I’m invited to present at the La Pelvis Project Presents: “Live with LULU”, a project made possible with the support of the Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts, Interior Beauty Salon, and the University of California Riverside Dance Department. Date: Thursday, March 31, 2022. All sessions are free and open to the public upon RSVPing. More info here: interiorbeautysalon.com/in-motion

Priscilla, the organiser, asked me to write 2-3 sentences on what I will be presenting. I typed down the following, as I find this could be quite interesting. I just sent it out right now, therefore I don’t know what she will make of four paragraphs, it’s certainly more than 2-3 sentences. Just for the archive, here’s my original proposal:

Why don’t you just say what you want to say? How can we ever find the right words within the infinite possible combinations of words and sounds of spoken language?

And furthermore: Can we compare spoken language to physical movement? For example, in spoken language, would the repeated shouting of a single word be the equivalent to the repeated execution of a single motion? And consequently, would telling a longer story be the equivalent to a longer movement sequence? In movement, what would constitute a congruent story? What makes or breaks the grammar of movement?

In this context I will present a selection of movement sequences from Somatic Education, inspired by Moshé Feldenkrais, to experience the pelvis like we might experience the subject, object or verb in a sentence, or the agonist, or antagonist, or a side character, or maybe even the setting in a story. Does any of this make any sense?

What do we need to make sense of movement? In popular media we see famous clinical psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists produce a lot of very elaborate and complex spoken language, but why don’t we see them teach equally sophisticated movement classes? Let’s find out!