Teaching - Overview

-  Receptivity  -  Expression  -  Curiosity  -
 

My main teaching principal is to hone in on, develop and sharpen each persons individual and unique movement qualities. To strengthen once conviction, confidence and ability to generate movement in the present moment. Get insight into the worth it has, both to your own development and also the development of the artform in general. 

 

The first step is to find inputs that pique our interest, ignite our imagination and pump up our creative flow. This is a skill grounded in self-awareness, openness, listening and the understanding that every day is different, what worked in the past may not always, making this an ongoing process with no ultimate correct answers or methods. What is rewarded is our ability to rethink and try new things, even things that may be perceived as contradictory or illogical can work. However, the intention should always be to create space and give the opportunity for what may arise to arise, respond to it with a non-judgmental or evaluative listening and try to the best of one's ability to resist the impulse to enter into a "doing mentality" but instead allow oneself to be carried away by the experience and the sensations. This is based on developing a trust where the intellect, our thinking self, can let go and trust that the body and senses know best. In this way we open up the attention and allow it to dissolve into a consciousness that does not stand in separation from what is experienced but embraces and allows itself to be absorbed by it.

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The second step is to find ways to shape the flow so that it can be seen and experienced in varied forms. If we draw the analogy to a flow of water, where the frame through which the water flows also constitutes the shape the water takes. This is where we begin to talk about creativity as an ongoing dialogue between freedom and limitation. The insight rests in the knowledge that everything you are, has ever been and will be able to become informs and lays the foundation for what you are doing in the moment. This means that everything can be used, all of your life experience, dreams and visions can be incorporated and can inform your expression. So we don't need to separate our creative self from our everyday self. The shaping of the flow can thus be initiated from every little hair follicle on your physical body, the tiniest little sensation from your surroundings detected by your senses or from every little nook in the expansive world of your mind. In order to concretely delineate this infinity of possibilities, we can use everything from intentions, frameworks, methods and tasks to our advantage. There is no right or wrong, just different ways of putting the puzzle together. However, everything boils down to the same desire, which is to discover new worlds and dimensions of expression and impressions with the body as our vehicle. The only thing that separates a practitioner and an artist is that, like a shaman, the artist wants to convey and make these worlds visible to others with the hope of igniting something that was previously extinguished.