Dance Artist, Educator and Feldenkrais Practitioner

• Dip. Teach

• Dip. Performing Arts

• Master of Fine Arts

• Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner

Exploring and understanding human movement has been central to my life as a dance artist and movement educator for over forty years. Integrating the Feldenkrais Method into my practice has given me another way to investigate how I can improve the way I move, develop greater mastery of my body as I age, recover more quickly from injury as well as opening up different avenues of creative engagement with other people.

When we are in pain it is difficult to function let alone think. The Feldenkrais Method has enhanced my connection between my body, thinking and habits in order to manage pain with greater kindness, function more effectively in daily life and improve the quality of my relationships.

I first encountered the work of Moshe Feldenkrais during the 1980’s at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts where a variety of integrated body/mind/movement practices were being taught. As a performer, choreographer and lecturer, I valued the focus that each of these different practices had on the development of imagination, the quality and flow of movement and the relationship and influence of the small body parts to the whole body. I developed a regular personal practice of Awareness Through Movement lessons, along with yoga and swimming to support dancing fulltime while keeping myself injury free. This interest and practice continued throughout my entire professional dance career.

Nurturing and enhancing creative processes is fundamental to becoming more expressive and less judgmental. In both my dance and Feldenkrais practice I encourage people to be playful and explore the relationship between the parts of themselves that are well known and those that are less familiar, to find pleasure in the journey of learning something new with a non-judgmental attitude.

At the beginning of 2016 I had a hip replacement. During my rehab I realized I needed to reimagine myself as a mover, the way I stood, walked, sat on the floor, climbed the stairs or balanced on one leg. I knew from previous experience that The Method helped me understand my movement habits and develop new relationships between my experience of movement and sense of myself. Training in the Feldenkrais Method has been a gift which has enriched my capacity to continue learning, moving and creating.

To this day the curious movement puzzles of Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons continue to reveal ways in which I can improve my own and others physical and emotional wellbeing. I offer Functional Integration (FI) lessons with performers, mothers and babies, people with neurological disorders like Parkinson's and those who are looking to recover movment function after injury. I also offer weekly ATM classes, online ZOOM ATM, experiential anatomy classes for ATAR Dance and monthly EMBRACE YOUR BODY Awareness Thorugh Movment Workshops.