Meet Alexander Guzman, the Dancer Designing His Dream Career
When many of Alexander Guzman’s fellow Cleveland Ballet dancers go home after a long day of rehearsal, he sometimes heads to a different kind of studio: the costume shop. Under the name Alessander Lee, Guzman designs costumes for dancers, fashion for everyone, and the occasional Nutcracker T-shirt. He has even worn his own creations onstage and designed costumes for full-length productions.
Guzman was first exposed to both ballet and sewing in his native Puerto Rico. He began his dance training at age 15 on scholarship at Ballet Señorial, studying ballet and other styles like jazz, contemporary, folklore, and salsa.
He considers sewing and design to run in his family. He learned to sew from his mother and grandmother, who he says were always working on projects for their home, like curtains and tablecloths. His great-grandmother was a bridal designer. “I guess it comes from my genetics,” he says with a laugh.
He was first drawn to stage costumes as a teenager when his sister competed in a pageant. “Something clicked with me when I saw all the designers and all these beautiful gowns and how they made them. I was like, Wow, this is art.”
Despite his passion for dance, Guzman’s mother encouraged him to have a backup career, so he studied fashion design in college while balancing his dance training. When he graduated, he began making costumes for Ballet Señorial. “Costumes and fashion are very different,” he says. “For dance, you have to think very light, and you have to tell a story with it.”
Guzman moved to Kentucky at age 20 to join Kentucky Ballet Theatre, his first professional company. When artistic director Norbe Risco and his wife, Rafaela, learned about Guzman’s interest in costume design, they invited him to work in the company’s costume shop. “They started me with little things, to see how I work.” Satisfied with the quality of his skills, they offered him the chance to refurbish old costumes and eventually to build his own designs for the stage. Guzman says his favorite project was designing for KBT’s The Wizard of Oz.
“It’s my favorite movie,” he says. “I did little modern twists for the costumes, but still kept [Dorothy] traditional, with the blue gingham.” In total, he designed six costumes: Glinda, the Wicked Witch, Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow, the role he also performed.
In 2022, Guzman joined Cleveland Ballet, and until 2024 he worked in the costume shop in addition to dancing with the company. He typically rehearsed from 10 am to 5 pm, then worked in the costume shop from 5 pm to 9 pm or later. “My first big project here was Swan Lake,” he says. “There were so many costumes, sometimes we were here till 1 am.”
His designs for Cleveland Ballet include unitards for his piece in their ChoreoLab series, titled Ouisa, and three intricate costumes featured in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Parade the Circle event. The design created a snowy owl’s face when the dancers stood together, and pointe shoes painted black and white served as individual feathers.
Lee’s costume design for the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Parade the Circle event. Courtesy Lee. 
Lee working on his design for the Parade the Circle costume project. Photo courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 
Lee working on his design for the Parade the Circle costume project. Photo courtesy the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Dancing and designing allow Guzman to appreciate different repertoire in different ways. As a dancer, he says, he prefers contemporary works, but he loves the storytelling involved with designing costumes for classical ballets.
In the future, Guzman is eager to design more for Cleveland Ballet and to collaborate with freelance choreographers. “I love to create things with people, and see their process,” he says. “I have a lot of ideas and a lot of things that I want to put out there.”
