Exhibit: Alexandra Beaumont “The Choreography”
Rochester Art Center presents an exhibition by Minneapolis-based textile artist and dancer Alexandra Beaumont. The exhibition includes artworks from her 2024 series Techniques for Ecstasy and The Choreography, a new installation that expands on Beaumont’s research on dance floors as spaces of joy, community-building and resistance.
Beaumont’s textile and movement work explores personal and collective preservation, resistance, and expansion embracing the visual, kinetic, and metaphoric joy of parades and dance floors.
In Techniques for Ecstasy, she captures dancing silhouettes of her friends and community. She renders them through light and movement responsive materials and techniques. Overlapping textile, fluid decoration, eclectic texture and painterly brushstrokes become vehicles for expressing not only one’s identity but also the soothing merging of these identities with the bodies and narratives of others. In Beaumont’s words: “These capture moments of exuberance and connection on the dance floor. They hang loosely, inviting viewers to join the dance.”
The Choreography, a new large-scale installation created for the Rochester Art Center’s atrium, reinforces Beaumont’s goal to “honor the power of moving together, in celebration and in resistance” while responding to a present urgency for connection. As the artist states: “the dyed and painted patchwork fabric pays homage to Minnesotans moving together in resistance against federal occupation.” In referring to the historical 2026 immigration crackdown and the violent actions that occurred in the Twin Cities, she offers dance as a metaphor to view community response: “We have learned and have taught each other tangible choreographies of protest, stepping united in time to offer our neighbors support and protection. We are leaning into this rhythm.”
In times of division, art reminds us of our collective power and that we can be united if we accept each other. As American dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Pearl Primus once said: “dance not to entertain but to help people better understand each other. Because through dance I have experienced the wordless joy of freedom, I seek it more fully now for my people and for all people everywhere.” We hope this exhibition moves you and makes you want to move your body.