SDSU's Common Experience 2018-19:

Experience Time Faculty Component | Experience Time Dance Series

SDSU's Common Experience 2016-17:

Embodying Cellular Consciousness through Touch and Movement with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

I received grant funding from SDSU’s 2016-17 Common Experience, “Experience Movement” to bring world renowned somatic educator and creator of Body-Mind Centering, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, to teach a two-day workshop for a cohort of SDSU faculty and their students.

My work with Arts Alive is connected to my desire to contribute to SDSU’s goals around interdisciplinarity, and my involvement thus far with numerous “Pop-Up Performanes” has enabled me to better differentiate between mutli-, inter-, and transdisciplinary endeavors. A common tendency is for interdisciplinary projects between artists and scientists to result in works of art that illustrate or are inspired by scientific principles. In order for a collaboration to be “transdisciplinary”, the contribution must be reciprocal to the degree that the theoretical positions of both the artists and the scientists have the potential to be changed by engagement in the other’s work. Barbara Hawkins mentions the research of Foral et. al in her assertion that “transdisciplinary collaboration requires the ingredient of ‘transcendence’–the giving up of sovereignty over knowledge and the generation of new insights by co-operation on equal terms.”

Dance educators within higher education typically have extensive experience in the laboratories, and certainly the languages, of other disciplines. Throughout their education, they have been in classrooms and cadaver or chemistry labs, and have learned to read and write. Professors from other disciplines do not typically enter into the laboratory (the studio and their body) or use the language (movement and psychophysical expression) of dance artists, and as such, are not often familiar with the kind of knowledge that emerges through research in/of/through dance.

This workshop was designed to bring several members of the SDSU community together to engage in research methods commonly used in the field of dance. The work is highly accessible to those with disabilities, and requires an open mind for those who are accustomed to focusing on primarily objectively measurable phenomena within their research.

Over fifty faculty, undergraduate and graduate students from over 10 different disciplines and 4 universities, SDSU administrators, staff, alumni, and professors emeriti, and several community members and dance professionals from San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Santa Barbara were in attendance.

Folks of different ages, disciplines, and body types came together to slow down, sense, and move with Body-Mind Centering® and its creator. The workshop provided a space for so many to inhabit their body-minds beyond what is possible in their everyday lives. It was clear that this was just a beginning, and that the SDSU community is ripe for more experiences of this kind.

Weber Honors College Faculty Fellow 2016-17

Honor 113: Connection and Commitment | Practice, Embody, Know

“When you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want." ― Moshe Feldenkrais

I was selected as a Weber Honors College Faculty Fellow. Shedding light on the importance of embodied ways of knowing such as kinesthetic intelligence is central to my work as a dance educator within a larger institution.

Dance is recognized by SDSU and the National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD) as a rigorous academic discipline, but since physical education and the arts do not typically play a significant role in the educational experiences of college applicants, there are no metrics by which students’ skills and achievements within the art of dance are measured. A student’s capacity to succeed within the dance major cannot be determined by their SAT scores or high school GPA. We hold auditions so we can assess these skills and determine which students are qualified for college-level study of dance. In this way, the Dance Division in School of Music and Dance houses SDSU’s Honors students in the areas where kinesthetic and creative intelligences overlap.

I redesigned and updated DANCE 290/Body Modalities, a practical and theoretical overview of various somatic methodologies. When Weber Honors College Director, Stacey Sinclair, approached me about teaching HONOR 113/Connection & Commitment, I proposed a partial stacking of HONOR 113 and DANCE 290. The Honors students were exposed to capacities that are less commonly understood as intelligences (like the dancers’ combination kinesthetic and creative skills), and the dancers began to understand that their skillsets are, indeed, academic.

The depth of my DANCE 290/Body Modalities course redesign made it ripe for conversion into HONOR 113/Connection & Commitment. The Feldenkrais Method is a somatic system that is covered in both courses and is particularly accessible for those without dance experience, so I chose to spend more time on it in the Honors course and invited my colleague, collaborator, and certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, Leslie Seiters, to co-teach, offering Awareness Through Movement lessons (ATMs) each week. I also added a social awareness element to the course by focusing on the first person, somatic experience in relationship with others, current events, and political positions.

Below is the Student Evaluation document and selected Qualitative comments.

Practice/Embody/Know

Honor 113 | Connection & Commitment Course Description

Created in collaboration with Leslie Seiters.

What does it feel like to ask a question with your whole body at once? How can becoming aware of our bodies lead to becoming aware with our bodies? Do your heart and mind know each other? In this course, we will privilege embodied knowing/knowledge and somatically-oriented practice. Somatics describes methodologies focused on the first-person, experiential study of the human body/your unique soma (which means “living body”). Somatic approaches to breathing, dynamic alignment of body~mind, rest and recuperation, and performance of identity will be introduced primarily through gentle movement explorations, supported by readings, viewings, lectures, and discussions. This embodied approach to learning is designed to integrate us as whole human beings in relationship with each other and our individual research interests. Our primary lab will be Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons from The Feldenkrais Method®. ATMs are structured movement explorations designed to enable learning through slowing, sensing, and moving. Anyone can do an ATM. Together, we endeavor to reduce effort, and practice working “smarter, not harder”.

Arts Alive

Pop-Up Performances

I have created seven “Pop up” performances with dance majors at the Farmer’s Markets, in the Aztec Student Union, and co-created a dance with dance majors and Professor Joe Waters’, and his class for the Edible Palette event in the Art Department.

Below are two of several Pop-Up Performances I created, collaborated on, and/or performed in with students for Arts Alive. On the right is a video with clips of our first durational performance on campus in 2016 where we took two hours to descend and/or ascend the stairs in the dome of the Love Library in formal wear. A few years later, Professor Leslie Seiters received funding to purchase the red coveralls (often worn in site-specific dance) to continue with the durational dances. The video on the right is a clip from "curvilinear", an hour-long embodied exploration of internal volume, continuity, roundness, and curved pathways in the body.