Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alexandra Bradshaw-Yerby. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alexandra, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
When I was a young child, maybe four or five years old, my brother James patiently helped to “stage manage” my living room “dance concerts.” All of these years later, James is now a physicist and I am still performing. I suppose I pretty much came out of the womb this way.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am currently the Director of the Dance Program within the College of Performing & Visual Arts at Southern Utah University (SUU). My areas of teaching specialty are modern/contemporary dance techniques, somatics, K-12 arts education, dance kinesiology, and dance composition. In this educator role, I guide college students to become future professionals in the fields of dance performance, education, and administration.
I am also commissioned to choreograph dances here at SUU, at other universities, and in the professional dance field at large.
Prior to primarily serving as an educator and dance maker, I worked as a professional contemporary dancer for about 15 years. Many of those wonderful years were spent touring with Salt Lake City-based Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. Over the span of my career, I have supplemented my income as a working artist through teaching dance and yoga, as well as by working as a grant writer and arts administrator.
I am most proud of the fact that on the precipice of my 40s, I am still dancing. I believe that it is empowering for aspiriring dancers to see that is possible to “have it all”– you can have a dance career AND a family; you can have a dance career AND other careers. Life (especially creative life) is not linear.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
In my opinion, there is no such thing as a non-creative. I believe that every person possesses a capacity for creative thinking. More than that, creativity is as important as literacy (as asserted by the late education advocate Ken Robinson). Think: entrepreneurial vision, collaborative drive, conscientiousness, skillful pattern recognition, the ability to conceive of multiple possible outcomes, rigor, autonomy–the list goes on. These are the life skills gained by creative/artistic inquiry. It is for this reason that I fervently believe in college students pursuing fine arts degrees. More than that, I believe that arts education is a human right.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
About ten years ago, I suffered a traumatic foot injury that caused a a significant pause in my performance career. This injury happened on stage during a performance. I spent the rest of that tour hobbling around on crutches and the rest of that year slowly regaining the use of my foot and ankle. Honestly, a decade later, I am still healing. Here is what I learned from that experience:
1. Orthopedic injuries can be curious gifts that create an unwelcome but necessary moment of reflection and learning.
2. During the healing process, I discovered the Gyrotonic Method and the Franklin Method. These somatic modalities were my first taste of the power of positive mental imagery in dance training. Check it out!
3. It is painful to walk away from a performance career (pun intended)–taking this pre-retirement pause helped me to assess my future goals and identity beyond the stage.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alexandrajanebradshaw.com
- Instagram: uberjaneb
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-j-bradshaw-yerby-8a17b59/
Image Credits
Photos 1 -3 by Steve Korn, Seattle, WA. Photo 4 by Jon Yerby.