&

present
SomaSpheres

Free Admission - Everyone Welcome
Saturday ​April 21 - Monday April 23, 2018

MacKenzie Art Gallery, 3475 Albert St, Regina
New Dance Horizons Studio, 2207 Harvey Street, Regina
University of Regina Aquatic Centre / Swimming Pool

Soma: “The body as perceived from within” – Thomas Hanna                                                 
Spheres: Interlocking spheres, exploring the interior landscape in the body.

SomaSpheres is an inquiry into the moving body through a series of interconnected movement forms toward developing a working knowledge of somatic practices and an opportunity to engage in embodied movement. Led by local and guest somatic practitioners and artists, SomaSpheres offers a fun-filled weekend of experiential learning and exchange focused on the body’s magnificent capacity to speak a myriad of languages. 

Context
SomaSpheres is among several programs NDH are presenting in conjunction with the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s exhibition Re: Celebrating the Body, running January 26 through June 3, 2018. Guest artists Ingrid Baxter, Hannah Dubois and Jeannie Mah, whose work engages the bodies most abundant property, water, are featured in both the exhibition Re: Celebrating the Body and SomaSpheres. The exhibition proposes the idea of a “soma-esthetic”, a conversation that extends SomaSpheres into NDH’s Stream of Dance Festival beginning with the spoken performance Danse avec les Proxys / Dance with Proxies | Olivier Bosson with Fabien Pinaroli. 

Cost 
All SomaSpheres mini-workshops are free.
Please consider a $50 donation and become a Friend of NDH.  
Your support will be regularly acknowledged in our print and on-line promotion, while directly supporting SomaSpheres expenses.

History
Since its inception in 1986 New Dance Horizons has provided space and support for contemporary dance artists with parallel practices in the healing arts, somatics and bodywork. Through our ongoing commitment to somatic research and education NDH consistently invites artists of many contexts to explore their somatic approaches, creative research, and performance, as well as share this activity with the public. A long-term goal of NDH is to develop an International Somatic Creation Centre (Snail Dome Somatics).​

Welcome Susan McKenzie (Scribe) to SomaSpheres
Susan McKenzie joins SomaSpheres to observe, interview, and document SomaSpheres. She anticipates with great pleasure a weekend of savouring motion and discoveries with you. 
Over the course of her 57 year relationship with dance, Susan McKenzie has played many roles, among them professional dancer, choreographer, artistic director, movement educator, rehearsal director, writer, and recently graphic artist and dramaturge.
Susan “learns by doing, writes to reflect, remember and understand.” 
www.susanmckenzie.ca

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PROGRAM 

Saturday April 21st, 2018

Location: MacKenzie Art Gallery, 3475 Albert St.
10:00 am – 10:15 am  Registration | Robin Poitras Introduction
10:15 am – 11:00 am Johanna Bundon | First Approximations
11:15 am – 12:15 pm Ashley Johnson | Constantly Seeking Softness
 
12:15 pm – 1:00 pm Lunch break | Enbridge Young Artists Studio at the MacKenzie available for your picnic lunch

1:00 pm – 2:15 pm Jennifer Mascall | Heart to Heart
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm Patricia Dewar | Energy Medicine Yoga
3:30 pm – 4:30 pm Johanna, Ashley, Jennifer, Patricia | Compare and contrast ideas with the day's practitioners

First Nations University of Canada 2018 Spring Pow Wow

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​​Sunday April 22nd, 2018

Location: New Dance Horizons Studio, 2207 Harvey St. 
9:00 am – 10:00 am I-Ying Wu | Subtle Awareness
10:15 am – 11:30 am Traci Kluk ​| Bones to Breathe: Discovering Embodiment through Fitzmaurice Voicework

11:30 am – 12:15 pm Lunch break | We suggest 2 favourites near NDH studio: Café francais and PHOmilu

Location: MacKenzie Art Gallery, 3475 Albert St.
12:15 pm – 1:15 pm Ingrid Baxter, Erian Baxter, and Hannah Dubois | Artist Talk: An Intergenerational Dialogue in Art & Life & Water
 1:30 pm – 2:45 pm Ann Tutt | The Mitzvah Technique and the Alchemy of Motion
3:00 pm – 4:15 pm Natasha Martina | Revisiting our Developmental Roots through Body-Mind Centering®
4:15 pm –  4:45 pm I-Ying, Traci, Ann, Natasha | Compare and constrast ideas with the day's practitioners

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Monday April 23, 2018

Location: University of Regina Aquatic Centre / Swimming Pool
9:30 am – 10:30 am Ingrid Baxter, Erian Baxter, Hannah Dubois, and Jeannie Mah | Plunge: An Aquatic Experience
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Note: Please meet at the pool 15 minutes prior to the presentation. Participants are invited to join in the pool or watch from the pool deck. Don’t forget your bathing suit, goggles and other swim equipment.

For more information on the Stream of Dance Festival, please visit the Stream of Dance website

RE: Celebrating the Body

 

Artist Bios

Photo Credit: Michael Bell

Johanna Bundon

Johanna Bundon is an independent dance maker, teacher, and facilitator. She has taught contemporary dance and Yoga classes through New Dance Horizons Dance Core, is a faculty member of the Globe Theatre’s Actor Conservatory, and is currently a student in the Feldenkrais Professional Training Program under the direction of Elizabeth Beringer (San Diego).​

First Approximations​
Inspired by current study in the Feldenkrais Method, this class will bring awareness to the foreground as a tool for inquiry, self-care, and pleasant learning. Everyone welcome

 

Ashley Johnson

Ashley Johnson is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist trained in group facilitation and hands on bodywork as a teacher of the Mitzvah Technique/Itcush Method and Continuum Movement. She works with diverse populations in movement re-education, and injury rehabilitation with a focus on shifting postural patterning and increasing movement efficiency.  As a dance artist and educator she creates interdisciplinary site specific creations that blend embodiment practices with creative process.
www.constantlyseekingsoftness.ca

Constantly Seeking Softness
This workshop brings together fluid undulation inherent in Continuum Movement with alignment of the vertical axis in the Mitzvah Technique/Itcush Method. A constant play between internal and external sensing, a discovery of what it is to be embodied in everyday actions allows the participant to understand the connections between forms. 

Photo Credit: Daniel Paquet

 

Jennifer Mascall

Jennifer Mascall is a choreographer of over 200 dances, teacher, mentor, and an advocate for the art of dance. She is currently the artistic director of her own creation based company in Vancouver, MascallDance. Mascall has established choreographic and somatic training contexts, in which she offers research infused with her studies with master teachers Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Linda Putnam.  Jennifer Mascall pursues understanding and its reflection through crafting moving landscapes. Her long fascination with the boundary between one form and another leads to making endless physical dialogues, most recently with architects, videographers, and writers. www.mascalldance.ca

Heart to Heart
Yielding the back of the heart to the hand of a partner developed the  arc of the waltz. Connecting the energy of the heart bodies  between two people drives the tango. When the venous and the arterial blood meet we feel a pause resting, before the decision to lead ,to follow, to guide,  to yield. The class will  approach the heart with partnering through  hands on  work  and movement.

Photo credit: Eric Zennstrom

 

Patricia Dewar

Photo credit: Deborah Black

Patricia Dewar, Ph.D has spent a lifetime studying and practicing various mind/body techniques which assure us that “we are larger than we thought we were.” While previously this belief was expounded by the Ancients as well as by present day Yogi’s, Poets, Dance Artists etc.  it is only with recent advances in Neuro Science (see Candice Perks, Norman Doidge ) as well as advances in technical equipment (MRI’s and Pet scans) that Energy systems within the body, (i.e. meridians, chakra’s, aura’s etc) have been verified.  Patricia’s keen interest in understanding how everything is vibrating and interconnecting brings a new lens of wonder to her long standing Iyengar Yoga career.  She feels that the EMYoga practice is not only accessible and practical but it is almost magical in the felt sense of instant shifts of energy.

Energy Medicine Yoga
This is an introductory session in Energy Medicine Yoga as conceived and taught by Lauren walker , and of course as received and taught by me in my own search for healing and personal spiritual growth. EMYoga is based on the Chinese 5 Element Theory and the Energy Medicine works of Donna Eden, an internationally renowned Energy teacher.  The session will consist of combining simple/accessible yoga poses with various energy techniques such as tracing meridian lines, fluffing the aura’s , tapping, stroking, holding and massaging or pressing certain acupuncture points.  The only essential requirement is to come with an open mind. 

 

I-Ying Wu

I-Ying Wu is an improvisation practitioner and researcher. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Northampton, UK in 2014 and did her postdoctoral research at the Improvisation Studies Centre based in the Faculty of Media, Art and Performance, University of Regina during 2016-2017. Her PhD practice-led research employed a Daoist understanding of qi to develop a system of improvisational movement. Informed by ancient texts on Chinese traditional qigong and Daoist philosophy, her improvisation practice focuses on subtle awareness of the very moment when an improvisational phenomenon emerges. 

Subtle Awareness
This workshop explores improvisation based on Daoism’s notion of subtle awareness, that is, a kind of intuitive sensitivity that exists prior to interpretation achieved through nurturing a calm and relaxed state of heightened consciousness. Through a series of improvisational tasks as a process of detachment, participants will find their own pathways to allow awareness to move deeper into the body by listening to a subtle reaction with the external surroundings. Each participant will have their own meditative process, a realization well-recognized in Daoist world view.

I-Ying Wu | Photo Credit: Raymond Ambrosi

 

Traci Kluk | Photo Credit: Jeff E.

Traci Kluk

Traci Kluk is an inclusion focused multidisciplinary artist, educator, coach and director, who was Canada’s first certified Fitzmaurice Voicework™ instructor (2006) and is on of Canada’s lead practitioners of the work. She explores and develops her work through somatic arts with a focus on where awareness, intuition and action intersect. Traci is the recent and humbled recipient of the 2015 YWCA’s Woman of Distinction Jacqui Shumiatcher Arts Award. Her exploration of somatic art began before the term was trendy. Traci’s deep and thorough explorations have included and are not limited by: Mitzvah/Itchush Technique, Extended Vocal Technique, Pochinko Clown, Somatic Experiencing™ and Yoga. Traci’s lived experience informs her understanding of ‘somatics’ to describe embodied-focused awareness through dynamic efforts.

Bones to Breathe: Discovering embodiment through Fitzmaurice Voicework™
Fitzmaurice Voicework™ is a somatic approach to voice that uses asana or ‘dynamic efforts’ to experience released breath, free and connected voice, and flow. This gentle grounded interplay between released body, breath and sound creates a safe and innovative way to explore voice & movement and the connection between psyche and soma.

 

Ann Tutt

Ann Tutt is an alternative movement professional. Tutt is a Mitzvah Technique practitioner, trainer, dancer, improvisor, creator and educator who’s perspective is rooted in 37 years of experience with the development of Nehemiah Cohen’s work, the Mitzvah Technique. Ann’s ongoing research includes investigations into many other movement modalities, i.e. Klein Technique, Skinner Release Technique etc. as well as ongoing analysis of movement clarity, facility and functionality of the sensate body mind in relationship to contemporary dance technique and embodiment. Tutt is the founder of RadixlyEmbodyDesires which includes the Alchemy of Motion and B.I.T.E.S. with Sound. She has performed in the works of Peter Chin, Claudia Moore, Julia Aplin, and Learie McNicolls and creates her own solo work and interactive improvisational performance events.

The Mitzvah Technique and the Alchemy of Motion
This workshop will bring participants into the essence of the Mitzvah Technique. Tutt will introduce participants to her movement laboratory, The Alchemy of Motion. This space is the processing arena for her ongoing research in the pursuit of embodiment. Tutt will source from her wealth of experience in the evolution and distillation of the Mitzvah Technique as well as in dance and other movement approaches. This process will endeavor to excavate clarity, fluidity and perception for body and mind.

 

Natasha Martina | Photo Credit: Dave Stobbe

Natasha Martina

Natasha Martina is an Associate Professor in the Department of Drama at the University of Saskatchewan, specializing in movement for actors. She is a Somatic Movement Educator in BMC® and a certified Laban Movement Analyst. Part of her artistic research delves into the creation of original work, through her theatre company, Ground Cover Theatre.  
www.groundcovertheatre.com

Revisiting our Developmental Roots through Body-Mind Centering®
Through explorations done on the floor we will begin to the unfold the many layers of developmental progression an infant goes through in anticipation to walk and communicate in the world. The foundation of the work is rooted in Body-Mind Centering®; an embodied physical practice that provides a foundation for the individual to freely experience, sense and consciously gain more connection to self. Kneepads are recommended.

Ingrid Baxter

"I grew up in Spokane, Washington. I graduated from the University of Idaho in Music, studied at WSU in Pullman, Washington and much later completed a Masters in adaptive aquatics from UBC in Vancouver, BC. For the next several years I was a stay-at-home Mom and looked after Tor Baxter and Erian Baxter. Both have become remarkable people in their professional work—Tor as a carpenter-artist in the film industry and Erian as a remarkable developer of The Block, Deep Cove Outdoors, and also now Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak Centre. During the time of raising the kids, Iain and I had an amazing mind connection into the changing art climate in Vancouver, Los Angeles, New York and the international art world. Hence the birth of the N. E. Thing Co Ltd."
 
"Now for all the other things in my life. I bought Watson Boat Rentals in Deep Cove, North Vancouver and taught canoeing and boating safety through Red Cross Training. This has now become Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak Centre. I was the Adaptive Aquatic Specialist for the Vancouver Parks Board, earned Silver medals for pool and for Synchronized Swimming in Masters events, and researched and published Waterways, a program documenting the wonderful water program at UBC for preschool children with disabilities aged 3-5. I currently live on Gabriola Island where I enjoy accompanying the Gabriola Chamber Ensemble and playing Pickle Ball, a game which I introduced to the island."

Ingrid Baxter | Erian Baxter | Hannah Dubois | photo credit: Sophia Biedka

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Erian Baxter

Erian Baxter is a co-owner of Deep Cove Kayak and Deep Cove Outdoors, with Bob Putnam and Ingrid Baxter. She lives in Deep Cove with her artist husband, Kevin Dubois where they have raised their three kids, Gabriel, Hannah and Quinn Dubois, who are creative in their own ways. Prior to being in the kayaking industry, Erian founded and ran Bebop Vintage Store with her business partner, Sally, back in 1982 or so. Then Erian developed The Block Clothing Store and Cappuccino bar on Cordova Street in Vancouver, with initial support from Ingrid and Tor Baxter, and ran it for 15 years, from 1984-1999, at which time she sold it to Jennifer Mackay who still has it up and running for all these 33 years since inception...

Erian’s unique upbringing as the daughter of Ingrid and Iain Baxter and their whole family's involvement with N.E. Thing Co immersed her in the conceptual art world so thinking "out of the box" has been her go to since a young age.
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"Conspire to inspire" is her current approach to most things in life...

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Hannah Dubois

​Hannah Dubois is a 3rd year film Student at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Through reflection and sensitivity in her work she aims to create films that tell universal stories through personal journeys. Hannah is beginning her career however she has had experience with documentary, experimental and narrative filmmaking. With a background in photography, she draws inspiration from the naturally occurring beauty of the West Coast to fuel her cinematic passions. As a young woman, exploring femininity and vulnerability has become a recurrent theme in her artwork.

Jeannie Mah

Jeannie Mah | video still |

​​In Jeannie Mah's Deep Dark Water, somatic memories are activated through the image of Mah's lithe body gliding through water. Using footage shot by Joan Scaglione in an outdoor pool belonging to the late photographer Courtney Milne, the film offers a utopic vision of a liberated body. As Mah describes it, "The sensuous joyful exhilaration of a body gliding through the water. . . in summer is like a dream!  A small bit of heaven for a hot and dry prairie city, this is an idealized yet real space, its aqua blue water, shimmering in summer sunshine, with friends, active bodies, liberates our imagination and soothes our mind."

Jeannie Mah was born in 1952 in Regina, Saskatchewan. She attended the University of Regina, receiving a Bachelor of Education in 1976, and in 1979 she studied ceramics at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. Other studies took Mah to the Banff Centre (1984, 1988), to France's Université de Perpignan (1988) and Université de la Sorbonne (1989). Eventually Mah returned to the University of Regina, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1993. Mah credits Regina artist and instructor Jack Sures with inspiring her practice: “I learned my heavy-duty work ethic from him.”
Mah's ceramic work emphasizes vessels, particularly cups, and she creates these delicate porcelain objects by hand. Mah explains her approach: “Balanced on the cusp of a fine arts education, I insist on working in a medium which is considered to belong to a decorative art. While seeking out the vestiges of art in our daily lives, I plunder the history of this decorative art, and usurp the cup as pulling it into a fine arts practice.... While an "upstairs/downstairs" split reveals a classicist gap in our societal/domestic consciousness, the mug and the teacup meet on this domestic front, as the utilitarian and the decorative merge to fulfill aesthetic and bodily needs.”
Since 1986, Mah's work has been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Canada and internationally. Her work is represented in collections including the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Winnipeg Art Gallery, MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina), Municipalité de Nyon (Switzerland), Burlington Art Gallery, Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, and the Museum of Civilization (Hull).
In addition to her ceramic work, Mah collaborates with other artists on work in a variety of other media, including film and video, photography, and performance. Mah also co-edited Regina's Secret Spaces: Love and Lore of Local Geography (2006, with Lorne Bueg and Anne Campbell).
Jeannie Mah works from her studio in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Thanks to the Government of Canada, the City of Regina, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Canada Council for the Arts for their ongoing support, and to Mascall Dance and Dance Saskatchewan for their support of this unique community gathering.