Danii Simkin on perfection

Beautiful.

Love
ssc

גיבורי תרבות - Out of focus

HOT stuff. Love it


ssc

Mina - E Poi

ssc

What is the point of education? J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti On Education Foreword

"Why are you being educated? Do you understand my question? Your parents send you to school. You attend classes, you learn mathematics, you learn geography, you learn history. Why? Have you ever asked why you want to be educated, what is the point of being educated? What is the point of your passing examinations and getting degrees? Is it to get married, get a job and settle down in life as millions and millions of people do? Is that what you are going to do, is that the meaning of education? Do you understand what I am talking about? This is really a very serious question."

- J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti On Education Foreword



ssc

Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance - 1895-1908

1895-1908 Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance (highlights from the greatest movie pioneers' films)

Almost every important movie pioneer seems to have chosen the Serpentine Dance as an interesting subject for one or more films: the Skladanowsky brothers (1895), Dickson for Edison Manifacturing Company (1895+1896+1897), Lumiere brothers (1896), Demeny (1897), Alice Guy (1899+1900+1902), Melies (1899), G.A. Smith (1902), De Chomon (1908) and many others. 
Unfortunately none of the surviving films seem to contain a performance by the original dancer / choreographer Loie Fuller (despite some of them carrying her name in the title or otherwise crediting her as the dancer).
Loie Fuller was a pioneer of modern dance and of theatrical lightning effects. She developed this dance in 1891 and combined her choreography with silk costumes illuminated by multi-colored lighting of her own design. In several of the Serpentine Dance movies her special colored lighting effects have been translated into fascinating hand-colored effects. Fuller also had a successful Fire Dance of which elements are often incorporated in Serpentine Dance performances, which were also often refrred to as Butterfly Dance.




Beautiful. Enjoy.
ssc

Is Yoga Enough?

Is Yoga Enough?

Yogis Are Working With Other Movement Modalities.

Die-hard yogis are now branching out into other movement modalities, cultivating a “hybrid practice,” so to speak. But why? Does yoga leave something out? How can somatic practices like the Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method, and Body Mind Centering inform a yoga practice?  

On Thursday, March 19, at The Breathing Project, YogaCity NYC tried to answer these questions at its ninth Deeper Learning Series discussion. The panelists—senior teachers Amy Matthews,Witold Fitz-Simon, and Joe Miller—vetted the similarities between yoga and the other somatic practices in which they specialize. Founder/Publisher Brette Popper moderated. 

“I feel like I talk to a lot of people who are doing somatics, but they don’t think they are doing somatics,” Matthews said, explaining that the word “soma” is a Greek word for “body.” “Somatics are body-based practices that come from the experience, or intuition, or inner knowledge of the body, rather than, say, bodywork, where someone might work on you from outside and you would be completely passive.” 

She noted how this concept should, and could, apply to asana. “To me, there’s no distinction between my asana practice and my somatics practice. I think that sometimes, in asana, we let go of deciding for ourselves…and your first place of knowing shouldn’t be reliance on an outside authority, but on your own direct experience, your perception. And that’s what we should be doing in yoga.”   

Matthews, who studied with Alison West and Mark Whitwell, specializes in

Body-Mind Centering (BMC). Founded in 1973, BMC is an integrated approach to movement with two primary areas of inquiry: embodied anatomy and developmental movement.

“How is it in my body?” Matthews said, referring to BMC’s embodied anatomy wing. “I can look in a book, I can see what the bones and joints look like, but then how does my experience change when I actually live into it?”  

The developmental side of BMC investigates the movement patterns of babies—from birth until walking—and the layers of skills needed to attain those abilities. “Then, later on in adulthood, if a step got skipped or if a piece is missing, we can go back and re-pattern it,” said Matthews. “We can change what hurts or we can change how we approach what hurts…and that creates more possibility.”

In this way, BMC shares similarities with the Alexander Technique. 

Fitz-Simon, who studied with Donald Moyer and at the Integral Yoga Institute, came to the Technique via a sacroiliac injury. “The yoga wasn’t enough…it wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do for me anymore—partly because I couldn’t actually do it, with my back pain,” he said. In 2013, he became a certified teacher of the Technique. 

“It changed my understanding of the body and the mind and how they work together,” he said. “My back is in much better shape, I’m stronger and more flexible, and I can do poses now, at age 47, that I couldn’t do when I was 32.”

Pioneered by Australian actor Frederick Matthias Alexander who, after losing his voice, re-trained himself to speak, the Technique identifies and helps change habitual patterns. “The idea is to bring the body into a greater sense of poise so that, when you do move, you're moving more efficiently, more smoothly…doing less damage to yourself,” Fitz-Simon said. 

The work is taught in two ways: one-on-one and in groups.       

“Group work is terrific in its own way…you get to learn from other people. But, ultimately, the direct interface between the student and the teacher, through the teacher’s hands, is the most powerful way to learn,” Fitz-Simon said. 

The Feldenkrais Method is also taught and practiced in two different modes: led classes—called Awareness Through Movement classes—and one-on-ones. Israeli physicist

Moshe Feldenkrais created the method while working through a knee injury. In a session, students lie on a mat and make small movements within a pain-free range. 

“Many of those movements explore development patterns that you would go through in infancy,” Miller said. “Basically, the idea is to move a person through some series of movements to communicate to the central nervous system and develop self-awareness,” Miller said.       

Miller, now a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, has studied with Glenn Black and Pattabhi Jois. He came to the method accidentally. How does it relate to yoga? “I feel like I’m still figuring this out,” he said. “I feel like I understand movement better…and it’s certainly helped me in terms of developing my hands-on skills as a teacher.” 

The Method has also changed his understanding of alignment. 

“It’s helped me get rid of any idea of ‘imposed alignment,” he said. “I now deconstruct the instructions that I’ve given over the years…and let go of any fixed ideas about what alignment should be.”

Now, thanks to the Alexander Technique, Fitz-Simon understands alignment “to not just be position and shape, but to be a relationship between what you’re thinking about and what your body is doing.”

Agreeing, Matthews used to think that there was a specific set of rules about alignment, but BMC “blew it wide open. There’s a million ways to get aligned,” she said. “I can align through my organs, my endocrine system, my cells, my bones…the idea of ‘rules and alignment’ has come to be really questionable to me.”    

Popper asked about the controversy of hands-on adjustments.

When putting his hands on a student, “I don’t really think in terms of ‘I’m going to move you there!’” Fitz-Simon said. “It’s like having a dancing partner…to perhaps get the student into a better place. I think it’s a shame that I had to go outside of yoga to learn how to put hands on people in a constructive way.”

Miller noted how hands-on adjustments are, and should be, a form of clear communication. “I’ve always thought of them as a dialogue,” he said. “But I think I’m much more conscious of myself listening and doing less talking than I used to be.”

“I personally find hands-on adjustments to be the least helpful kind of adjustment,” Matthews said, who doesn’t like being “pushed” into a pose. “I don’t like getting put into something I can’t get into by myself…but should touch go away altogether? No. To be touched somewhere where I’m not moving is incredibly informative,” she said.

“Maybe we need a new term…,” Miller suggested. All heads nodded.

—Michael Laskaris

http://www.yogacitynyc.com/#!Isnt-Yoga-Enough/c1m6q/5545ee3a0cf21fee13628a2e






Love
ssc

Jon Kortajarena - A Single Man

You know, it's the smog that makes it that color.
I've never noticed the sky like this before.
Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty.
Can I have another cigarette?
Sure.




Love
ssc

Ohad Naharin discusses Gaga movement

Move

ssc

Andean flamingo mating dance

No need to worry if you an artist short in inspiration or ideas... It's all in nature.
How beautiful.




Love
ssc

Fenicotteri - Cagliari

Joy

ssc

MINA "Se telefonando"

luv
ssc

Martha Graham - Lamentation

 Lamentation, choreographed and performed by Martha Graham. Filmed  in 1943 at Bennington College by Russian-born sculptor Simon  Moselsio. His wife, who took still photos of the same piece,  explained ""We used two movie cameras for the motion picture, so we  could take the picture from different angles.... I had the still  camera around my neck and made the stills at the same time."

 Janet Eilber in "Lamentation".

Performed to music by Zoltán Kodály, Lamentation premiered on January 8, 1930, at New York's Maxine Elliott's Theatre. The solo work was performed by Martha Graham in a concert given by the Dance Repertory Theatre. Graham joined dancer/choreographers Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and [Helen] Tamiris to form the Dance Repertory Theatre. The goal was "to give annually a season of continuous dance programs which will be representative of the art of dance in American and will give native artists an outlet for their creative work." Dance Magazine (April 1930) noted that the work was "a statuesque composition, which relied for much of its eloquence upon an ingenious and simple costume arrangement." The November 20, 1932, Record(Philadelphia) reviewed a later performance and noted, "When Miss Graham in her Lamentation depicts the dumb agony of grief she does not droop like a flower or attitudinize like Patience on a monument, she is grief from the first stricken bewildered gropings of her head and torso to the last moment when she averts her covered head with a finality that is pitiful and terrible."





Love
ssc