THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

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Clare Maxwell  00:00

Teachers who saw who you were and said, that’s something special. Don’t worry about the other stuff. Don’t worry that your feet can’t point or that you don’t have a good line. You have something else. You have a joy and movement. You have something that’s special. Just go for that.

Achim Nowak  00:16

Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. I’m your host, Achim Nowak, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am just delighted to welcome Claire Maxwell to MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. Claire is a former professional dancer and choreographer who was celebrated in the vibrant downtown Manhattan performance scene. Claire has now for many decades been a certified Alexandra technique teacher and somatic movement coach who helps professionals and performers to feel more fully at ease in their bodies. She serves on the somatics faculty of movement research, a well known New York City dance organization. Claire is an innovator in movement education and online learning. She has taught dance and the Alexander Technique and colleges, universities, hospitals and the New York City public school system. Claire has a lively practice in New York City and online world wide. Hello, Claire, hello, hello. Before we start, I want to acknowledge that you and I first met in the 1990s of Manhattan, when I lived there. So I’ve known you for a long time, and sometimes it’s harder to interview somebody who you known well, but I also know that I’m going to discover a bunch of things about you that I didn’t know, even though I feel like I know you. I mentioned that you had a first career as a professional dancer, choreographer, performance maker. Always wonder when somebody does that, when you were a young girl, a teenager growing up, were you a dance geek, or what were you thinking of doing with your life?

Clare Maxwell  02:31

Well, it’s funny that you would ask that you call it a geek, because that is exactly what I was. When I say I, I feel like I have to say we, because it wasn’t just me alone. I had a best friend. Her name is Apollinaire Cher, and we were complete total dance geeks. We were so obsessed. But that was later, when I was younger, when I was a little kid, the first ambition I can remember having was just to be like, move like a wild animal, always fascinated with motion in the natural world, to animals, and what would that feel like to move that way? I always had a mind like that, and I had a really hard time sitting still, but there were rough times in childhood kind of led me to consciously choose movement a life and movement in dance,

Achim Nowak  03:36

because I know the Manhattan performance scene a little bit. I collaborated with a performance maker myself. I know that it it sounds very sexy, but it can also be a competitive scene. Now, you want to be produced and shown at the right places. There’s a almost like a pecking order of recognition, and you are recognized for your work in that rather challenging environment. When you think back, like, what are some moments when you go, wow, that was really cool. I can’t believe I did that. That was great. Let’s start with that, and I’ll save the second part of the question.

Clare Maxwell  04:19

Oh, goodness, yes, it’s really true. And I think partly because I started dancing when I was so young, I didn’t really realize I had a lot of chutzpah. And I moved to New York when I was 17. I didn’t know anybody there. I would say my experience of the dance world was both what you described, but also the exact opposite. There were always angels. There were always there was a tribe people who didn’t know you at all, would let you sleep in their place and crash until you could find a place to live. They taught me how to go. To get my dinner at the art openings. I don’t know if you remember those days, but there was art openings every night, and like food on the street and cheese and wine and Claire pay for dinner.

Achim Nowak  05:10

I still joke that the former actor and me will always show up for free food,

Clare Maxwell  05:15

free food. That’s right, we we’re very resourceful, and so I just what I remember a lot about the training part of being a dancer, which is so intense and long, it was full of rigor, it was very hard, but it was also full of kindness and love and people who supported you and teachers who saw who you were, I mean, not all of them did, but teachers who saw who you were and said, that’s something special. Don’t worry about the other stuff. Don’t worry that your feet can’t point, or that you don’t have a good line. You have something else. You have a joy and movement. You have something that’s special. Just go for that. But I would say that the competition is pretty soul crushing. One of the highlights of my dance life when it all felt like it was coming together. So I had lived in New York for two years without any I left high school early. I didn’t go to college. Finally, I surrendered. I was like, Okay, I need an education. I went to college, I’d been dancing professionally, I would say, By this time, maybe seven years already, but I’d never really danced with anyone that was a hero of mine. Yeah, you know what I mean. I had all my heroes, but I hadn’t gotten to that place, and I had been teaching the public schools with this wonderful choreographer and brilliant teacher by the name of Anne Carlson, I believe you know Anne.

Achim Nowak  06:45

I know Anne. Yes, yes, fantastic. Just

Clare Maxwell  06:49

an amazing person like many are not every artist, but some artists are also just incredible teachers, but the public never sees that part of them. I had been teaching with her. We got to know each other really well, and she was doing these outrageous things with the kids in the public schools, like we would have them stand on their desks and do things that were probably not so great for insurance purposes and and I was beginning to reach the end of my youth at that time and realizing I needed self care, so I went on my first vacation. I had never had a vacation. I think I was like 2726 and I went on a vacation to Portland, Maine, and I was walking down the street feeling all relaxed, and who did I see But Anne Carlson on the street, and she said, Hey, I’m here working, doing a piece here for this Arts Festival, but I’m working on a new piece. Would you like to come into the rehearsal process with me? And I was just like, Are you kidding? So that was my vacation, and then I ended up working at the Arts Festival also, but that began a very long, like 1012, year relationship that was mostly related to one or two of her pieces, that it was right at the point in her career where she got the recognition that she deserved, and she started touring a lot, and so we would tour every year, and just working at that level with your hero, the people who are at the height of their craft and who are committed and with work that is heartfelt for everybody, like has a deep meaning for everybody, that piece was animals. It was called animals, no accident that my first ambition was to be like a wild animal.

Achim Nowak  08:40

I saw animals before I knew you, so I’ve actually saw a performance of animals.

Clare Maxwell  08:46

That’s so great. It’s wild. Was such a special time, wasn’t it, in the art world as a whole?

Achim Nowak  08:53

And I was debating whether to share this tidbit, but because I didn’t know you, did all the performing with Anne and Carlson and I did some work together at a place for dancers on Martha’s Vineyard called the yard. Of course, we spent six weeks there, and there was a photographer who was looking for models who would do some nude modeling for him in the dunes and and I volunteered. So I had these very vivid memories are rolling around in the dunes with Anne. I saw the photos. We both looked really great. I wish I still had but this is one of my more intimate memories of Anne Carlson, who we just honored.

Clare Maxwell  09:32

That’s a perfect Anne memory. Yeah, I have many

Achim Nowak  09:38

now, because you also are recognized for your own performance work, and at some point you moved away from it. So in the spirit of this podcast, which is all about life transitions and choosing other things, I’m very curious, how do you walk away from something that you self described as you. Being a geek in right

Clare Maxwell  10:03

for me, the decision was really hard and it was complex. It had to do partly with the financial reality of what it means to be a choreographer and a dancer. It’s enough to be one or the other. As a dancer, I had maybe five different jobs. I eventually narrowed it down to one or two. But choreography is a full time job. Then you have a full time job, you have a part time job. So I had a whole nother career as a photo editor, which I treated very seriously. It was mostly freelance, but the apex of it was working at the Wall Street Journal, which was an incredible view into a different universe most dancers don’t see. And I can talk about that if you’d like, because, well anyway, it was just very interesting talk about it. It was shocking to me that I sat in editorial meetings where they decided this is what’s going to go on the front page. This is what’s not going to go on the front page. I worked with the reporters who are not, often not in agreement with editorial board or, I mean, the Wall Street Journal is a pretty conservative editorial board, but I was just so moved by what it really means to be a journalist and to tell the truth, to try to tell the truth, and to work with photojournalists who go and get the imagery. Those days, the imagery, because I worked for the weekend section, was of extreme wealth, the shortage of yacht parking space. How can we build a resort that costs more and more and more money to stay at, because we’re aiming for that wealthy market, because that was who they were writing for correct. And I just saw how much of a bubble that Uber wealthy world lives in, and I tried to develop some understanding of like there’s just information missing from some folks’ view, and it was a view I didn’t have, you know. And over and over, I would get offered jobs at places like that that were full time and be invited into switching careers, and I would get down on my knees, and I would pray to the gods that I don’t believe in and I would say, What should I do? And they would say, don’t take the job. Yeah. So I just, I always had to follow my my vocation as a mover, as a movement coach, as a teacher. It reached a point where I had been blessed to get my training as an Alexander Technique teacher that work supported, I would say, the last 10 to 12 years of my dance career, because my body was shredded by the time I was about 26 Yeah, the Alexander work it not only saved my body, but it it was like my little flying wild animal. Body was like a landed in a slingshot, and this incredibly soft, beautiful, wide open Alexander teacher just caught that velocity and shot me off in a healing direction. And I didn’t even have time to think, Oh, I’m healing. Now, you know, I was just all of a sudden, I was healing. And so that work became a foundation for me, personally, it led me to a lot of personal growth and healing, for deep healing, and that was what I wanted to teach. So I was gifted a training by a relative, because at that point I couldn’t afford it the training, I was like, Okay, I got this gift, so what am I going to do with it?

Achim Nowak  13:44

You’ve painted so many beautiful pictures already, and one where I want to jump in is part of the artist’s life is that you’re always working on five things at the same time, and even listening to you, understood the stress that that can put on your spirit, but also on your body. Eloquently, I had the blessing of doing Alexander technique work for three years before I came to New York, and I want to make describe my experience, and then I want to throw the ball to you as a certified teacher, to explain to our listeners who may not know what Alexander Technique is, why it matters, why it can be as deep and healing as you just described it. So my memory of working with an Alexander Technique teacher for three years in New York, in Washington, DC, was that we were doing very, very subtle alignments of how I carry myself. I was learning to be aware of how I hold myself, how I hold unnecessary tightness in ways that I wasn’t aware of at all. You know, it seemed normal to me, but there was another level of ease of moving behind it that. Without these adjustments, I would not have been able to access and it was very subtle work. It was slow work, but definitely transformational. So that’s what I remember. And I threw out some words, ease stress or removing stress. Flow. I didn’t say but flow. These are all related energy. Would you play with that a little bit for our listeners who may not be familiar with Alexander Technique,

Clare Maxwell  15:31

sure, it’s 150 years old. It was created by this guy named Alexander, which is why it’s called the Alexander Technique, and it’s one of the first, earliest quote, mind body processes. I don’t think of it really as a technique. I almost think of it as a process that you can use to examine a technique or a way of being and decide, is this really working for me? Is this helping my body, which is the support for my being, or is this hurting my body right to have someone put hands on you in the way that traditionally, Alexander Technique is taught, just to have that witnessing hand is a very intimate thing, because through being witnessed by what some scientists call a second person expert, you all of a sudden can perceive things that alone in your own sensory world you wouldn’t notice. It’s a gift of listening and not really manipulation. So the first time I had somebody put a hand on me like that, it was actually in a dance class. It was a repertory class of this super famous piece called set and reset by Tricia Brown. The teacher was a brilliant person at the time, like is often the case you encounter a really particularly special person who just is perfect for you in that moment. No idea how lucky I was, but I’ve been lucky so many times in life. And she put her hands on me to explain a movement, and I saw I’d been wasting 75% of my energy for like, 15 years, and I was able to let go of it and move differently. And I was like, Oh, my God, I’m dancing with the gods now, and it’s taking 5% of the effort I thought it would. What the heck is going on? I got, I mean, it was a little bit different than your experience, because it wasn’t subtle, because the effect of it was amplified by being in a active dance situation. But then it took me years to figure out what had happened. You know what I mean? I got very curious, like, I think happens with many of us who find that practice that is like the food we needed, the support that we needed. I answered your question. You did

Achim Nowak  18:07

your but your example, i is what I call a dance, aha, awakening, which is a beautiful story, but I know you do this work with non dancers, with executives, with professionals, and they might be listening to us and go, Well, yeah, but I’m not a dancer like i How will this work? And I feel like I’m asking an obvious question, but let’s articulate the answer. How will this work help me as I maneuver through life?

Clare Maxwell  18:37

Yes, here’s what I say to my students who I have worked with so many people, especially folks who are maybe 60 and older, the older generation maybe have old and not very constructive relationships with their bodies. There’s this idea that you need to look good from the outside, or you need to be fit, or you somehow need to improve yourself, that to feel like a dancer, you have to look like a dancer. But the truth is to feel like a dancer is available to everyone. I have never met somebody who could not create massive sensory improvement, not in how how you look, how you speak. The outward stuff is a side effect, but the core of it is, oh, if I connect with myself this way, if I ask for ease in my body, I get ease. Oh, my goodness, I have a choice that is available to everyone. I’ve worked with people who live with cerebral palsy whose mind body connection is very different. And of course, we all have a unique mind body connection. But. Most of the time, we haven’t had the opportunity to work with someone who can really get in there and tweak it so that it connected and linked up. That’s my jam. I mean, I just love it.

Achim Nowak  20:11

I know that when we do the work that you do, and you’ve been doing this for a bunch of decades now, that the work we do also changes us and who we are. I am very curious how, and this may be hard to put into words, but as you work with your clients, what have you learned about your relationship to yourself and your own body and your own ease and all of that? Well,

Clare Maxwell  20:41

I don’t want to give a pat answer. I can say what I’m learning right now. I mean, one thing I would say is humility and honesty. Alexander, work in particular is something that you are doing in your own system, yeah, and thereby affecting other people. It’s a profoundly ethical practice, because you’re not asking people to do something that you’re not doing however you are a normal human being, and you’re not always perfectly easy, and you get tight and you get distressed, and you tensions and emotions come up in sessions, and things get difficult, so I have had to just become kinder and even kinder and gentler and easier. And it’s so hard to believe Achim that this could be useful, that there’s this incredible power in it, that kind of self love is like, doesn’t even begin to touch how hard it is to embrace our own humanity. You know, I just, I think about all the clients I had who really just didn’t like themselves, and how that was expressing. You can’t force yourself to like yourself. It’s like a process, which is part of why it takes a long time, then I would say there’s some more mundane, outward benefits and simple things about the Alexander Technique. At this point, there are a group of scientists who are studying it, who are trying to understand why it works because it does. It has some, although these haven’t been my main focus. It really helps back pain. It helps. Well, I cured completely repetitive stress injury in my hands, my arms. I have arthritis in my neck, no pain, no surgery, no nothing. The hip replacement was the only thing I couldn’t fix with my mind. But what we think we’re doing through the practice putting hands on or teaching people how to reconnect to gravity so that they’re not pulling themselves off of their balance point, right their poise or their balance point, we’re just giving them repeated experiences of that. We think that we’re working with their postural system, which is the system that relates you the earth. Yeah, that system calibrates other systems. So if you were a neuroscientist, you would know that there’s the movement system neurologically, and there’s balance system, and then there’s the postural system. Without the postural system, the other ones don’t work so well. That

Achim Nowak  23:30

was a beautiful explanation. I want to take the conversation to aging and getting older. You and I are both in our 60s now. I like to I like to joke that everything that that aging men get, I have gotten, you know, so you alluded to your recent hip replacement, and I’m wondering number one, and I just want to test this assumption. My assumption is that when you are a body energy worker, there could be the belief that, well, stuff like hip replacements or knee replacements, that’s not going to happen to me, because I’ve been taking care of myself and and I’ve been doing Alexander technique for 30 years. And damn it, here it is. What was your reaction to? Oh, I need to have a hip replacement.

Clare Maxwell  24:24

I had all those feelings partly because, I mean, now I’m 60, I’ve had the hip pain for over 20 for like, about 20 years. Like many dancers and people who have a sense of dominion over their body, and who take pride in their agency and their control of their body, like athletes or actors, anyone who you know presents themselves in public, it’s such a vulnerable thing to realize that you’re just not in control of the universe and that you have genetics. Is that, in my case, one of my hip joints faces a different direction than the other one, so one of them wore out sooner. It could have been the 10 years or the 20 years before the Alexander Technique, whatever. But you know, this is not about having control over something. This is about embracing our body and caring for it as it is and so I mean, later in my work, I would say that I have become much more my students have reflected back to me what I should do next. So at one point, I had a student who had been a dancer like me, and kind of grok what I was doing, because I was teaching at movement research, like you said. And she was like, whatever it is that you’re doing, I want you to do more of it, and I want you to start doing it online. And we need to get the profession together so that people can be more in movement. And I just, I like what you’re doing. She had a foundation. She asked me to apply to the foundation, so I got this grant to start a learning community for Alexander. Teachers. Now we’re not a very well resourced profession. Therapists have these kind of communities. Teachers call it, continuing, like everybody has these peer support groups, elegant or teachers have formed them, but they are usually to study with the Master. Yeah, and I felt that that was kind of killing our profession, and I wanted to treat everyone like a grown up, create a place where we could talk about our own vulnerability as teachers, as practitioners, our struggles and and share teaching our own unique ideas and our our special creations. And so I did, and the way we did it was we were our practice was dedicated to connecting intellectual, cognitive information with emotional tone. So sometimes, if you get too heavy about emotions, people freak out. But there’s always a tone, you know, like you said, you’re having a really good day already today, and that tone can shift in shape, but just to touch that and then to connect that with the sensory world of our bodies. And we realized we really needed to practice, I don’t even know what question you asked, but practicing connecting the flow between sensory experience, emotional energy and then the thoughts that come and be more flexible, because we all have habits of like, that was my habit. I don’t know, what did you ask me? I’m sorry I forgot. You answered

Achim Nowak  27:49

beautifully, which is what you are learning again about yourself, and you talked about what you’re teaching, but what you’re teaching is a real question of how you live and experience your body and the world around you. So it’s all connected in my mind, because we started the conversation talking about so that juggling five different jobs when you’re a dancer choreographer, which any artist who listens to us fully knows what their life is like. I am proudly a serial entrepreneur now, and I love doing it, but what you’re doing right now, you are an entrepreneur in whether you call it wellness movement, self awareness. I don’t want to you know you use the word embodiment space. What have you learned about being an entrepreneur, you know, and supporting yourself as an entrepreneur, which is different from getting a full time job because you turned all of those down, as you told this.

Clare Maxwell  28:47

Yeah, I was just like, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are have a deep sense of vocation that pulls them. I would call myself a reluctant entrepreneur. It wasn’t like, I love making money. Making money hasn’t come easily, but I have been willing to study, to study it, and it’s really become a spiritual thing to me, because the exchange of money is a spiritual connection. Really been a spiritual thing for me since I had this vocation to be willing to learn. How am I going to be of service in this world? Where am I happiest? I am addicted to being joyful as much as possible, although lately, part of being joyful is not turning away from suffering, and my spiritual practice has become more and more important to me because I see the richness of life that I miss if I don’t open up and let my heart be broken and things like that. So emotional life is much more important to me, and as that’s become more important to me, I’ve got all these therapists coming to work with me, which is so interesting. What did you ask? You

Achim Nowak  29:57

answer, it’s fine, because we. Established that you just you’re 60 now, I’m in my late 60s, and in the spirit of this podcast, are there any things where you look at to the future? You go, here’s some things that I would love to explore, that maybe I haven’t explored before, and I’m not presuming that they have to exist. But sometimes when we’re younger, we’re so busy making it, and usually by the time we reach 60, we no longer feel like we have to make it. So the door is open to other stuff. One

Clare Maxwell  30:30

thing like, yeah, I made it, which, again, is like, wow, I don’t have to have a you know, I can do what I love, and I’m I’m I’m well resourced, and I can earn enough money, and it’s amazing, like, I really didn’t know that that was possible, and so I do love to share that with other people. So I do have mastermind groups for people who are in a similar wheelhouse in terms of embodiment or some kind of creative work. I’ve had some visual artists who also use embodiment in their teaching, who are doing crazy things, like doing drawing with neurosurgeons to help them improve their skills and stuff like that. So our work is of value, and that still is really my mission, that this is a very disembodied culture becoming more and more disembodied. I am always looking for the places where I can carry that message and through helping other entrepreneurs in that space, because it’s not an easy space, business wise, that really feeds me, and I’ve been doing more and more of that. I’m not going to go back to school for psychotherapy, but I’m really curious to do more work with therapists, exploring the uses simple foundational embodiment in their work, not necessarily for the clients, but for them. I’m having the most fantastic conversations with people about that right now. I don’t know where that’s going to go. And I would say my spiritual practice is a priority for me. That space just a wide open Zen, Soto Zen space. I just need a lot of that. I need a lot of nothing. I need a quiet, yeah, I’ve had a very busy, active life, and I’m really longing for that quiet piece.

Achim Nowak  32:24

Well, let me test that statement, and I want to offer my own experience, like a moment in my life that changed my life was, you know, I lived in the West Village, and I went for a little walk in the middle of the week. You know, I lived off of Carmine in Bedford, which is beautiful, and the village is beautiful during the week. And I said, Oh my gosh, I love it here. And then the little, literally, a little voice in my head said, What do you love about being here? And the answer was literal. It said, it’s quiet and you’re two blocks from the water. Was two blocks from the Hudson, and then my aha moment was, if you want quiet and two blocks from the water, you don’t need to be in Manhattan anymore, if that’s what you want, you know. So let me test this with you. You’re a long time Brooklyn gal, long time commuting to Manhattan. How important is place to you? Because some for some people, it is. For some people, it isn’t. What’s the what’s the meaning of that in your life,

Clare Maxwell  33:31

place is, place is foundational. For me. I feel like who I am in Brooklyn is related to who I was in Berkeley, California, where I grew up, was the most beautiful place to grow up. It’s in my body. It’s in my soul. The colors I always thought I would retire at Point Reyes, that’s not affordable. Yeah, the Pacific Ocean. Many people are fleeing the Pacific. People I know in California are fleeing because of the climate issues, yeah, but I’m really rooted here. I’m looking out my window. It’s really hard to pry myself away from this apartment, but I am ready to leave. We are right on the edge of Brooklyn in what’s called Bay Ridge. I look out and I see the bay. I’m not I’m like, one block from the water. I walk along the water every day. I see the ocean that comes into the bay. I’m intimate with the river and the creatures that migrate up and down. I don’t know where we’re going to go. We’re looking to get out of here. We had been looking in Pennsylvania, which is on a river, but it’s near a river, but not quite near enough for me. We may move up river, yeah, and the Hudson River has become really important to me. So when we go on vacations, often we go up into the deepest, quietest. First, least traveled part of the Adirondacks, which is the the headwaters, the source of the water that we rely on here. So that’s my special place. I love it there.

Achim Nowak  35:12

Well, I, as we wrap up this conversation, I appreciate that we’re ending at the source. That’s cool for anybody who’s listening to us and who would like to learn more about Claire Maxwell and the work that you do, where would you like to direct them? Claire, well,

Clare Maxwell  35:31

you can work with me privately as a coach. I’m going to be doing an online retreat soon, called it’s deep resilience retreat, specifically for therapists. I’ll give you a link to that, and I teach a dance class

Achim Nowak  35:45

every Tuesday. Do you have a website?

Clare Maxwell  35:48

I have a website. I’ll give you all of that information. Why

Achim Nowak  35:52

don’t you let us know what’s the name of your website?

Clare Maxwell  35:53

Oh, embodied learning systems.com.

Achim Nowak  35:58

Great Claire, it was a total pleasure for me to have this conversation best wishes for figuring out the return to the source, whatever that is and whatever that wants to look like.

Clare Maxwell  36:11

Thank you so much. I really needed that, and it was such a pleasure to have this particular invitation to tell my story the way I tell it today to someone who I have such affection for whose work I love so much so real pleasure and honor to be here with you and your fantastic audience. So thank you.

Achim Nowak  36:33

Thank you, Claire, thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my for the ACT podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim nowak.com it’s where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors. See you there and bye for now.