Latest / The Scene Projects / Alexandra Beller on Trauma, Movement, and Navigating Emotional Landscapes

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Alexandra Beller on Trauma, Movement, and Navigating Emotional Landscapes · The Scene Projects

• 0:02
  Welcome in to another exciting episode of the Scene Projects.
• 0:05
  I am your host, Bubba Starts, and with me today is author and choreographer, Alexandra Beller.
• 0:10
  Welcome to the show, Alexandra.
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  Thanks for having me.
• 0:13
  I am thrilled.
• 0:14
  It's not often that a small town South Dakota boy gets to talk to someone from the big city.
• 0:20
  You are in New York City, and, just I was already admiring the lovely architecture behind
• 0:26
  you, the the old houses, and you said you live in a beautiful brownstone.
• 0:30
  But before we get into all of that, I wanna give you a chance to just kind of introduce
• 0:33
  yourself to our listeners and to me, and, we'll take it up from there.
• 0:38
  Thanks.
• 0:39
  I'm Alexandra.
• 0:40
  I am I have been an artist for a long time, first a dancer, then a choreographer.
• 0:46
  Somewhere in there, started really loving the art of teaching and got a bunch of degrees
• 0:52
  related to teaching and choreography.
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  And, the main one is about how to analyze the human body for movement, which took me into
• 1:01
  theater and doing private work and mentorship with, individuals to try to heal their bodies
• 1:09
  and make their bodies the most efficient vehicles for their life they can have.
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  And then I started writing a book about a lot of this material, which is about to get turned
• 1:20
  in next week to Bloomsbury.
• 1:23
  How exciting.
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  And I think as a society, we now know that our traumas and and things live in our bodies.
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  Right?
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  They have physical manifestations inside of us, and the only way to really work through those
• 1:37
  is movement.
• 1:39
  Right?
• 1:40
  You know, we talk so much about working out these days, right, and and being healthy in
• 1:45
  that regard, but I don't think that many people hit on the effects of dance.
• 1:49
  So I think that's really beautiful how, like, the choreography and, like, that previous life,
• 1:56
  it seemed like spilled into teaching and then spilled into, oh, we can actually be, like,
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  healing people with all of these skills that I have.
• 2:03
  That's so cool.
• 2:05
  Yeah.
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  It's been a really nice fluid trajectory in my life, and I I am not sure I'll be able to
• 2:12
  really figure out what happened until I'm, you know, really close to the end, which, you know,
• 2:17
  hopefully, I'm not right now.
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  But I feel like when I look back, I feel like I've had 18 different careers, but they each,
• 2:26
  linked pretty gracefully to the other.
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  But what I was thinking when you just said working out is and nothing wrong with working
• 2:34
  out.
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  Working out's great.
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  Totally appreciate it.
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  People should do that.
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  And sometimes it actually does the opposite.
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  It, like, creates this shell of us that doesn't allow for some of that interoception, which
• 2:52
  means how you feel the inside of the body.
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  And again, nothing wrong with working out.
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  I'm not I'm not criticizing it.
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  But we can sometimes do it in order not to be in touch with the body, which sounds
• 3:05
  contradictory or counterintuitive.
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  But there's a lot of very subtle information that can be heard with softness that cannot be
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  heard kind of through the noise of muscularity and trying and making and doing and being and,
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  you know, all of that stuff that's gotten conditioned into us through hypercapitalism
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  and, that productivity, and I have to be better and do better and make more and and get ripped.
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  And that mentality sometimes can keep us from listening to the darker, softer, smaller,
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  littler things inside, and I think that's where a lot of the healing can come from.
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  So sometimes it's not about doing more, but, like, resting and, being still and listening to
• 3:55
  just what comes up in stillness.
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  I love it.
• 4:00
  I think, especially with a podcast that focuses a lot around independent musicians, we are all
• 4:06
  about that very raw masculine energy in a very feminine art form.
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  Right?
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  You know?
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  A lot of it is loud and and just kind of giving it to you full force, right, especially with,
• 4:19
  you know, a lot of us are country musicians out here.
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  Rock and country are our predominant kind of musical genres.
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  So it's very easy to get caught in that.
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  You know, for me, I work around, you know, sports teams and motorcycle rallies and music
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  festivals.
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  So it's it's very hard to find a quiet still place.
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  But, a great example, I feel like I just kinda lived at this last weekend.
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  We were at a festival called Rock the Country, here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
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  I mean, it was thirty, forty thousand people.
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  Right?
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  Huge acts, kid rock, and and these big bombastic bands.
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  And my wife and I found a a shady place underneath their little, you know, sunshades
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  they had built out.
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  We dropped our backpacks and our blanket on the ground right there, and we sat back in the back
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  in our own little world and just enjoyed the show from there.
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  And it was, almost better for us than being up in the front pushed against the, you know,
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  pushed against the grates and being inside of all that energy.
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  We both feel a lot more comfortable on the outside, you know, observing and and there and
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  and kind of feeding off the energy, but not fully invested into it.
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  Yeah.
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  And, I think, you know, sometimes that loudness can be cathartic and really great.
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  Sometimes that can be an intuitive place to get authentic.
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  And it's also sometimes not about, like, what the outside world is doing, but how you're
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  listening to the inside world while you're moving through it.
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  Well, and how much more necessary, I feel like, in a place like where you live than where I
• 6:01
  live.
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  For us, it's very easy to find silence.
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  Right?
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  We can go out on the farm.
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  My in laws have a thousand acres that they farm out here.
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  It's very easy to walk into the middle of the field and hear and see nothing.
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  Right?
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  But much different for most of, you know, citizens of this planet that live around major
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  city centers where it never stops.
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  There there's always noise and interference from the outside.
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  Yeah.
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  And, I think many of us are envious of that, you know, ability to find external quiet.
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  But I think also what I'm talking about is this, choice to find internal conversation.
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  And it can be easier when there's quiet outside, but theoretically, you could do it in
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  Times Square too because what I'm really thinking of is the amount of noise we make
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  inside ourselves.
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  And you could be in the middle of that beautiful field that I'm envious of and still
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  be making all that noise inside.
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  And that noise is your shame and your inner critic, like, making enough noise that you
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  don't have to listen to what the stuff is at the deeper levels.
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  And so that doesn't necessarily require external quiet, but it does require quite a bit
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  of bravery.
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  Well, in a a whole different skill set that most people aren't equipped with.
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  That introspective nature is not, especially in a hypercapitalistic you know, not just our
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  society, but the time in which we are all living right now.
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  Right?
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  It can't get you can't get any more information coming in.
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  Right?
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  We we are all on overload all the time.
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  So we've kind of forgotten those skills of of just, you know, how do I feel?
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  Right?
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  And not just physically, but how do I how do I feel, like, as a human being right now?
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  How do I feel about my life and and where it's going?
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  And sometimes it's hard to quiet those feelings of how your life was.
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  You know?
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  A little bit about me, Alexandra, because I know you don't know me.
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  Our listeners, know a lot more, but, you know, I've been to prison.
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  I've experienced homelessness.
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  I've done all these things.
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  So I've kind of, like, I've lived through these things, and it would be very easy for me to, to
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  busy my mind with the negative thoughts.
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  Right?
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  Of, oh, well, you're never gonna be anything because that's who you were, and you're never
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  going to get where you want to go because of these things in your past where nowadays, like,
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  if I don't tell anybody about it, you would never assume that about me.
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  Right?
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  So it's being able to let go of that that negative self talk that we have.
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  Right?
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  And I think that's a skill that's even harder for people to grab onto now just because you're
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  bombarded with information and being told who you should be and what you should look like
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  and, you know, what clothes you should be wearing and just all the things.
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  And I I also think thanks for sharing all of that.
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  I also think that, it's really challenging to live with contradiction and, to have feelings
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  that don't fit each other.
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  And I feel like we're always being pressured to reduce down to one thing.
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  I'm confident.
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  I'm but you can be insecure, and you can have insecurity and confidence in the same body.
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  And I feel like this pressure to just be one thing that a lot of society is like, you have
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  to be this, and if you're not this, you're that, and all these binaries that we face.
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  They don't they're not realistic because so for example, when I was, at a certain point, I
• 9:54
  essentially folded my dance company as a performance company and create created an
• 9:59
  education company out of it, and I started choreographing for the theater.
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  And I was telling a friend that I was having some grief about letting go of my dance company
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  because it's something that I had done for sixteen years.
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  And they were basically like, first of all, oh, well, then don't do it.
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  If it creates discomfort or you're having bad feeling about it, you shouldn't do it.
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  And I was like, no.
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  No.
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  No.
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  It's the right decision.
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  I want to do it, and I'm feeling sad.
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  And I'm feeling a sense that, like, it didn't it didn't do everything I wanted it to do in
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  the world.
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  It there's, you know, some sense of pride in it, and then I also have a sense that it it
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  failed in some ways, and I feel sad about it.
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  And they just and this was, like, a high level, evolved, emotionally intelligent friend, but
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  she was, like, trying to talk me out of feeling that something had failed.
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  And I was like, I'm okay.
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  I'm saying this is a real feeling.
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  It I feel sad that I didn't get to accomplish everything that I wanted to.
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  There there's a a feeling of sadness and failure in there.
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  Also, feel really proud.
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  I think I made a lot.
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  You know, she was like, you made so many things and you toured and you did this.
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  And I was like, I know all those things.
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  And I feel good about all those things.
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  And I feel sad about these things at the same time.
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  And I'm sad about this decision, and it's the right decision at the same time.
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  And we're just we're very complex creatures, and society is always telling us to reduce down
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  to a single thing, and that thing is on a binary against another thing.
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  And it's it's not a way to live an authentic life.
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  Like, we have to reject that, reductivism reductionism.
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  And I feel like like, I've I've lived my life as a dancer in a body that was not a
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  traditional body.
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  I was always bigger than traditional dancers.
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  And people always wanted me to be this, like, oh, you're so confident.
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  You're this role model, and you're you love your body.
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  And I was like, when did you ever hear me say any of those things?
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  I've never talked about my body.
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  You've taken a look at me in a big major dance company as this, like, success story, and
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  you've decided that I feel a certain way about myself, which is completely untrue.
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  You have not asked me how I felt.
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  You've never heard me say how I felt.
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  So you've made a huge assumption about me because it's a story that you wanted for
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  yourself.
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  And because there's a binary for you, either you're totally confident, you love yourself no
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  matter what you look like, or you're like a pile of tears in a corner hiding yourself
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  because you're not what society expects you to be, and that's the binary.
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  And it's total BS because I, plenty of times, did not love my body, did not feel confident or
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  secure in it, and at the same time, was able to walk onto an opera house of 3,000 people and,
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  you know, a a small costume and dance and be really proud of my body and what it could do
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  and passionate and expressive and real, and also insecure and a little ashamed and fearful.
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  And those things could coexist, and that made me real.
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  That's beautiful.
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  That's and that's it's so funny that we we look at the world these days as it has to be like
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  you said, that binary, it has to be black or white when in reality, the entire world is just
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  different shades of gray.
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  It's it's it's all these different shades and mixes of it.
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  And it's, like, in a in a deeper level, we all know this, but we still try to be this
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  reductive, you know, that it has to be this, that a dancer has to be confident and love
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  themselves.
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  And they created this entire story for you just from seeing one performance.
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  Right?
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  And for someone who doesn't necessarily speak during their performances.
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  Right?
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  It's a lot different than me going up as a songwriter and standing on stage, and I'm able
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  to tell you the story behind the song before I perform it.
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  You're not getting that.
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  So, yeah, I'm sure I'll just I probably hundreds of thousands or millions of people
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  have a story in their head about who you are when they see you on stage that is not even
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  close to the real the real thing.
• 14:12
  Yeah.
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  And if I had forced myself to take on that mantle that they wanted me to be I'm I'm so
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  proud.
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  I love myself so much.
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  I'm great.
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  You should you can't you can't criticize me.
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  I am I'm badass, and I'm, you know, the best.
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  Right?
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  If I had done that, I would have gotten more and more out of touch with how I actually felt,
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  who I actually was.
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  And all that does is compound trauma in the body.
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  So when you said com trauma lives in the body, and movement is how we speak to it, and when we
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  can speak to it, we can heal it, that movement requires authenticity.
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  I cannot be this tough girl body.
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  Nobody can get me down.
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  I only have one set of feelings, and they're all what we'd call good.
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  Right?
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  That's not real.
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  And so I'm I'm getting farther and farther away from my real self, which means my trauma has
• 15:07
  nobody to talk to because I'm not I'm not in there.
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  I'm out here presenting something.
• 15:14
  Alexandra, was there a specific moment in your career where you wanted to shift from the
• 15:22
  performance side to the education side?
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  We kinda just touched on you closing the dance side to be in education.
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  Was there a single moment, or was it something that built over time?
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  Everything's been pretty smooth in terms of my like, I've really cross faded all of my career
• 15:41
  choices.
• 15:44
  While I was performing and dancing, I really started wanting to choreograph.
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  And so then I left the company I was dancing with and started choreographing, started my own
• 15:52
  company, but was also performing in it.
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  And then during that, I was like, I am not making the I'm not able to make the work I
• 15:59
  wanna make when I'm in it.
• 16:00
  So I stepped out of it, and I would still choreograph, like, solos for myself.
• 16:04
  Myself.
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  And then I just found I lost the bug to be on stage.
• 16:09
  Like, I just didn't feel the need to be witnessed.
• 16:11
  I feel like my artwork had gotten clear enough that I felt like I was being seen when people
• 16:18
  would watch my art even when I was not physically in it.
• 16:21
  So then that became fine for me.
• 16:24
  And then so many of the ideas that I was, like, passionate about working with as an artist, I
• 16:31
  started bringing to other artists and getting their ideas and talking to them about their
• 16:35
  art.
• 16:36
  And that started to feed a lot of that energy too.
• 16:39
  I still love making art myself, but I started becoming really enamored with how many
• 16:45
  different voices there are in the world and how those voices don't always have access to the
• 16:51
  world, and how could I help people bring their voice more clearly out into the world, their
• 16:58
  artistic voice or their actual physical voice, you know, in the case of actors.
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  I just love how, because I don't necessarily think of I think of dance as art, but I didn't
• 17:12
  think of the choreography as an art form, right, until you mentioned.
• 17:15
  And I was like, oh, of course.
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  You're a painter, but you're painting with people's bodies and their movements.
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  And and what a beautiful, beautiful way to look at it.
• 17:24
  And I'm sure there's choreographers out there that don't necessarily look at it the same way
• 17:28
  that that you do.
• 17:30
  Right?
• 17:30
  You know, everybody's kinda coming to it from a different you're so so introspective and so in
• 17:37
  the art, and it probably comes from, you know, decades probably inside of it now, a long
• 17:41
  performance career.
• 17:42
  Now I hope a very long teaching career.
• 17:45
  When when did the transition happen, in years, in the timeline?
• 17:50
  When did that kind of performance bug leave you?
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  And it was just like, you know, I wanna be on the other side of this now.
• 17:57
  Let's see.
• 17:58
  Five years ago, I did I performed for a colleague of mine, and I told her it had been
• 18:05
  eight years since I'd been on stage.
• 18:06
  So it's been about thirteen years since I was, like, really regularly performing.
• 18:13
  And then it has to be something that feels like a really unusual project to make me want to
• 18:20
  bite into it as a performer.
• 18:25
  So I would say that in the last thirteen years I'm actually Sunday about to perform something,
• 18:30
  but, from another friend, colleague, but it it's really been thirteen years.
• 18:39
  Now you you seem a little nervous almost about getting back out and performing.
• 18:44
  Do you feel like kind of letting that go for so long kind of reinvigorated that that it gave
• 18:50
  you time away from it?
• 18:51
  Because as a and I'll speak from personal experience.
• 18:54
  As a songwriter and and, you know, someone who goes out and plays three, four hour bar gigs,
• 18:59
  right, we're playing at, you know, a a bar and grill.
• 19:01
  They're not real fancy gigs.
• 19:03
  We're not performing at, you know, theaters on Broadway or anything.
• 19:06
  But it it it can get to feel like a job, right, that you're just kinda going through the
• 19:10
  motions again and you're not really doing that.
• 19:14
  You get burnout, right, I I'm sure is what we would call it in today's society.
• 19:18
  Do you feel like kinda letting that go a little bit gave you chance to kinda recharge that side
• 19:24
  of your personality?
• 19:26
  I wouldn't call it a recharge, but what I would say is it, I think it emptied the need.
• 19:35
  Like, I I kinda drained out the need that was behind performing.
• 19:41
  And now every once in a while, new interests in performing come up from other places because
• 19:49
  that old need, which I think to me did have a little bit of trauma in it.
• 19:54
  Like, not being seen much as a kid, I think, gave me this feeling of, like, I don't know if
• 20:01
  I exist, if people are not watching me.
• 20:05
  And I think as I healed that, I that reason for being on stage went away.
• 20:11
  And then there was sort of an emptiness, not in a bad way, but just a kind of stillness around
• 20:16
  it.
• 20:17
  And then in that stillness, I can hear like, oh, that's interesting.
• 20:20
  That's an interesting idea.
• 20:21
  I would play with that in front of people.
• 20:22
  That that would be cool.
• 20:24
  And the thing that I'm actually grappling with now, ironically, in terms of your show is I've
• 20:29
  always had stage fright to sing.
• 20:33
  And so and I started learning guitar just before the pandemic so that I could because I
• 20:40
  would sing to my kids, and that's no problem.
• 20:42
  That's easy.
• 20:43
  And I really enjoy singing.
• 20:44
  Like, my body really enjoys singing.
• 20:46
  But the idea of putting it out in front of other people without a dance I've I've had to
• 20:55
  sing in a dance performance, and that's fine.
• 20:58
  No stage fright.
• 21:00
  But singing, like, at a microphone in front of people who are just there to hear the singing,
• 21:06
  that's terrifying to me.
• 21:07
  So I've been trying to work my way into getting on stage to do that because I feel like that
• 21:14
  would be a breakthrough for me.
• 21:17
  So I think what what happened is that my old reasons for performing went away, and it's not
• 21:21
  that they got reinvigorated, but something else, a little healthier, came in their stead.
• 21:27
  A curiosity?
• 21:29
  Yeah.
• 21:31
  I find that for myself.
• 21:33
  So we started this podcast, just a year and a few months ago.
• 21:38
  So relatively new to the podcasting broadcasting world, but I've always loved deep
• 21:42
  conversations.
• 21:44
  And I really didn't realize what this podcast was gonna be until, you know, maybe the
• 21:49
  beginning of this year and and getting into it.
• 21:52
  I knew we had something because there's just there's no podcast out here, not just in South
• 21:56
  Dakota, but in the Midwest in general.
• 21:57
  Right?
• 21:57
  There's just not a lot of people, so there's not a lot of artistic people that are going to
• 22:01
  go chase this.
• 22:02
  And we don't even have, like, weekly arts magazines here.
• 22:05
  Right?
• 22:06
  So they're we're kinda becoming a hub for our local Midwestern people to kind of come to to
• 22:12
  meet the players and to to find out a little bit of what's going on.
• 22:15
  That's an ever evolving kind of thing, but it's it's taken away the need for me to go on stage
• 22:21
  and sing because the same things.
• 22:23
  Right?
• 22:23
  I was like, I I I need to be heard.
• 22:25
  This is how I feel, you know, validated in my life is this.
• 22:30
  Because when I, you know, I I talked about experiencing homelessness, well, I I was never
• 22:34
  really destitute because I always had a guitar on my back.
• 22:37
  Right?
• 22:38
  Like, my family, I grew up around music.
• 22:40
  I grew up playing guitar since I was 12, 13 years old and singing all the time.
• 22:45
  So that was always kinda like my my reach back to feeling that was the place I was most
• 22:49
  comfortable with, especially when you're I say homeless, but I was a vagabond.
• 22:53
  Right?
• 22:53
  I was just I was hitchhiking around and experiencing life.
• 22:56
  I was 19, 20 years old.
• 22:59
  So, like, where I felt most comfortable was when I had the guitar on, when I'm playing, no
• 23:04
  matter where I was at.
• 23:06
  And now it's changed to, well, I I don't need anymore.
• 23:11
  Who am I now without that side of of the, of Bubba?
• 23:17
  Right?
• 23:18
  Where are we now as kind of Bubba the podcaster who's busy, kinda bringing other people out and
• 23:25
  asking interesting questions, and and it all comes back to just curiosity.
• 23:29
  I'm so curious as a human being.
• 23:32
  It's probably why I was on the road, you know, as a hitchhiker just because, like, I don't
• 23:36
  wanna settle down.
• 23:37
  I wanna see this, and I wanna see that, and I I wanna do it all.
• 23:39
  And, you know, I'm a little sad that my travels never brought me to the East Coast.
• 23:44
  Right?
• 23:45
  I never got to experience New York City as that person.
• 23:48
  Right?
• 23:49
  I think I woulda had a great time, albeit, probably not for long.
• 23:52
  I didn't do very well in Los Angeles either.
• 23:54
  It's a few too many people.
• 23:56
  But, you know, you talk about sadness.
• 23:59
  I I loved that part of my life.
• 24:00
  But is there some grief attached to that?
• 24:02
  Is there a little bit of, hey.
• 24:04
  You know, you could've you could've had a different life or done these other things and
• 24:09
  but I don't regret doing what I had done.
• 24:12
  Right?
• 24:13
  It's all made me so it's poised me for this part of my life, and and and the being curious
• 24:19
  part has never left me.
• 24:21
  So, yeah, I love it.
• 24:23
  You know, you used that word regret, and I think that that's such an important word inside
• 24:30
  this conversation because, you know, I don't I don't feel regret for any of oh, well, was
• 24:37
  ruminating on regret when you said it, and I was thinking, like, yeah.
• 24:40
  Oh, I don't I don't believe in regret because, you know, every choice brought me here,
• 24:45
  etcetera.
• 24:45
  But then I feel like there's this expectation if we say, I don't regret anything, that I
• 24:50
  don't have any sadness, or I don't have any wishes.
• 24:54
  Like, you know, I I wish I had treated that person with more kindness.
• 25:00
  I wish that I had spent more time with that person.
• 25:03
  It's not regret.
• 25:04
  It's sadness.
• 25:06
  Right?
• 25:06
  I feel sad that I wasn't the person that could have done those things at that moment.
• 25:11
  Right.
• 25:11
  And the two terms don't have to be inextricably linked to one another.
• 25:14
  Yeah.
• 25:15
  And, you know, I think we can feel I don't I don't wish I had done anything differently.
• 25:22
  Even the things that I can see, oh, if I had done that differently, I might have saved
• 25:28
  myself some pain or grief or stress or loss of money or whatever it is.
• 25:34
  But that's what I did at that moment.
• 25:36
  You know?
• 25:36
  I'm not gonna regret it, but I do feel sad that I didn't have the, you know, validation or the
• 25:43
  confidence or the, you know, sense of myself to stand up for myself in that bad relationship
• 25:49
  or, you know, whatever it is.
• 25:51
  It's not regret.
• 25:52
  But I'm I'm sorry for that.
• 25:54
  I'm sorry for that old version of me that I didn't have more resources or more help or more
• 26:01
  self assurance or something to get myself out of a bad situation.
• 26:05
  And I'm also proud of that person for surviving it and getting getting me here even though I
• 26:10
  had to climb through some stuff.
• 26:12
  So, you know, I have, even then, contradictory feelings about that person.
• 26:18
  Like, what an amazing person that was that, like, survived all that and got me here.
• 26:23
  And, oh, I'm sorry for them.
• 26:25
  Like, I wish that they had had an easier time of it.
• 26:28
  I wish that could have been easier for them, and they could have had more community around
• 26:33
  them or whatever whatever it is.
• 26:35
  And I can simultaneously feel those things, and I feel like people wanna talk you out of that
• 26:40
  too.
• 26:41
  You know?
• 26:41
  Like, reduce it to, oh, but you can't regret where you've been.
• 26:44
  You You wouldn't be.
• 26:45
  Yeah.
• 26:46
  I I'm not regretting it, but I am sad for that person.
• 26:49
  Doesn't mean I have to be like, yeah.
• 26:51
  Yay.
• 26:52
  My really hard, struggle y, survival y life.
• 26:56
  Yay.
• 26:56
  That life.
• 26:57
  No.
• 26:58
  It could have been easier, and it wasn't.
• 26:59
  And I'm, like, I'm amazed with myself that I got where I got.
• 27:04
  And I can also be a little sad that, you know, at some points, I didn't take the easy route.
• 27:09
  Like, we can do both of those things.
• 27:12
  Wish I'd known better here or there.
• 27:14
  I wish I'd, you know, believed in myself more here or there.
• 27:18
  And I'm also, you know, yay me for getting here, through there.
• 27:22
  You know?
• 27:23
  And they just they coexist.
• 27:25
  And when we when we force ourselves to only believe one of them, it's just shutting down
• 27:31
  the authenticity.
• 27:33
  And you you said something several times now, like, feel bad for that person, and you're
• 27:38
  talking about you, that previous version of you.
• 27:41
  And I think so many people are so trapped inside of their ego, right, that that I that I
• 27:47
  well, I did that.
• 27:47
  Well, I mean, a version of you did that.
• 27:50
  You know?
• 27:51
  You're you're not I'm not the same person I was yesterday.
• 27:53
  Right?
• 27:54
  And and none of us are.
• 27:55
  And I think there's a mentality there that I believe you and I share, obviously.
• 28:00
  Maybe it's a performer artist thing, right, that most people in our fields would would have
• 28:06
  a little bit of that.
• 28:07
  But the the introspection, most people just don't even have the skills to be able to go, I
• 28:13
  I feel bad for that previous version of me.
• 28:17
  Right?
• 28:17
  People can't even get to that point.
• 28:19
  It's poor me.
• 28:20
  It's poor well well, yeah, but it didn't happen to you today.
• 28:24
  It didn't happen to this version of you.
• 28:26
  It happened to that version of you.
• 28:28
  But And
• 28:28
  that version of you, you know, was theoretically doing the best they could with
• 28:33
  what they had and, you know, didn't make the choices they would necessarily make today, and
• 28:38
  that's okay.
• 28:39
  I understand them.
• 28:40
  I have empathy for them.
• 28:42
  I I have some sadness for them.
• 28:44
  But even even now, like, I don't feel like I have a singular I.
• 28:48
  I have lots of parts right just sitting here right now, and some of those parts do things
• 28:54
  that make me feel really proud, and some of those parts do things that frustrate me.
• 29:01
  And, you know, it's about having a conversation with my different parts right now.
• 29:08
  And, you know, the parts that are doing things that frustrate me are not trying to derail my
• 29:14
  life.
• 29:15
  They're they're not being attended to in some ways right now.
• 29:19
  Right?
• 29:19
  So for me, even now, it's a conversation with, like, why are you sabotaging this?
• 29:26
  What is happening?
• 29:27
  What are you what are you trying to say?
• 29:30
  What are you trying to get?
• 29:31
  Like, we don't do anything that's bad for ourselves arbitrarily.
• 29:37
  Right?
• 29:37
  We don't we don't drink too much arbitrarily.
• 29:40
  We don't, you know, get sucked into addiction arbitrarily to stay in a bad relationship.
• 29:45
  We do it because we're getting something out of it, and that something needs a conversation.
• 29:53
  Right?
• 29:54
  Because just like we said with the performance, like, oh, well, that that need to be on stage
• 29:59
  was really from something else.
• 30:01
  And when that thing got fed, that need changed.
• 30:04
  And it doesn't mean you can never be on stage again, but it's just not for the same reason.
• 30:09
  And I think sometimes we need to be able to have a conversation with some of these parts
• 30:15
  that are not doing things in our best interest and say, hey.
• 30:20
  What's going on?
• 30:21
  What what is it that you need that you're not getting?
• 30:23
  What am I not hearing you say?
• 30:26
  What am I not listening to?
• 30:28
  Oh, you need more rest.
• 30:30
  I'm pushing too hard.
• 30:31
  Or you need to be away from these toxic people, or you need to get off social media or whatever
• 30:36
  it is.
• 30:36
  Like, something's happening that's causing distress in the ecosystem, and I can see
• 30:42
  because something's not functional in my ecosystem.
• 30:45
  I'm not taking good care of myself.
• 30:48
  I'm not exercising, or I'm not, you know, having healthy relationships.
• 30:52
  Or so so what's going on?
• 30:55
  Because I can't just force myself to do better things.
• 31:00
  For some reason, part of me doesn't wanna do better things, doesn't want to take good care
• 31:04
  of myself.
• 31:05
  So does part of me not feel like I deserve care?
• 31:08
  Does part of me not feel like, I deserve that rest or that sleep that good food or that
• 31:14
  exercise or healthy body or to be around people that love me or right?
• 31:19
  Like, so that's how I start to get to talk to my trauma parts and heal them so that they can
• 31:27
  collaborate with me on wanting to go to bed on time.
• 31:29
  Like, I find I was talking to my partner about this last night.
• 31:33
  I sometimes get a little, like, toddler energy at bedtime because I've been working so hard
• 31:38
  all day, and and, you I don't wanna go to bed and wake up in the morning and I have to go
• 31:43
  back to work and now I now I just I wanna stay up and watch TikTok or something.
• 31:47
  And I was talking to that part last night that was saying that to me and I said, you can stay
• 31:53
  up and watch TikTok.
• 31:54
  You're you're an adult.
• 31:55
  Like, if you wanna stay up and watch TikTok, you can.
• 31:58
  You know, you're gonna be tired tomorrow.
• 32:01
  And I realized that the part of me that's was saying, I don't wanna go to bed, actually, is
• 32:06
  not the part that gets up in the morning and goes to work.
• 32:09
  And so they didn't really care that I was gonna be tired for work.
• 32:13
  And I was like, oh, we're not we're not agreeing enough as an ecosystem.
• 32:19
  Right?
• 32:20
  Like, that means I'm not taking that part of me to work.
• 32:22
  That means I'm shutting part of me down to go to work.
• 32:25
  That means that sometimes in the morning, I'm that part of me wants something like, I wanna
• 32:31
  stay in bed and have a hot chocolate and watch TV.
• 32:35
  And I'm like, shut up.
• 32:36
  Get back in there.
• 32:37
  I gotta get to work.
• 32:39
  And when I say that enough times, that part doesn't really care about work.
• 32:43
  Right?
• 32:44
  Because they're never getting to do what they wanna do in the morning.
• 32:47
  So I need to have more talk with that part.
• 32:52
  And every once in a while, you know, certainly not every week, but every once in a while, I do
• 32:57
  need to say, you know what?
• 32:59
  I am gonna take the morning off and make a hot chocolate and get in bed.
• 33:02
  That's what I'm gonna do because that's what part of me wants to do and has been yelling at
• 33:06
  me every morning for three weeks to do it.
• 33:07
  And you know what?
• 33:08
  They're gonna get what they want this morning.
• 33:11
  Oh, and there's always time to get the things done that need to be done.
• 33:14
  And I think that's another kind of byproduct of the society that we all live in is that
• 33:19
  everything just needs to be immediate.
• 33:21
  And and in no way has your life taken that path.
• 33:24
  Your your life is like a slow flowing river, it feels like, and it's gonna take its time and
• 33:30
  evolve at its own pace anyway.
• 33:32
  But sometimes you gotta let the toddler out and take him to the park.
• 33:35
  Totally.
• 33:36
  Totally.
• 33:38
  So you got a book that you're finishing.
• 33:40
  I'm assuming it's probably finished now and getting ready to get shipped off.
• 33:43
  Can we talk a little bit about the book and, before I let you get out of here?
• 33:47
  Yeah.
• 33:48
  It's called the anatomy of art, Unlocking the Creative Process for Theater and Dance.
• 33:53
  And I've taken 12 aspects, that I think are fundamental to our creative lives, but things
• 34:01
  that we don't necessarily look at individually.
• 34:04
  So time, space, meaning, relationship, environment, process, facts, faith,
• 34:12
  communication, material, context and culture, and priorities.
• 34:16
  Those are the 12 topics.
• 34:18
  And I feel like each one of them is a juicy place for us to explore as creatives.
• 34:23
  Like, if I just spend some time really thinking about my material or I spend some time thinking
• 34:29
  about, the environment that I create or that I in which I create.
• 34:35
  And so it's if you've ever heard of The Artist's Way, it's like a more specific
• 34:43
  artist's way.
• 34:43
  It's like an artist's way for artists.
• 34:45
  The Artist's Way was for everyone, which is beautiful, gorgeous book.
• 34:49
  And this is like a a more specific artist's way for creatives.
• 34:53
  So for creatives that feel like, I wanna level up my art or I'm I sometimes hit these walls
• 35:00
  and I feel static or stagnant, and I want I wish I had a mentor.
• 35:05
  I wish I had somebody to really just, like, get with me in the studio and help me with my art
• 35:10
  when I hit a block to give me little tricks to get out of it.
• 35:13
  That's what's in the book.
• 35:15
  And my hope is that it provides mentorship for artists who, you know, don't have access to to
• 35:22
  mentorship.
• 35:23
  That's me.
• 35:25
  Well, that'll be out in May.
• 35:27
  Well, I cannot wait, and I hope that I can get a copy to put up here in our beautiful display
• 35:32
  behind me for other artists to see, and we'll be, recommending it in our Scene Projects book
• 35:38
  club.
• 35:39
  And, yeah, thank you, Alexander, for for sharing so much with me today.
• 35:43
  It was beautiful to get to know you, and you're welcome back on on any of our shows anytime you
• 35:48
  like.
• 35:49
  Get better together is one of our programs on the network that really allows us to get into
• 35:54
  the, into the dirt, if you will.
• 35:57
  It's kind of how our community gets in and just talks about the the stuff that's actually
• 36:03
  happened to us and how we came through it and and how it's made this version of ourselves
• 36:09
  exactly the people that you see in front of you now.
• 36:11
  So, Alexandra, just a pleasure talking to you this morning.
• 36:15
  Thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 36:17
  Thanks for having me.
• 36:19
  That is Alexandra Beller.
• 36:20
  Remember to like and subscribe to all this stuff, and we will see you all next time.
• 36:25
  And remember to make yourself part of the scene.