Awakening Inner Wisdom
Ecstatic Dancing in the Cemetery

Friday, September 20, 2019; 6 p.m. - 9 p.m. (Event has passed)
Saturday, November 2, 2019; 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. (Event has passed)

Peter Fodera guided a 5Rhythms movement meditation class focused on awakening and listening to the body’s inner wisdom and the stories that are locked within. In dancing the 5Rhythms, one can track perceptions and memories, seek out gestures and shapes and tune into instincts and intuitions. The 5Rhythms is a dynamic movement practice that ignites creativity, connection and community.

Bones

Sunday, September 22, 2019; 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. (Event has passed)

Peter Fodera & Janine Antoni led a workshop exploring how somatic intelligence cultivates self-awareness and transformation.

*Awakening the body wisdom
*Unearthing our body-parts
*Defining ancestral gestures
*Exploring intuitive instinctual embodied movement
*Breathing life into life

The 5 Rhythms

“5Rhythms is a dynamic movement practice—a practice of being in your body—that ignites creativity, connection, and community.”

“The 5Rhythms – Flowing Staccato Chaos Lyrical Stillness® – are states of Being. They are a map to everywhere we want to go, on all planes of consciousness – inner and outer, forward and back, physical, emotional and intellectual. 

They are markers on the way back to a real self, a vulnerable, wild passionate, instinctive self.”

“Dancing the 5Rhythms is a practice—a dynamic way to both workout and to meditate in the same breath. They teach us that life is energy in motion, freeing us from any fixed notions about people, places, objects or ideas.”

- https://www.5rhythms.com

Green-Wood’s extraordinary trees punctuate the landscape, bear witness to countless funerals, and give up their earth for our dead.

Antoni studied the trees to learn which ones could be foraged to make tea. Branches from these trees were collected and dried in her studio. The leaves were ground and put into teabags. She said, “I love the idea that the roots are hugging the coffins and by drinking the tea, we are ingesting the landscape and maybe even the bodies buried there.”

At each event during the three month period of the exhibition, she offered visitors a choice of three teas.

These were sweetened with honey from the bees and beekeepers of Green-Wood. Antoni gathered sentiments from gravestones scattered across the cemetery. Each teacup bore a quote for individuals to contemplate, compare, and discuss with others.

As part of “I am fertile ground”, participants enjoyed an outdoor screening of Spirit Labour.

In this visual essay, Hugo Glendinning and Adrian Heathfield follow the creative practice of sculptor and performance artist Janine Antoni: her collaborations and conversations with the choreographer Anna Halprin and the writer Hélène Cixous. Spirit Labour traces the lines of connection between these artists inclined toward elemental exposure and non-human forces. The film asks: what kind of labour is it, to work communally with the bodies, movements, expressions and affects of others, to dedicate one’s lifework to the othering that issues from these relations? How might we think of these labours and affinities as forms of infrastructure?

Elizabeth Povinelli introducing Spirit Labour at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn:

 “… We think … our ancestors were in the past and we're in the present, watching as the future hurtles toward us. But rather, we're all entangled together. All you have to do is breathe in and breathe out, and breathe in and breathe out. And if you think and pay attention or are mindful you will have already experienced sharing, not an idea but a materiality. And the air that you share is not simply here, but here as a result of all kinds of entanglements. The winds that blow various kinds of upper atmospheric conditions, the toxicity that we've removed from Brooklyn and shipped to China. The cleanness of this air has to do with the labour of the ancestors among us tonight. The film asks not merely for us to pay attention. Pay attention that we're always in the present doing labour with our ancestors. Our ancestors are right here. This is our ancestors. Our ancestors are here. [Breathes in and out] This is our ancestors. Our ancestors are in how we move our bodies. I am my ancestors. But it asks us more profoundly, as an ethical question, and as a political question: which ancestors are we going to pay attention to? Which ancestors will we allow to flow in and shape our bodies, our ethics, our way of relating to time and to space?”

Since the late 1930s Anna Halprin has been creating revolutionary directions for dance, inspiring artists in all fields. Richard Schechner, editor of TDR: The Drama Review, calls her “one of the most important and original thinkers in performance.” Merce Cunningham said, “What’s she’s done … is a very strong part of dance history.” Defying traditional notions of dance, Anna has extended its boundaries to address social issues, build community, foster both physical and emotional healing, and connect people to nature. An early pioneer in the use of expressive arts for healing, she co-founded the Tamalpa Institute with her daughter Daria in 1978. 

Hélène Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic. Her experiments in writing, including the development of l’écriture feminine for which she is renowned, have had wide-ranging influence in her fields. Cixous is best known for her article "The Laugh of the Medusa", which established her as one of the early thinkers in post-structural feminism. She founded the first centre of feminist studies at a European university at the Centre universitaire de Vincennes of the University of Paris (today's University of Paris VIII).