.
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