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- Volume 1, Issue 1, 2009
Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2009
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2009
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A brief history of somatic practices and dance: historical development of the field of somatic education and its relationship to dance
By Martha EddyThis article outlines the historical development of somatic movement practices especially as they relate to dance, dancers, and dance education organizations. It begins with historical events, cultural trends, and individual occurrences that led up to the emergence of the classic somatic methods at the turn of the twentieth century (Alexander to Trager). It then defines somatic movement education and therapy, and the growth of three generations of somatic movement programmes. Interview data reveals how a second generation included a large proportion of dancers and speaks to how the bodymind thinking of dance professionals continues to shape the training and development of somatic education, as well as dance somatics. Finally it raises the question of the marginalizing of both dance and somatic education, and points to combining forces with their shared characteristics to alter this location in western culture. Another finding seeks to assess the potency and placement of somatic dance in a global schema.
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Formative support and connection: somatic movement dance education in community and client practice
More LessThis article articulates some of the key features and philosophical standpoints currently employed by Somatic Movement Dance Educators in community and client-based practice. Community and client practice is a newly formed profession in the UK. This article explains some of the defining features of community practice, particularly formative processes of connective support such as: biologic movement, relaxation support, heart-felt connections, inter-connective support and open-ended models of self-discovery. In doing so, the article also addresses many unspoken elements of international practice namely the cultivation of human qualities such as companionship, gentleness, heart, vitality, pleasure, empathy and compassion. Further to this, there is a discussion of key skills required to work within contemporary practice and generic international concerns pertaining to the field at large.
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The experience of discourses in dance and somatics
Authors: Sylvie Fortin, Adriane Vieira and Martyne TremblayAn action research consisting of somatic education classes within a bachelor program in dance has showed how dancers negotiate the dominant dance discourse and the marginal discourse of somatic education in relation to the complexities of body and health issues. More specifically, the students appreciated the approach of the Feldenkrais Method that favoured a pedagogy compatible with health concerns and with Foucault's concept of technologies of the self.
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Enskinning between extended voice and movement: somatics, touch, contact and the camera
More LessThis article has two parts: a prelude, or prosaic introduction to its artistic research content, and the body of the work, which explores through metaphor, rhythmic wordplay, description, and still image, the making of the 2008 music-video-dance experiment Intimacies. The article uses an adapted performance-writing style to explore the results of a somatic process that yoked together interests in touch, membrane and emotion, with a studio process exploring the notion of intimacy, intensity, contact and the skin. Intended as an immersive experience in the subjective memory of a creative process, it celebrates encounter.
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The potent persuasive pleasurable unappeasable pli
More LessI am thinking about a movement that I, as a psychotherapist working with dance and movement, have reframed and re-visioned as a therapeutic tool. Every dance sequence contains this movement in it. It is a movement that all people who do not think of themselves as dancers also, unknowingly, do. The movement is named pli.
I think about the pli. I: dancer teacher, choreographer, educator, writer, or any combination of the above certainly have done and certainly know about, the pli. My objective in speaking about the pli is to bring to our attention the capacity, inherent in this most familiar of acts, for healing and transformation.
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Breaking old habits: professional development through an embodied approach to reflective practice
More LessPersonal embodied experience impacts upon the way in which we present ourselves professionally. Somatic practices emerge as a way of developing an embodied awareness and a way of exploring the meaning of experience. Through narrative and reflection, this paper explores how somatic awareness can add to professional development in areas that, historically, have been disembodied. It addresses my subjective experience of a critical incident, a cycle accident, and how it interrupted my habitual sense of embodiment. It explores how the experience presented an opportunity to visit again my body as ground of my being and my body as first home (Halprin 2003), and to listen through silence to the layers that give way to somatic awareness. Reflection offers an opportunity to pause, and explore the space for deep engagement in what it means to be professional.
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Keeping Your Wits
By Suna ImreThis article sets out to begin a validation of why the application of somatic processes to dance and movement is so important to recognize and nurture in the twenty-first century. It takes as its subject an interview with one of the leading practitioners in the field, Miranda Tufnell. The conversation generates discussion about improvisation and performance, our relationship with each other and ourselves, our connection with the environment, our spiritual selves; and how somatic processes can help us develop and heal as human beings.
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Anna Halprin and the Sea Ranch Collective, an embodied engagement with place
By Helen PoynorThis paper examines Anna Halprin's life-long engagement with the environments that have supported and inspired her dance practice from the 1950s to the present. It traces the evolution of Halprin's practice in locations that include the dance deck in the redwoods at her home in Marin County, her work with the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop in the city and with the Sea Ranch Collective on the Californian Coast. Drawing on extensive personal interviews with Halprin and members of the Sea Ranch Collective, and the experience of participating in the Sea Ranch Retreat in 2005, I examine in detail Halprin's current approach to creating dances in the environment. The paper elucidates Halprin's understanding of the relationship between the natural world, human beings and dance-making. It analyses the processes used to heighten sensory awareness and engender a kinaesthetic engagement with nature to create embodied dances which are of personal significance to the dancer, and which demonstrate an awareness of the wider environment and an aesthetic sensibility. This includes Halprin's use of self-portrait visualizations and performances in the environment.
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Reflections on Evoking the wisdom of body and imagination Anna Halprin Summer Programs; San Francisco, 23rd June 17th July, 2008 (funded by a Lisa Ullman Travel Scholarship)
More LessThis article has been written as a result of studying with Anna Halprin and her colleagues in Tamalpa, San Francisco, in the Summer of 2008. I wished to further my research into dance in the landscape. The course gave me an insight into different aspects of the Halprin process, and when taken as a whole, provided a multifaceted view of the Tamalpa work. The course was in three parts, Dance as Ritual with Anna Halprin, Self-portraits and Movement led by Jaime Nissenbaum and Expressive Arts in Nature, led by Jamie McHugh.
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