Alex trained as a teacher at Dartford College and went on to study contemporary dance at The Laban Centre before moving up to Cumbria for her first teaching post. She started clog dancing in Ulverston with Furness Clog Dancers in 1984 and was excited by the idea of learning and helping to revive the old Cumbrian Step Dance tradition (see Flett, 1979). She was also able to broaden her knowledge of clog and step dance through attending classes with the legendary step dancer, Sam Sherry. In 1992 she moved over to the N.E. of England where she performed with Newcastle Cloggies, Kern Morris and Short Circuit Rapper. Inspired by the work of Chris Metherell she joined the Instep Research Team; becoming involved in step dance research and analysis, and teaching and performing at festivals in Britain and abroad.

In 1996 she studied for a Masters Degree (Dance Studies) at Surrey University, focusing on Dance Anthropology and 20th Century Dance History. Clog dance became her main research topic and her dissertation focused on the clog dancer Jackie Toaduff (Clog Dance. Revival, Peformance and Authenticity. An Ethnographic Study 2000) - see Summary. Alex also worked on freelance clog dance projects for FOLKWORKS (now The Sage Gateshead); teaching and performing and developing programmes of work in schools throughout the Northern region and tutoring adult courses and summer schools.

Since moving to Lancashire in 2001, Alex is continuing to promote clog dance as a community activity and now runs a regular class, Eccleston Heritage Clog, and a young peoples’ group Eccleston Buskers. She is strongly committed to making connections with Lancashire’s social history; bringing communities together to rediscover and celebrate ‘clog culture’ and this is contributing to a new awareness of Lancashire identity. She has developed and run clog dance projects with many schools and gives regular talks to other community groups and organizations. She has given lectures on Step Dance history at Roehampton, Liverpool Hope and Newcastle universities. In 2006 she gave a paper on the Lakeland Step Dance tradition at the North Atlantic Fiddle convention in Aberdeen where she also ran workshops and performed with fiddler Carolyn Francis. In 2010 gave a paper at the First Symposium of the Instep Research Team entitled: 'Tradition or Ignition: Jackie Toaduff and the English Step Dance Revival'. She has written for many publications – English Dance and Song, Past Forward, History Quarterly and Palatine People and made contributions to BBC Radio 4 programmes Happy Feet (Nov 2008) and Woman’s Hour (May 2009).

In 2007 Alex and Eccleston Heritage Clog were awarded a Heritage Lottery Grant to carry out the project CHORLEY SPARKS; an intergenerational project focusing on Chorley’s clog heritage. Pupils in four primary schools were taught to clog dance and took part in a performance at Chorley Town Hall, whilst local residents were invited into the schools to talk to the pupils about their memories of clogs. All this material contributed to the making of a DVD which also featured visits to clog-makers past and present and an investigation into the history of clog dance. (see Chorley Sparks – A Social History of Clog Culture).