Interests

My preoccupation with movement springs from two sources: a desire to overcome a history of movement problems since early childhood; and an interest in the performing arts. From early on in my engagement with movement as a field of study, both paths pointed towards what I later came to know as the general field of somatics.

Somatics

Somatics, as I understand it, is a study of the whole unity of is a study of what it is to be a whole human being. From early on I recognized that working with somatic techniques not only improved my movement abilities but improved everything in my life significantly. I noticed the connection between my physicality and my psychology.

These days I call myself a somatic movement researcher, educator and artist. For a long time I resisted using "somatic" to describe what I do because it sounds complicated. I preferred to call myself a "mover"; but it proved to be too vague. When I began to search for something more specific, I realised that all of what I do falls into the broad category of somatics.

"Soma" is simply a Greek word for the living body. Somatics was a term first introduced by Tomas Hanna when he founded The Somatics Magazine - Journal Of The Bodily Arts And Sciences in 1976. The word Somatics is used to designate the approach to a way of working with the body where the body is experienced from within rather than objectified from without. The implication is that when the body is experienced from within then the body and mind are not separated but experienced as a whole.

The field of somatics is vast and spans many areas of study: health, education, performing arts, psychology and philosophy to name but a few. Individual disciplines that can be described as somatic in approach, for example, include the Alexander Technique, Rosen Therapy, Rolfing, Feldenkrais Method, Body-Mind Centering, the work of Elsa Gindler, Mabel Todd, Ideokinesis, Authentic Movement, Classical Osteopathy, Eutony, Reichian Therapy as well as many non-western disciplines such as Chi Gung, Aikido, some forms of yoga and meditation etc. What unites these individual disciplines share is a holistic, first-person view of the body and mind.

We in the west have a tendency to experience "mind" as something located in our heads. To redress this imbalance, many of these disciplines offer ways to experience "mind" as a property of the whole self. I believe that we can all benefit from deepening our own somatic experience; when we think with our whole selves we have more information with which to make decisions and to act.

The Feldenkrais Method

The first somatic discipline that I discovered, and for me the most significant, is the Feldenkrais Method (1991). It helped me to begin to develop the sensitivity and awareness that opened doors to many other somatic practices. It improved my ability to move and gave an added dimension to my performance work. It also got me thinking about how I learn and later, as I began to teach, about how everyone learns.

I studied with a Feldenkrais teacher for 11 years before beginning a training (2002-2005) to become a teacher of the Feldenkrais method myself. After entering the training I became increasingly aware of just how much my experience of the method permeates my whole approach to teaching, no matter what the form.

Experiential Anatomy and Developmental Movement

To me, the study of movement is inseparable from the study of our physical structure and perceptual abilities, and how we arrived at those structures and abilities within an evolutionary framework. Science doesn't offer a definitive narrative on how this came to be, how we came to be, though some times some scientists present their theories as facts. My approach is pragmatic, I am interested in exploring how working with scientific ideas and images about the body can change the way I move. This approach is not unique to any one discipline though it is often refered to as experiential anatomy.

Post-Modern Dance and Contact Improvisation

Within months of discovering the Feldenkrais Method (1991), I found Contact Improvisation (1991) through it became interested in the field of Post-Modern Dance (1992) which I have been working with ever since. My study of Post-Modern Dance has included a number of somatic practices. Some, like Body Mind Centering, are forms which have been adopted into Post-Modern Dance training, while others, like contact improvisation and release technique, have evolved from within the field of Post-Modern Dance itself.

Although my interest in movement began a few years before I discovered Post-Modern Dance (see background) and is much broader then it alone, it is largely in this context that I have been studying and working with movement for the last 12 years. So here is a brief history of "Post-Modern Dance".

Over the last 30 years or so in the dance world, contemporary and modern dance have been joined by what has become known as "Post-Modern Dance" (aka New Dance). It has its direct roots in the work of some contemporary and modern dancers who, in the fifties and sixties, began to question the place of the body in those forms. Contemporary and modern dance were typically more concerned with how the body looked from the outside than on exploring the organic movement potential of the human body.

In seeking to broaden their body knowledge, these dancers looked to forms from the East such as Tai Chi, Yoga and Aikido, as well as Western, often therapeutic, bodies of work of those like FM Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais, and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, or the pioneering work of Mabel Todd and Elsa Gindler that preceded them back in the 1920s and 1930s, to mention but a few.

This influx of ideas led to the creation of New-Dance techniques and practices such as release technique, authentic movement and contact improvisation. Post-Modern Dance trainings have been developed which include developmental movement and experiential anatomy and there is interest in improvisation as a performance art form in its own right.

These New-Dance practices are all directed towards developing an intelligent body. In respecting the different potentials of different physiques rather than seeking to impose uniformity, these educations therefore tend to be more inclusive. They emphasise self-development, self-awareness, interaction skills, choice making skills, creative process, health and well-being of the dancer.

What all these practices share is a somatic approach. I believe that many of the practices that have arisen with Post-Modern Dance have much to offer beyond the confines of the world of dance.

I have never been particularly comfortable with describing myself as a "dancer". I prefer to use the term "mover" since movement is what I am really concerned with. I never learned steps. Instead I study improvisation as a performance technique and take a somatic approach to improving movement range and quality both in my own studio research and in my teaching.

 

 

 

 

 

• Move to Learn
• Interests
• Background
• Movement forms that I teach and
  teachers who taught them to me
• Movement forms and
  teachers that influence my work