EMBODYING LIFE
We move and are moved.
How can we find our way back to ourselves when we’re off balance, when we’ve lost sight of the light, or are paused while old doors close and new ones open? Returning to the body helps. From the body, much can arise, because the body is the location of all that we are. The body itself thinks and speaks. The mind itself senses. Read the words above – find, balance, a path lost, sight, paused, open, closed. We understand those words because they are metaphors for the embodied experiences we’ve all had as humans. Through a simple embodiment practice that leads us into our feeling function, we return to ourselves. So much can show up when we move and are moved.
Jennie’s movement-based expressive arts practice is based in the Tamalpa Life/Art Process, a process developed by dance pioneers Daria Halprin and Anna Halprin, and informed by the work of Anna’s husband, renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.
In the Tamalpa process, we track sensation, emotion, and associations, then move, giving expression to our physical, emotional, mental bodies. We move and are moved. Then we use sketching, poetic writing/journaling, and voice to psychologize and explore the interplay of body, mind, and creativity. Our life material becomes art. Creativity becomes a way of life.
For one-on-one sessions, contact Jennie.
MOVEMENT CIRCLES
The Tamalpa process is valuable in the contexts of healing and balancing, creativity and arts, and spirituality.
In witnessing each other and being witnessed, we cultivate our own inner witness. Group member observations are their own aesthetic responses, from their own self knowledge. We do not fix, advise, interpret, analyze, or deconstruct each other. The process is therapeutic, but it is not therapy.
We practice in small group circles limited to four people. Circles are held at Jennie’s home studio in the Paris Mountain area of Greenville, SC. Each circle series may include three or four sessions.
Private sessions are also available.
Contact Jennie for more information.
COMMUNITY DANCE
Movement as an approach to learning — everyday, pedestrian movement in space — works with the sensory and kinesthetic abilities of learners as a way into academic content. We can solve equations by plotting points on a human 3-D graph using people as points, or use the elements of movement to focus on action words in a story, or play with the qualities of magnetism by using the weight and force of bodies. In this way, experience is the origin of innovative, authentic ideas and critical thinking.
EDUCATION
It has been said that the archetypal form of dance is village community dance. Its function: social glue. We tend to think of dance as self expression, but we love community dance for its ability to unify, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Contact Jennie for calling contra dances and other user-friendly community dances at public and private dances.
MEET JENNIE
My work is about making situations for people to dance – in every sense of the word, actual and symbolic. Dance is not only second-hand visual experience for an audience, it is also a first-hand sensory experience for people of all body types, ages, and abilities. Dance is a metaphor for a life well lived and shared with others and for the underlying unity of things.
I have been a teaching artist (dance and folk arts) in primary and secondary schools for the Metropolitan Arts Council in Greenville, SC and the South Carolina Arts Commission, and a caller of contra dances for public community dances and private events like weddings. I am an associate teacher of Tamalpa Institute and a registered somatic movement educator (RSME) by the International Somatic Movement Educator and Therapy Association (ISMETA), and am a movement-based expressive arts facilitator in private practice.
I am retired (emerita) from the English department of Clemson University, Clemson, SC, where I taught composition, humanities, and literature courses and used the Tamalpa Life/Art Process (TLAP) to help students in all majors tap their own creative process. I developed these courses at Clemson: “Writing, Body, and Earth,” “The Role of Dance in Culture,” “Writing Architecture,” and “Writing the Occupational Narrative.” I lead dance events at Haden Institute in Hendersonville, North Carolina, where I received a certification in Jungian dreamwork. My MA in English is from Clemson University. My BFA in dance is from Boston Conservatory.
