A dancer's career -- like that of any artist -- is a mix of highs and lows. But we rarely hear about it from the dancer's perspective, at least not from the stage.

Thankfully, over the past seven years, French choreographer Jérôme Bel has delved into the lives of world-class dancers to shape fascinating performance documentaries. Cédric Andrieux is Bel's most recent subject. On Friday night, Andrieux told his story in an eponymously named work at Minneapolis' Walker Art Center.

The 34-year-old native of Brest, France, has an understated and dryly witty manner. Dressed in practice clothes, Andrieux recounted his childhood interest in dance. He wasn't particularly good, he said, but he made it into the national conservatory in Paris. After a stint with choreographer Jennifer Muller in New York, he joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Andrieux's story is incomplete without movement. Much time, for example, was spent breaking down Cunningham's technique and choreographic process. Andrieux was candid about his boredom over repeating the same exercises daily. But he was also challenged beyond imagination when learning the repertory. Andrieux demonstrated the methodical layering of leg, torso and arm movements. If you think simultaneously patting your head and rubbing your stomach is hard, you'd be amazed by how Cunningham took kinetic puzzles to another level.

This work might seem geared only to dance insiders, but Bel's arrangement of the biographical material in collaboration with Andrieux taps into universal themes. Anyone can relate to the effort it takes to excel in a chosen field. Andrieux's critical appraisal of his body was familiar, too, not to mention his dislike of unitards.

So the purpose of the training repetition and the difficulty of the choreography took on new meaning when Andrieux performed excerpts from Cunningham's "Biped" and "Suite for Five." We gained profound appreciation for the struggle.

But also, like most of us, Andrieux craved variety. He joined the Lyon Opera Ballet (until 2010) to learn from other artists. His expanded sense of possibility shone as he performed an excerpt from Trisha Brown's loose-limbed "Newark," and even more so as, ironically, he stood motionless in a moment from Bel's "The Show Must Go On." While The Police's "Every Breath You Take" played, Andrieux looked at every audience member. For the first time during the evening he broke into a broad smile.