Tag Archives: movement

Mar26

movement, stillness

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Photo:  Pam White

The theme of the dance workshop I taught in Boston yesterday was movement and stillness. Asking dancers to be still is somehow counter-intuitive.  After all, we are movers.  And yet I find that a stillness practice – consciously alternating between movement and stillness – brings out the color and texture of the moment.  It takes us deeper into what is unfolding right here, right now. It teaches us to listen and to see the wildness in the small, the quiet, the humble as well as in the dramatic and the riotous.  There is a boldness in stillness, and for the performer, a kind of audacity.  We have to trust that our audience will stay tethered to us in the still and the quiet.  Like a conversation in which the rushing river of ideas quiets to a lake of receptivity and depth.

I love translating my practices as a dancer into a language for the poet, the painter, the parent, the worker.  That is the idea behind my ebook, Breaking into Blossom:  Moving into an Improvisational Life.  It is about finding a deeper, more embodied creative engagement regardless of your work, your passion.  You can order it here.

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Mar25

the wild dog

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The other side of Cho, Spanish Galgo, and former street dog of Cadiz, Spain.  It takes a lot of restorative yoga to be able to sustain cross-country gallops when you are 17-years old.

Today I am off to Boston to teach my workshop, Cookbook for the Bonehouse.  It is exciting to me to return to Boston to teach.  Many years ago, Pam and I were among the founders of Green Street Studios, which has become a vibrant center for dance and performance in Cambridge.  I developed my chops as a choreographer in Boston, and made many dances with many fine, generous dancers.  Tomorrow’s workshop is at the sister studio, The Dance Complex, another hive of creative energy for movement and dance.  So I am going home.

And not.  I feel a profound difference now which has to do with my long absence from the conventional concert dance scene and from Boston in particular.  I am older, and I have spent the past 13 years in two different kinds of studios.  The one with the wooden floor where I move and stretch like a dancer, and the other – the arena, the field, the paddock, the stall, the saddle, with my partners, the horses.  I feel a little like the wild dog coming home after a big tear across the fields.  But there is a cosiness there too – a desire to settle and nestle into the moment.

Mar22

a reminder: workshop this weekend!

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MOVEMENT FOUNDRY presents

COOKBOOK FOR THE BONEHOUSE

an improvisation workshop for dancers and performing artists

 

with PAULA JOSA-JONES, MA, CMA, RSME/T

 

SUNDAYS, March 25th & April 1st,  3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

The Dance Complex, 536 Mass Ave. Cambridge 02139

 A two-day workshop that takes a playful and strategic approach to movement, voice and performance.  I have developed a “cookbook” of wild play “recipes”  to challenge and focus dancers and performing artists.

The cookbook includes:

  • development of personal kinetic imagery
  • the power of stillness
  • the palette of dynamic space
  • internal phrasing
  • initiation
  • shape shifting
  • listening and responding
  • A Thousand Voices  -a “chunking down” practice that brings greater clarity and differentiation to the body .

COST
$30 for both classes / $18 a la carte

HOW TO REGISTER
Please email movementfoundry@gmail.com to reserve your spot.

PLEASE NOTE
Participants interested in taking both classes will be given registration preference.
Maximum capacity: 22 students per class

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT
WWW.MOVEMENTFOUNDRY.YOLASITE.COM

Mar9

body dharma 3

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Ingrid Schatz in Pony Dances           Photo:  Jeffrey Anderson

 Body dharma is a fierce practice. It is not for the timid or the lazy.

Attending to the body is not just cosmetic ministrations and ablutions.  It is not just practices, classes or disciplines. It is not only poses or techniques.  Because you can do all of that and still have never entered the body.

Movement is the body’s language and voice.  Breath is the body’s anchor.  Heart is the body’s center.  When you invite the body to move – without judgement, without hurry, without direction – you have begun to practice body dharma.

A recipe for entering the body:

Attention:  because the body is precise.

Listening: because the body is subtle.

Kindness:  because the body is tender.