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The Anatomy of Art reconnects you with the creative current already moving through you. A choose-your-own-adventure for performing artists, it offers 1000+ questions, frameworks, and field-tested scores that reveal options, deepen rigor, and help you trust yourself. Twelve elements-Time, Space, Relationship, Meaning, Environment, Process, Facts, Faith, Communication, Material, Context & Culture, and Priorities-create a working map for practice and performance. Built from three decades in devised dance and theater, it fits complex rooms and real lives: a ten-minute spark, a day of practice, a season-long arc. This is a companion for the first step and the begin-again-listening to desire, doubt, and faith while calibrating environment, collaborators, and audience. When the work asks for more than you can name, these pages offer discerning questions, actionable practices, and grounded companionship-cultivating the courage to meet yourself, hear your voice, and make art that matters to you. With a preface by Marisa Tomei and contributions from Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Deborah Hay, Kate Hamill, Liz Lerman, Bebe Miller, and others, offering lenses on context, care, and craft.
List of contents
List of Figures
About the Author
How to Use This Book
Preface by Marisa Tomei
Introduction
Start Here: A Wayfinding Guide
1. Time
2. Space
3. Relationship
4. Meaning
5. Environment
6. Process
7. Facts
8. Faith
9. Communication
10. Material
11. Context and Culture
12. Priorities
Conclusion
Appendix A: Laban
Appendix B: The Art of Feedback
Appendix C: Acknowledgements
About the author
Alexandra Beller is a choreographer, director, teacher, somatics coach and Artistic Director of Alexandra Beller/Dances and Praxispace. She is a Certified Movement Analyst in Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals. She has served on the faculty at Princeton University, Rutgers University and The Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies, and she guest teaches nationally and internationally. She has choreographed extensively Off-Broadway and has been heavily involved in devised dance theater and regional productions.
