Texas Studio: Alexa Capareda Keeps Moving

Indefatigable Alexa. That’s the only way to describe Austin’s Alexa Capareda, whose professional artistic engagements include dancing, choreography, teaching, film, drawing, arts administration/organization, and now additionally, acting.

Most recently Capareda played the part of Luna in Austin Playhouse’s production of The Heart Sellers, directed by Ben Wolfe. In Lloyd Suh’s 2023 play, Luna is a super-extrovert with a motor mouth. From the moment Capareda enters onstage, she captivates the audience with an unparalleled energy that she taps into for all her artistic pursuits.

In regard to live theater, Capareda says it was during her work in Megan Debaque’s play, Decapitations, that she “was first bitten by the acting bug.”  Her acting debut as the Lola (grandmother) in this surreal show about a multigenerational Filipino American family produced by Austin Salvage Vanguard Theater gave her a taste of stage acting, and after that, she knew she wanted more.

Fast forward to July 2025 when Capareda auditioned for The Heart Sellers, a one-act play for two Asian American actors. Upon learning that she was cast as Luna, she was initially “terrified.”  She recalls, “this is a heavy lift; I have never said so many words on stage before. I just knew that I could do the part well.”

Capareda’s early arts training was in dance. Born in the Philippines, she studied ballet and learned Filipino folk dance into her high school years there.  She moved to the US in 2005 and began a traineeship with Ballet Austin in 2007. Professional dance engagements abroad followed, including those with Le Jeune Ballet du Quebec, Ballet Ouest in Montreal and Balet Bratislava in Slovakia.

Since returning to Austin in 2013, Capareda has racked up many dance credits, including her appointment to Ballet Austin’s Academy faculty and to the rehearsal director role for Ballet Austin II.  Additionally, she choreographed works for Ballet Austin II and has received choreography commissions from the Asian American Ballet Project Boston, SALT Contemporary Dance, tbd Dance Collective and Houston Contemporary.  As an Austin dancer/performer, she has been cast in works by Performa Dance, Frank Wo/Men, ARCOS, BLiPSWiTCH and COLLIDE Arts Collaborations.

To prepare for her part in The Heart Sellers, Capareda turned to her Filipino heritage. “I loved this character because I know this person—parts of her are in me.  And my parents came from the Philippines to the US for graduate school, so parts of the story relate to my parents.  You could say I see my family in this story,” she says.

She relied also on the transferable skills she honed through dance teaching, coaching and performing. “After all, dancing is acting. The best dancers are genuine and intentional.  The only difference between the forms is the speaking,” she explains. “Yet as a dance teacher, I project myself every day. Teaching itself is a performance and I have to know how to use my voice well.”  Recalling The Heart Sellers rehearsals, she notes, “Everything was natural, but there were new tricks to learn.  For instance, I had to learn how to move this prop—the wine bottle—around naturally.”

Her connection to the Philippines comes through in some of her other projects such as her story ballet creation, Maria and the Mouse Deer, for Ballet Austin II.  Premiering in 2022 and revived in 2025, Capareda summarizes the work as, “a whimsical earth-saving adventure with animal friends from the Philippines.” Grounded in Filipino folklore and featuring elements of traditional dance, costuming, music along with contemporary Filipino music, this production displays Capareda’s choreographic talents.

In the conception phase of Maria and the Mouse Deer, Capareda relied in part on her drawing skills. She found it helpful to sketch out her ideas for the ballet’s costume design and character development. Some of these fanciful illustrations are even featured in the ballet’s playbill.

Capareda has long been attracted to drawing and working with watercolors.  “Growing up in the Philippines, I was surrounded by so much art and color everywhere.  I’ve always loved art.”  She further unpacks her practice this way, “There’s a freeness in my art practice, maybe because it is something I have done in the past to relax. I always enjoyed the visual arts, but my technical training was in ballet and dance. It is something I want to be good at, but I’m not putting pressure on myself technically in art.  But I’ve found that many people enjoy what I create.  You could say I have found my sense of style.”

Capareda is eager to share her visual art with the public. To this end, in 2026 both her visual art and improvisational performance will be featured at a COLLIDE Arts event. Grant funding has just been approved, so the project’s guidelines are still in formulation. “What I can say is that I will be interacting with my drawings—maybe bigger projections of my drawing—in different ways. I think it is really cool to cross mediums!” she exclaims.
In regards to Austin arts administration, Capareda sets the rehearsal schedules for multiple performance groups, works part-time as an administrative assistant for COLLIDE Arts (in addition to her full-time responsibilities at Ballet Austin II), and manages no less than four separate arts organizations’ social media accounts.

A multi-talented, multi-tasking maven, Capareda says she thrives at high activity levels and, “easily shifts gears,” when needed. She, in fact, relishes the brain switching required to move from project to project. She explains, “They stimulate different parts of my brain. They all call on my creative problem-solving skills. I’d say they feed each other. I am kind of working all the time, but I feel that I have enough breathing space. It’s like running down a hill. You don’t stop; you just keep going.”

—TARA MUNJEE