The Anatomy of Art

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.

Author Biography

Alexandra Beller is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, director, performer, and educator, and the Artistic Director of Alexandra Beller/Dances. A former member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (1995–2001), she bridges dance and theater with a focus on somatics, creative process, and embodiment. She has created 60+ works for concert stages, regional and Off-Broadway theaters, and university programs. She holds an MFA, is a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA), served on the faculty at Princeton University for 7 years, and is a sought-after teacher in higher-education and graduate programs. Beller founded Praxispace, an artistic community for creative process. Her work has appeared at Lincoln Center, A.R.T., La MaMa, the Goodman, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, among many.