Alexandra Beller

Bio

Alexandra choreographed “Sense and Sensibility” (Sheen Center, Judson Gym, Folger Shakespeare Library, American Repertory Theater, Portland Center Stage), (Helen Hayes Award, Lortel Nomination, IRNE Best Choreography), the Off Broadway musical, “The Mad Ones” (59E59), Bedlam’s “Peter Pan” (Duke Theater), “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), “As You Like It” (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Folger Shakespeare Library), “How to transcend a happy marriage” by Sarah Ruhl (Lincoln Center Theater), “Pride and Prejudice (Dorset Theater Festival, Actor’s Shakespeare Project), “Antonio’s Song” (CATF, Milwaukee Rep, Goodman), “Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)” (La MaMa/La Jolla/touring), Directing/Choreographing “Make Thick My Blood,” a two-person adaptation of Macbeth (Theater Row), and A Midsummer NIght’s Dream (Folger Shakespeare Library at The National Building Museum, DC).

Her international performance career includes 7 years with the Bill. T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, projects with Martha Clarke, John Turturro, and others. Alexandra Beller/Dances formed in 2001 and she has created over 40 original Dance Theater works, for her own and other companies. Her choreography has been presented at theaters throughout the US and in Korea, Hong Kong, Oslo, Cyprus, St. Petersburg, and Poland.

Alexandra holds a BFA/Dance (University of MI), MFA/Dance (University of WI at Milwaukee), and CMA (Certified Movement Analyst) in Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals (LIMS). She is on faculty at Princeton University, Rutgers University, and The Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies, and guest teaches nationally and internationally. Upcoming projects include “Let The Right One In” at Boston University with Actor’s Shakespeare Project, “Antonio’s Song” at The Goodman (Chicago), a workshop of “Perfect World” (Director: Karen Carpenter), and a devised adaptation of “Waiting for Godot” (Alexandra Beller/Dances). She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and two kids, is writing a book, studying guitar and is currently training in Intimacy Direction with TIE.

ARtist Statement

I am committed to revealing myself: as a woman, an artist, and an American. I make art because I want to find out where I mesh with and where I challenge my community. I use the creative process to develop compassion for that which is foreign to me. I want my work to trigger memory, emotion and heightened awareness through images that are electric, disarming and provocative. As a member of a sometimes-oppressed gender, an oppressive race, and a country that has exhibited questionable human values, I am fascinated by issues of morality, compassion, greed, manipulation, victim-hood, power, and absolution. The work traffics through the dangerous territory of homophobia, sexism and emotional isolationism.

My form of Dance Theater is truly a democratic use of movement and words, a series of artistic collisions where bodies, words, objects and sound function as characters in a human narrative. I believe that creation should be an act of survival. I invite the performers to go to their own danger, where they speak because they are personally compelled to reveal themselves, move because words cannot express the depth of their meaning. Their stories, intimate and unique, will hopefully etch a picture of our shared space.