The Self and The Shared Gesture 

Exploring the therapeutic and wellness opportunities of music & movement
• What happens when we sync up our motion with the motion of others?
• How might shared breath, shared trajectory, or shared gaits contribute to feelings of calm, stability, confidence, and community?
• What is the experience of bodied empathy and how might it lead to deeper connection with our friends and colleagues?

The Dalcroze Eurhythmics classroom, first recognized as a space for musicianship training, has yielded therapeutic benefits since the first explorations in 1903. We see these benefits even more clearly now after almost 120 years of practice and growth in the method.

In this 6-session short course, Stephen Neely will lead us through common Dalcrozian interactions with a focus connection, community, empathy, shared gesture, awareness of self, risk, intimacy, and vulnerability – lessons critical for advanced musicianship, but also central to a healthy and rewarding participation in our extra-musical worlds. 

This course was originally presented September 25–November 7, 2022.

This is the second series of a weekly, 75-minute long, Dalcroze-inspired dance-movement practice to develop and maintain functional, expressive and musical fitness. Principles of grounding, alignment, efficiency of movement, spatial intention, rhythm and phrasing, among other concepts, will be addressed. We will play with movement as personal and communal metaphor, and other material as it arises. Some vocal and tonal play will also be included.

“We see light etched by shadows, feel joy emerging from sorrow; the present hovers between the past and the future. Between all these opposites, there is a sense of movement that renews the clarity of each experience.” Irmgard Bartenieff, with Dori Lewis, from Body Movement: Coping with the Environment.

This course was originally presented March 28-May 9, 2021.

Six hour-long dance-movement classes to develop and maintain functional and expressive fitness. Principles of grounding, alignment, efficiency of movement, spatial intention, rhythm and phrasing, among other concepts, will be addressed. We will also play with movement as personal and communal metaphor, and other material as it arises.

“ We see light etched by shadows, feel joy emerging from sorrow; the present hovers between the past and the future. Between all these opposites, there is a sense of movement that renews the clarity of each experience.”– Irmgard Bartenieff, with Dori Lewis, from Body Movement: Coping with the Environment.