The Alexander Alliance
The Alexander Alliance serves as an intercultural, intergenerational community for the study and enjoyment of Alexander’ work. Founded by Bruce and Martha Fertman in 1982, there are now Alliance programs in Philadelphia (PA, USA), Santa Fe (NM, USA), Anchorage (AK, USA), Germany, Japan, Korea, Canada and Italy.
Studying at the Alexander Alliance provides the time, space and experience for deepening the quality of your attention, co-ordination and responsiveness. Gradually, you will acquire the skills for helping others to do the same. Students graduate from Alliance schools as sensitive, competent teachers of the Alexander Work.
Martha Hansen Fertman & Bruce Fertman,
Founders of the Alexander Alliance,
working with Karin Böskens, Alexander Alliance, Germany
Martha and Bruce Fertman apprenticed under Marjorie Barstow for ten years beginning in 1975, and Bruce continued to study with her thereafter until 1991. For more than twenty years they have devoted themselves to the development of innovative and effective methods for the education of Alexander teachers.The Alexander Alliance has become a recognized leader in bringing the application of FM Alexander's principles into the 21st century.
Martha and Bruce each bring more than forty years of continual, disciplined study in various movement arts, (Athletics, Modern Dance, Ballet, Aikido, T’ai Chi Chu’an, Chanoyu, Argentine Tango), to their careers as Alexander teachers. They have had the privilege to study with five first generation Alexander teachers, Marjorie Barstow, Richard M. Gummere Jr., Elisabeth Walker, Erika Whittaker, and Catherine Merrick.
For more information about the Alexander Alliance, please visit their website at www.alexanderalliance.com.
The Alexander Alliance
We are the alexander alliance,
an intergenerational, multicultural community
of alexander students and teachers
drawn to the interplay between alexander's work,
nature, art, and culture.
We are architects
of a non-postural, non-medical, non-academic,
more than professional society for alexander's work.
Our context is society.
We are proprioceptive pathfinders,
directing ourselves and our students
out of stasis, stagnation, fixation, restriction.
With unhurried swiftness,
we accompany people into spaciousness,
fluidity, swirl, and circulation,
making certain everyone's feet rest comfortably
upon common, and solid, ground.
We are artists of attention,
drawing out a delight in sensory consciousness,
in simple pleasures, within our everyday lives,
and at special times of retreat,
in chosen places of wilderness and vastness.
We are rescuers of human touch
as a renewable and sustainable resource
for education, human nurturance, and growth.
Our intent is to gently unharness
deep, naturally organized patterns of vitality
within ourselves and our students.
This groundswell of energy strengthens the will
to live, love, learn, and work
generously and freely.
Bruce Fertman