“My career and health transformed, when I learned how to bridge conscious living and art-making and explore the connection between the incredible experiences created in the studio and life lived outside the studio setting.”
Maggie Forgeron
Anna Halprin is a pioneer of experimental art and widely known as the “mother of contemporary dance.” I came across some video footage of Anna teaching a workshop in Paris, France, and I felt deeply moved when she addressed the participants by speaking the following message:
“The focus of this workshop is on you, and not on me. I’m a facilitator. I can’t do the work for you. I can facilitate and guide you into experiences, but it’s up to you to integrate those experiences. Your previous experience has nothing to do with what we’re going to do today. If you’ve never danced in your life, you’re going to be able to dance. If you’re a professional dancer, you’re going to be able, for a change, to take something in instead of always giving out.”
Anna Halprin
That last phrase propelled me into such a cathartic release, thinking about the many years I’ve spent training and performing and “putting out.” It led me to imagine that I must not be the only one exhausted from the rigour of my artistic lifestyle. I thought to host experiences for dancers who are looking to deepen their creative practice, with a special focus on life/art balance.
Eight years after beginning my training and professional journey as a dancer at Canada’s National Ballet School, I became very ill and considered leaving the strict formula of my profession. Then, I read an interview with Anna Halprin entitled, “From Dance Art to Healing Art” (Dance Magazine 2004), and my gut burned for sweet reconciliation between my body and external surroundings—and for the non-integrated parts of myself to find wholeness—while continuing to dance. I turned to expressive movement practices.
My study of expressive, free-form movement became a path to healing during the confines and rigour of my career in classical and contemporary ballet, and the stress-filled life of an artist. I found tools in these healing arts to sustain my career in the ensuing years with the National Ballet of Canada, Ballet British Columbia and National Ballet Mannheim. I have developed a deep love of the psychology, science and therapeutic aspects of physical exploration from the inside out, and I have done so in the midst of pursuing my career onstage for almost two decades. I owe this creative resilience in large part to the Tamalpa Institute. This time-out (time-in, really!) for study, research and creative distancing has led me to feel that when a dancer can get out of his/her head, explore beyond egoic constructs such as dance aesthetics, and get more fully into his/her body, positive and revolutionary change can take place for all involved and the art form itself.
Dancer: Ryan Genoe, “Blind As Night That Finds Us All”
Choreographer: Maggie Forgeron
Photographer: unknown
Not Just Any Body Part 