Somatic Pedagogies in Tango Dancing

Jessica Gerdel

 

Tango is a dance that is fundamentally of listening and improvisation within an embrace. It involves learning a body language: A special disposition to read the partner’s body, to interpret their movements and intentions to correspond/propose in the dynamic, and to enable the possibility that the own body is read by another person. All that in accordance to the music and the space. These learnings can modify the experience of one's own body not only in terms of posture, movement patterns, motor control and sensations, but also behaviors outside the world of tango, as it can improve self awareness, confidence, empowerment, and social skills.

 

The intersection of somatic pedagogies and tango dancing opens a line of work about the ways of inhabiting the world through a body experience that transcend the scope of the dance itself, promoting health and personal growth when practiced as a social activity or as a complementary treatment for patients with movement disorders.

 

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Bio: Jessica Gerdel is a tango teacher and sociologist based in Argentina. After studying Sociology, Education, and Social Communication, she joined a tango instructors’ program while studying a Master in Sociology of Culture. Her research on the process of learning and teaching tango from the lens of sociology of the body and anthropology of the senses led her to dig into the connections between body skills and identity, emotions, and mindsets. Later she joined a Yoga professors’ program, and a postgrad on Dance Movement Therapy where she got involved with somatic practices. Her current research focus on the potential of learning tango dancing as a way to gain body awareness and amplify the individual’s repertory of movements beyond the practice of the dance, improving the daily use of movement, and working on aspects of personality, self awareness, and relationships.

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Baby BodyMind Dancing 

 Angela Guerreiro

 

 

Baby BodyMind Dancing - BaBoMiDa brings awareness to embodied practices to parents/caregivers and their babies as well as to give support to babies with sensorimotor developmental problems, birth traumas, sleeping disorders, among other issues. In such a delicate moment in life BaBoMiDa facilitates parents/caregivers to cope with their new life situation, which can turn out to be very demanding and stressful.

Babies are the best example of embodiment itself, as it is BodyMind working at its best as they move on‚ coping with the environment. While observing a baby moving through space, it is astonishing how they master their movements so well, as well as they learn to regulate themselves and their daily needs, their body systems intertwined with their curious mind. BaBoMiDa also encourages parents to learn how to perceive their babies and it was created with the intention to foster strong parenting bond.

Therefore, in a BaBoMiDa class parents/caregivers together with their babies will be facilitated to learn embodied practices, to attune to their baby’s cues, to develop attention to own physical and emotional states, allowing the body and mind to move and dance, in a embodied and integrated way.

 

Angela Guerreiro is a choreographer, dancer, dance teacher, festival curator and producer. A Dance Movement Therapist (MA), Relaxation Therapist (Autogenes Training und Progressive Muscle Relaxation), and I hold the Basistraining in Moving Cycle, a Body-Centered Psychotherapy, with experience in Somatic Movement and Developmental Movement Therapy. She initiated Baby BodyMind Dancing - BaBoMiDa, a new branch of Dynamic Embodyment©.

www.angelaguerreiro.de | www.dancekiosk-hamburg.de | https://sharingsarts.jimdosite.com/dance-beyond-borders/ | survivingdance.blogspot.com | http://tanzfonds.de/projekt/dokumentation-2013/the-live-legacy-project/ | http://the-live-legacy-project.com | http://tanz-bewegung.de

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Continuum Movement workshop

Marianne Sharp

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In 2012 I encountered Continuum Movement, in Los Angeles, with it’s founder, the late Emilie Conrad. Since then I have been exploring Continuum’s multiple possibilities both for optimum health and for optimum presence in application to performance.  I arrived at Continuum after exploring a range of other practices to combat chronic pain, which was affecting my performance work.

 

I will offer a Continuum Movement workshop with a particular breath and movement combination that I designed to bring the performer, or company, to a state of readiness to generate work. The particular sequence is designed to interrupt/break patterns in the body, by taking the individual out of their habitual ‘cultural anatomy’, initially through bringing motility to the face, then working through the tailbone, and ultimately to create a flow of information through whole system.  Having only recently qualified as a teacher in this practice, I’ve begun to explore using this workshop with final year theatre undergraduates in a context where we consider critical materials on the body in performance (in a post Merleau-Ponty phenomenology context) and then work with the Continuum piece as a means of encountering our ‘recessive visceral body’ (see Zarilli on Leder:2004) and opening up an experience of ‘bidirectional incorporation’ in which ‘the boundaries between inner and outer … become more porous’ (ibid: 666). I’m interested in developing further courses in HE contexts that explore the somatics work in much more depth, but to date have only managed to use pieces of Continuum either in practical workshops with performance as the goal, or in classes that are focused on theory-practice relationships where the somatics work feeds in as a means of experiencing something that is framed by theory but not able to be described by that same theory.  In this sense the somatics work becomes secondary to the production and evaluation of theory, rather than an end in itself, but in response students have designed performance experiments that begin to ask audiences/participants to encounter their own inner body-mind in the creation of an experience.  I would like to examine this idea further in dialogue with others who teach somatic work…

 

 

 

Bio: Marianne Sharp currently teaches at the University of Winchester.  She holds a PhD in Theatre from Royal Holloway College, University of London, and a Performance MA from the Central School of Speech and Drama, London. Her Practice-as-Research thesis: ‘Being a Woman Twice: Knowledge, Subjectivity and the Autonomous Actress’ examines embodied knowledge and the figure of the actress by asking, ‘What is the knowledge of the Actress?’ with a degree of philosophical seriousness. Her work combines theatre-making with performance analysis of her own performer-generated theatre practice and analysis of the work of other ‘autonomous’ actresses on the international stage. She has published in this area and made Arts Council England funded work generated from this exploration. Prior to working in HE, Marianne worked as a performer and workshop director primarily in youth, community and applied theatre contexts in the UK and Continental Europe. She has explored yoga and Wing Chun style Kung Fu for some years and recently qualified as an Authorised Continuum Movement Teacher.

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 Here. Now. With: modulating student stress with presence and prosocial principles from the Alexander Technique and Dynamic Embodiment

 Elizabeth Johnson

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Student sensitivities to stress and trauma are inevitable and unavoidable characteristics of the classroom. The embodied nature of a dance class provides clear opportunity to witness mind/body behaviors and habits that often interfere with meaningful learning. Affects such as excessive muscular tension and anxious hyper-vigilance are frequently observable. In describing his term neuroception, author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysical Foundations of Emotion, Attachment, Communication and Self-regulation, Dr. Stephen W. Porges asserts “the detection of a person as safe or dangerous triggers neurobiologically determined prosocial or defensive behaviors” (2011, p. 32). When students unconsciously perceive the classroom environment, teacher, or fellow students as threats, two possible paths are set in motion. One readies the student for fight, flight, or freeze strategies, while the other relies on navigating social cues and awareness of bodily sensations to connect and adapt to the environment (instead of flee it). In this workshop, we will link neuroception most specifically to the Alexander Technique principles of Inhibition (non-reactivity) and Faulty Sensory Awareness (mis-calibrated proprioception/coordination). Among somatic practices, these concepts are explicitly unique to the AT and help teachers establish pedagogical practices that provide students environmental orientation (Here), present moment mindfulness (Now), and community (With). Through embodied games and small group activities, participants will identify the observable manifestations of stress and trauma in their particular student populations (and themselves). Then, practicing Dr. Martha Eddy’s Dynamic Embodiment Development Cycle (Observe/Support/Offer Options), participants will discuss ways to apply contextual prosocial adaptations that foster accurate observation, disrupt habitual pedagogies, and promote psychophysical health and agency.

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Bio: Elizabeth Johnson (MFA, GL-CMA, M.AmSAT) is a performer, choreographer, educator, Laban Movement Analyst and certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique. Her research integrates somatic, developmental, and feminist perspectives into her pedagogies as well her creative work. As Artistic Director of Your Mother Dances, her work has been seen in Milwaukee, NYC, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Minneapolis and she has served as Dance faculty at University of Illinois, UW-Madison, UNC-Greensboro, UW-Milwaukee, and Texas Tech University. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of Florida.

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"The creative spine"

Function-expression-energy-art  

Movement workshop 

 

Lorella Rapisarda CMA

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This short workshop is an exemple of how I use different (but similar) approaches like the Laban/Bartenieff System, Shiatsu, art images or quotations to help people get in touch with themselves and their physical sensations. Sometimes we have to offer more options to get a development into a more somatic way of connecting to ourselves and our inner sensations.

It happened in the last years that I concentrated more on creating movement classes for people who are not in the movement field with the idea of searching ways to make them feel more in touch with their body-mind connection.

The Laban/Bartenieff System is full of different tools I can use for warming up and guide expressive improvvisation around a particular theme. I choose in this proposal to work on the "spine" so I will propose movement explorations on the Head-Tail Connection, on the Vertical Dimension, Weight Effort, and the kinesphere. The Shiatsu is very helpful to also work on auto massage, in this case I will talk about the Bladder Meridian, which runs on the sides of the spine, is very connected to the bones and the nervous system. The Water Element is connected to this Meridian and of course we cannot forget about the liquid that runs through our spine.

Images of art like sculptures, paintings, pictures can be helpful to help people moving with specific effort combinations or to simply get in touch with their spine through images. Sometimes I also use to reed some lines of poetry or lines from a specific book, to create an expressive improvisation.

Usually more things need to be shown because not everybody con connect to the same thing. In this workshop I will travel between these ideas to feel our spine. I will probably use some music. I have my Ipod with me.

 

 

Bio: I'm a CMA from the Intensive course 1999/2000 at LIMS New York. I teach contemporary dance and movement classes based on LMA/BF principles to professional dancers, dance teachers, actors, beginners, young students in public schools. I'm a Shiatsu Practitioner and have a Certification in the Nikolais-Luois dance technique. I danced as a professional dancer and choreographer for many years. I participated as a presenter at Laban/Bartenieff conferences such as "Encontro Laban" Rio de Janeiro 2002, "Laban Event" Monte Verità 2008, "LIMS conference"2018 New York, "Eurolab Conference" Remscheid 2018.  I'm now studying Dynamic Embodiment with Martha Eddy.

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Bio

Sindy Butz is a visual artist, Butoh dancer, and somatic movement educator. She teaches Butoh and Somatic Butoh classes at the New York Butoh Institute, as well as BodyMind Dancing™️ classes at Movement Research New York, Butoh- BMD™️ at Studio 55C for Dr. Martha Eddy in the East Village New York and Butoh ritual classes at diverse art institutions around New York City. She has offered her teachings at different art residencies, dance schools, art organizations, and art programs in North America, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finnland, South Korea, and Germany. 

Butz has performed at the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, New Museum, Theater for the New City, Dixon Place, and Asian American Art Alliance among many others. Her solo projects Hearth and Homage to Hildegard of Bingen have been featured by the Marina Abramovic Institute.

 

Sindy Butz 
Visual Artist

• Website www.sindybutz.com

Performance: No. 4711

30 minutes

Sindy Butz

Overview: In the performative talk -No.4711-, the multisensory visual artist, storyteller, and dancer Sindy Butz shares her childhood memories of communist East Germany in the early ’80s through scent and a traditional German fragrance that was invented in 1709 as the very first historic Eau de Cologne. No.4711 became an illegal good during the government of East Germany as it now belonged to the capitalistic West German city Cologne. The spirit-citrus perfume created by Giovanni Maria Farina (1685-1766), an Italian perfumer from Santa Maria Maggiore Valle Vigezzo, Italy was popular and in high demand. In East Germany, it was hard to obtain the fragrance, and if acquired through hard currencies in specialty shops or the black market it could only be admired by looking at the beautiful bottle at home or be worn in secret. If friends or family came to visit, it had to be hidden at home, fearing the visitors may be involved with the secret service (Stasi) and possibly report the family for the possession of illegal goods. Performance, Context The performance will start by handing out perfumers fragrance strips sprayed with the fragrance packaged in small envelopes to set the olfactoric mood and to trigger personal or collective memories about this today international known vintage scent. The following dance performance New York, May 17th, 2019 itself is a Butoh-based dance piece of 15 to 20 minutes, showcasing the effect on the body and mind of a constraining and highly controlling government forbidding any small joy. The unique movement brings out and amplifies the deeply buried emotions and profound feelings around freedom, yearning, trust, and despair through slow, hyper-controlled, and grotesque movement. The performance will end with the reading of a short letter by the artist mother about her memory of owning a forbidden fragrance. The presentation will finish with a conclusion/review and a Q and A round, sharing ideas on the connection of scent and memory and awareness about the political and social body of different backgrounds in society.

 

Technique Background Butoh is a highly sensitized process of both listening too and controlling the flow of the body. Butoh is considered Japanese expressionism that emerged from similar needs as Laban-Wigman’s German expressionism and Martha Graham/Isadora’s modern dance expression. It has been written about by Sondra Fraleigh, Ph.D. founder of East-West Somatics and Tanya Calamoneri, Ph.D. professor/researcher in Dance who is also a Dynamic Embodiment Practitioner and a Certified Teacher of BMD™ (Dr. Martha Eddy).

 

Additional Information and Context: Workshop During the conference week with Dr. Martha Eddy, Sindy Butz will be leading a Butoh-BodyMind Dancing ™ evening class introducing her unique teaching method of a Somatics and Butoh Fusion. Her studies in Butoh, durational performance art practice, the New York, May 17th, 2019 Maureen Fleming Technique, visualization, breath-work, and the BodyMind Dancing- BMD™ and Dynamic Embodiment ™ methods by Dr. Martha Eddy have helped the artist Sindy Butz to develop a unique combination and creative approach of movement pedagogy. Butz encourages the examination of the body-mind connection, proprioception, and kinesthesia to discover and reveal the inner self. The physical class will introduce the avant-garde Japanese dance form Butoh with a short presentation (5 to 10 minutes) on its history in the beginning. During the exercises and guided dance journey, students will learn more about Butoh and practice guided imagery, time perception, multisensory experiences, the BodyMind Dancing™ (BMD Martha Eddy) fluid phrase, the spinal roll down phrases as well as calming the nervous system techniques, mindfulness, and body awareness. This workshop can potentially be connected to the performance at the symposium. Butz teaches Butoh classes at the New York Butoh Institute as well as BodyMind Dancing at Movement Research New York, Butoh- BMD™ at Studio 55C New York for Dr. Martha Eddy and Somatic Butoh Dance rituals at various art institutions around New York City. She has offered her teachings at various residencies, dance schools, and art programs in New York, Prague, Estonia, and Germany

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