Course Description

The 140-hour Embodied Performing Arts Program is divided into two distinct areas of study: Embodied Performance Studies and Embodied Creative Process. Embodied Performance Studies address the balance of self-awareness and external awareness necessary to work in performance contexts. Embodied Creative Process invites you to deeply assess what aspects of yourself are utilized and underutilized in the creative process as well as to risk new and unfamiliar approaches to making work. Each course described below is a 14-hour unit of study.

Embodied Performance Studies

Consciousness and Presence

You will understand pre-vertebral movement patterns as pathways to refinement of consciousness in yourself and to being present in relationship to an audience.

Enhancing Mobility and Stability

You will find a relationship between the stability of your skeletal system and the mobility of your fluids to provide you with a body-based approach to finding phrasing, vitality, surprise, and ease in transition as a performer.

Principles of Alignment

You will establish a relationship among the diaphragms (pelvic, breathing, thoracic inlet, vocal, and cranial) so as to facilitate internal energetic flow, physical alignment, and emotional grounding.

Organ Expression

You will learn to embody your organs, which will provide dimensionality, passion and depth to your expression.

Breathing and Vocalization

You will acquire articulation and range in your voice and movement.

Embodied Creative Process

Contents and Container

You will learn how one’s individual body-mind influences the balance between structural elements and material elements in creative work.

Endocrine Expression

You will learn to utilize the major endocrine glands as sources of energy, expression, emotions, and of connection with your personal history in your creative work.

Senses and Perception

You will learn to see what is really present as you create material. You will begin to identify the differences and consonances between your perceptions of what you create and the experience of your audience.

Taking Hold and Letting Go

You will learn to embody basic reflexes having to do with grasp and release in order to understand how you can enhance the editing process and choice-making in the creation of new work.

Balancing the Three Brains

You will learn to allow the nervous centers of your head, your heart, and your gut to function independently and in harmony, in order to consciously balance creative issues of risk, innovation, self-actualization and intellect in creating new work.