Drawn from the body of work developed by Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose over the past four decades, this movement workshop honors the deep intelligence of the body as subject, not object; the Earth as subject with intrinsic intelligence and integrity; and both as interconnected with much to teach us if only we learn to listen. Each movement session invites awareness of perception, including the words and images we utilize to frame our embodied experience in service of more conscious living and communicating. Experiential anatomy is featured as one of several lenses that honor the integrity of our structure, underpinning the delicious flow between groundedness and spaciousness in daily life and creative work. Come dressed to move and bring a writing journal.
The workshop will take place:
Saturday 17 June, 12 – 6pm
Sunday 18 June, 11am – 5pm
Betweenness is a central theme. We wake in the morning, move from silence to speaking, indoors to outdoors, private to public, and personal to professional with multiple transitions. As we communicate with different parts of ourselves, fellow humans, and our surroundings, we cross thresholds from one dimensional realm to another. Amidst all these transitions not-knowing is constant: there is a gap between where we were and where we are going. Interpretation of each present moment is based on our past experience and on the health and receptivity of our bodies. In this state of betweenness, we are immersed in fresh possibility. As we inhabit this “ecotone,” or terrain of potential creativity, noticing what brings personal joy and insight is part of the unfolding process.
From Olsen’s Moving Between Worlds, A Guide to Embodied Living and Communicating. Entryways: An Introduction, Wesleyan University Press, 2022
Workshop participants are invited to the accompanying talk on 16 June free.
Andrea Olsen, dance artist, writer, and educator, is author of a quartet of books on the body: Bodystories: A Guide to Experiential Anatomy (1991), Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide (2002), The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making (2014), and Moving Between Worlds: A Guide to Embodied Living and Communicating (2022) with colleague Caryn McHose, along with numerous articles and chapters in anthologies.
She is a Professor Emeritus of Dance at Middlebury College in the US and teaches and performs internationally. Recent film projects co-created with media artist Scotty Hardwig include the website Body and Earth: Seven Web-Based Somatic Excursions with Caryn McHose and international dance artists, and the multiple-award-winning dance short Matkalla, filmed in Finland and Sweden with Eeva-Maria Mutka.
Caryn McHose is a movement artist, Advanced Certified Rolfer™ and Rolf Movement Practitioner®. and co-author (with Kevin Frank) of How Life Moves, Explorations in Meaning and Body Awareness (North Atlantic, 2006). She collaborated with Andrea Olsen on the books Bodystories: A Guide to Experiential Anatomy; The Place of Dance, a Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making; and Moving Between Worlds: A Guide to Embodied Living and Communicating.
She has taught creative movement for people of all ages for over fifty years. Her work is influenced by her study with Hubert Godard, developmental movement with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and Continuum with Emilie Conrad and Susan Harper. She is also a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner and Certified Biodynamic Cranial Sacral Practitioner.
