Monday, September 24, 2007

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

Hello Everyone,

It has been a busy and wonderfully productive summer for me—I hope for all of you as well. I took a break from writing (hence the quiet blog), but was busy teaching, thinking and planning.

I was delighted to present a session at the DanceLife Teacher Conference 2007 at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston this past July. The conference, organized by Rhee Gold, brought together a teaching panel of leaders in various aspects of dance education and the dance studio business with over 300 eager participants.

Titled, Improving Technique: The Feldenkrais Method®, my session introduced the assembled dance teachers to Feldenkrais-inspired ways to improve alignment, with special emphasis on the spine and scoliosis. Given the interesting questions and comments that arose during the session and immediately afterwards, I thought a summary of the ideas and experiential exercises might be of interest to those who were not able to attend. I will be posting the summary shortly—stay tuned.

I also had the pleasure of working with some dancers who were participating in Summer Stages, the superb summer program in contemporary dance that is offered at Concord Academy in Concord, MA. A special thank you to Richard Colton and Amy Spencer, Summer Stages co-artistic directors, who gave me access to watch classes and the space to work with any dancer from the program who expressed interest. It was a wonderful experience and inspired me with ideas for upcoming IntelliDANCE Tele-workshops.

I will be announcing dates for the next IntelliDANCE Tele-workshop shortly. For those of you interested in the program, please let me know days and times that work for you. Also, let me know what kinds of technical problems you are seeing in class consistently. Two brains working on the problem are better than one, and as we grow our IntelliDANCE community, I hope that this professional network will serve as a constant source of inspiration and support.

Warmest Regards,

Andrea Higgins, Creative Director
IntelliDANCE