News: Anna Halprin's Happening in New York
At nearly 90, Anna Halprin, is still pushing the boundaries of dance and performance. Based on the West Coast since the 1950s, she has helped shape dancers, artists and composers like Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, LeMonte Young and Eiko and Koma, among many others. Her more recent exploration of dance as a healing power has led her to create "Planetary Dance." This annual event, which has been performed in 36 countries, is a ritual dance performed by members of a community to bring peace and renewal to that nation. On March 13, Halprin will hold a day-long workshop at New York City's Judson Memorial Church.
Click here to read the Dance Teacher May 2007 article about Anna Halprin.
This event marks your Judson Church debut. Why now, and why Judson?
The theater seemed historically pertinent, as so many of my students who attended my workshops in CA (like Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Meredith Monk and Trisha Brown) started their wonderful work with Robert Dunn at Judson Church.
What do you have planned for the workshop?
Everything we do throughout the day is going to be in relationship to the question: Does dance make a difference? Does it transform, does it make a change, does it answer a question?
Through movement, we're going to introduce the use of imagery, and work with an analysis of the breath and we'll explore the pulse. Because as long as you can breathe, or as long as you have a pulse, you can move. We're going to work alone, in pairs, in groups, and then work as a collective whole. At the closure of the workshop we'll perform "Planetary Dance," which I hope students will take back to their communities.
You have worked with and shaped so many different artists, not just dancers.
I've always been a crusader in saying, "Hey! Everybody can be a dancer." You don't have to train in somebody's idiosyncratic approach to dance to call yourself an artist, or a performer. To put a scale on what makes a performer a performer, I think limits creativity.
