Today, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is premiering the Four/Ten Media music video adaptation of Be a Doll, a solo electroacoustic toy opera composed and performed by Alexa Dexa exploring how toys shape gender identity.
The Be a Doll music video captures visual excerpts from four of the opera’s five scenes accompanied by an audio excerpt exploring the difficulties of navigating a patriarchal society.
Here’s what Alexa had to say about the piece:
I wrote Be a Doll as a personal step towards processing and dismantling culturally conditioned binary gender-based roles and their harmful effects on the mental and physical well being of female-identifying and nonbinary folks. This music video adaptation spans the gender-conforming play routines that make up the sonic and narrative focal points of my opera and speaks to the existential difficulties presented by being trained from a young age to perform a gender role that is so heavily objectified.
Keep in touch about future performances of Be a Doll by joining Alexa Dexa’s mailing list or following her on social media (insta – twitter – facebook).
About Alexa Dexa
Alexa Dexa is a composer-performer and sound designer noted as “an example of pure charm and whimsy” by The New York Times and “unarguably personifying DIY for the millennium” by Creative Loafing Atlanta. She is best known for her toychestral electronic pop solo project showcasing her soulful vocals, labyrinthine electronic sound worlds, and enough toy instruments to rival a playpen. Her compositions have been awarded a Discovery Grant as part of OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers program (2018), two NYSCA Creative Individuals Grants (2020 & 2015) and a Puffin Foundation Grant for activist art (2014).
Since graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2011, Alexa has self-booked 14 extensive tours throughout North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia. She has performed her compositions as part of Omaha Under the Radar’s Generator Series, National Sawdust’s Summer Labs Series, at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art, and at Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science. Festival appearances include London’s Tete a Tete Opera Festival, Omaha Under the Radar, NYC’s UnCaged Toy Piano Festival, New Zealand’s Future City Festival, Croatia’s Fairy Tale Festival, the Florida International Toy Piano Festival, Burning Man, Germany’s Fusion Festival, Detroit’s Sidewalk Festival of Performing Arts, and Make Music New York’s mass appeal performances of her site-specific compositions for toy instruments.