Lanny Harrison and Steve Clorefeine

Lanny Harrison

Lanny Harrison is a performer, teacher, visual artist & poet. She has been teaching theater and movement since 1968.  Her course Performing Stories: East Meets West at NYU’s Gallatin Division was successful for 25 years. Her ongoing Characters in Motion workshop in NYC was housed at NY Shambhala Center for many years & was taught again through NY Shambhala, this past winter. She was a founding teacher of kids workshops at West Kortright Center in upstate NY.

Ms Harrison began teaching at Naropa University in 1976.  Traveling from upstate NY to Boulder, her trajectory was: Keep studying with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and dance with Barbara Dilley. She did both!

Ms Harrison has been a member of Meredith Monk’s group The House, since 1969. 

She has collaborated with the late Collin Walcott & Jerry Granelli, with Steve Clorfeine, Arawana Hayashi, Barbara Bash, Christine Alicino, Lily Pink, Robin Daniels, Meredith Monk, Christopher Krotky. Her solo work has toured the States & Europe.  

Her book Characters in Motion – a Workbook of Improvisational Exercises was published in Spring 2025. 

Lanny Harrison has been a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche since 1971.

Web page: https://lannyharrison.com/

Steve Clorfeine

From Steve's website (https://www.steveclorfeine.com/index.html)

Original performance, developed through improvisation, has been the foundation of my 35 years as a performer, director, and teacher.  I studied improvisation with Barbara Dilley, one of the early members of Merce Cunningham’s company.   At the same time, I studied writing and poetics with Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Ted Berrigan and a host of New York and California writers gathered at The Naropa Institute.  While performing improvised work, I met Meredith Monk and became a member of her company for 12 years, performing and teaching in the U.S. and Europe.   At the same time I joined Ping Chong’s Fiji Company, also performing and teaching in Europe and the U.S. From 1977 on, I’ve created my own work, using physical theater as a base for introducing text, film, and characters.   Collaborations include musicians Jerry Granelli, Steve Gorn, and Jay Clayton; actors/dancers Lanny Harrison, Arawana Hayashi, Brenda Bufalino, Wendell Beavers.

In theater and storytelling workshops, I begin with sound and movement exercises aimed at accessing each person’s storehouse of imagination.  Movement and sound call up memory in surprising, often provocative ways, that cannot be “thought out.” The exercises allow images, feelings, and their expression to arise in the context of mind-body relationship.  From that place, we can more fully enter the world of embodied memory and expression, and begin to tell our stories.

I’ve been a student of meditation for the past 40 years, mainly in the Tibetan Buddhist and Shambhala traditions. As a member of the Shambhala community and the formative Naropa University community, my practice has included formal training in the Vajrayana path of Tibetan tradition, in the Shambhala teachings and practices associated with it, and in the traditional arts and contemplative arts practices, particularly contemplative movement, T’ai Chi, theater and writing. I’ve been trained as a meditation instructor, as a director of Shambhala Training, and as a contemplative arts practice director. In teaching arts based courses and workshops since 1973, I’ve incorporated a contemplative approach, often including sitting and walking meditation practice and drawing on my studies in T’ai Chi and 'dharma art' principles on perception and mindfulness-awareness. Through the forms of improvisation and 'deep play' I’ve been able to present techniques that draw people closer to their creative strengths and awaken their healthy resistances.

All of my adult life I’ve been engaged in teaching and much of it engaged in performance. In addition to years on the faculty at the State University of New Paltz, Naropa University, Amsterdam Theater school, Dance Therapy Institute of Switzerland, and Remshied Akademie of Germany, I’ve been an artist-in residence in public schools in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. Working with teachers and children, I’ve observed the growth in self-confidence that both groups experience through physical theater improvisation, and how the work creates a level playing ground for students of diverse backgrounds and intelligences. This supports my deep interest in contemplative education and engagement with peers whose interest and training parallels this experience.