Caravan of Dreams, a short experimental series
Modern Dance in Seven Directions. For all levels, Teens & Adults.
Sundays 11 am -12:30 pm, MOVE Studio, Santa Fe NM
MODERN DANCE … began in the West with Isadora Duncan and in the East with Japanese Butoh and in other places in other ways.
Both Isadora and Hijikata proposed a ‘new’ form of dance based on a restoration of ancient ancestral approaches. In this ancient-modern way, dance is primarily religious. It about exploring the always-elusive mystery place where space, time and matter intersect, where the formless takes form, and life is born, again and again.
Laura Melling has just returned from a 7 year break from teaching and will be experimenting in this short series with new ways of teaching.
In this course you will experience the authentic modern dance of Isadora and Butoh. Authentic modern dance is nothing like the avant-garde ballet the dominant culture calls ‘modern dance.’
Dance in this old-new way is our most expansive human language. We need it for celebrating, grieving, and naming the unnamable as well as for communicating with non-human life.
To recover this dance, we have to heal from our enculturation in an unsustainable culture of literalism, which blocks us from receiving the mythic intent of the body. This means a deep scrubbing of the imagination and re-culturing of the body.
Laura Melling is an affiliate teacher and former company dancer with the Isadora Duncan International Institute. Her teacher was directly taught by Isadora’s daughters. She also trained and performed with Atsushi Takenouchi, who was a member of the original Hijikata butoh company. Laura began creating celebratory festivals and performing in 2003 and has extensive training in other fields, which you can read about here. She is also a somatic Jungian therapist.