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Biodanza - Dancing for Health and Awareness by Marita Sanguinetti Director of the Biodanza School of Devon and Cornwall Rolando Toro first created The Biodanza System when he was working as a young doctor in Chile in the 1960s. In the years that followed he drew upon his years of study in science, anthropology and the arts to develop Biodanza's beautiful dances and exercises. Today Professor Toro has returned to his beloved Chile and still teaches classes and training courses all over the world. Biodanza creates a space in which something unthought-of, unimagined and full of wonder can take visible form. This is a way of knowledge that can bring us to the very centre of creativity, to that full involvement in the movement without calculation or reserve, which means health and freedom. Biodanza provides us with an opportunity to come and dance the story that expresses our unique selves and our life and in so doing get closer to knowing what it is we need to create to live our lives with more intensity, health and joy. Personally I have found Biodanza an inspiration that has enabled me to take part in my life more fully, instead of just being a spectator of it. I have seen in my students and members of the ensemble, a keenness to commit to do the challenging work necessary for them to succeed in reaching their full potential and find their place in the world. The main objectives of the Biodanza system are to increase the general state of mental and physical health by gaining awareness of our movement and how we relate to our lives, each other and our environment. Biodanza is a dance form that takes its gestures and expressions from the natural surroundings and our everyday movements and makes them conscious. This practice results in improving our choices as to how to live each moment of our everyday life in healthy, mindful and expressive ways. Biodanza teaches us what it means to put creativity into all parts of our life. Most importantly we participate in an in-depth study of the body and its movement and through this observation, by making our experience conscious, we become aware of how we can reach higher levels of integration, firstly within ourselves and then with the world. During the two and a half hour class the dancer concentrates on the highest reality, which is the present moment, and their body expresses what the moment reveals to them in visible form. Throughout the class we work towards the integration of our body, its movement and our emotions with our perception, our intellectual refined thinking, our imagination, and discernment. Within this system we work with specific exercises and dances and use poetry, painting, water, natural lighting and sound, film, the elements, The archetypes & gods and masks. Tuning our whole body and organism as one might tune a musical instrument, we invoke a balance of elements that are quintessential to our artistic expression and therefore to our health and wellbeing. It is my belief that if dance were taught to every child in every school from nursery school to University and, if from then on, students were encouraged to make dance a part of their lives as it develops along side their physical, mental and creative expressive needs, each person would have the opportunity to reach their full potential in life and live in peace and harmony with their natural surroundings. It is Biodanza's aim to make this form of education a reality and make dance accessible and vital to everyone. For dance to be considered a crucial and healthy part of everyday life we must firstly, as individuals, experience it as vitalising. To dance is to experience the grace of giving life's expression artistic form. Only when dance is experienced, valued and accepted as an everyday vital necessity for health and wellbeing can we as individuals and communities experience its nourishing vitality. The history of dance reaches back to primitive man, the ancient Athenians, medieval times, the Renaissance and throughout the ages to this present day. The evolution of dance runs parallel to and is reflected in the awakening and development of these proceeding ages bringing us to the present day where we can study and follow these parallels and expand insight into our own development, survival and health. It would be of great benefit for us all to know our history with such relevance to our health and growth. To study the body and its movement is the first step towards this wisdom. Every movement and gesture we make is dance. Our body houses our dreams and receives our experiences and it is the body that moves and makes music and emotion visible, dance. All art forms are mediums in which we can unite, express, record and communicate our experiences. Movement is the physical starting point of expression and the art, which expresses emotional values, is dance. So to dance one must study and explore and know movement. Art in all its forms follows and is especially adapted to this ideal of education, for it is only in art that all the aspects of mans complex nature are united and expressed. Marita Sanguinetti is the director of the Biodanza School of Devon and Cornwall. She was the first person to qualify as a Biodanza teacher in the UK, having trained for six years in London and Milan, and has been a didactic teacher- trainer worldwide for the past three years. Marita is a specialist in Biodanza for children and young adults and has been holding six children's classes a week (120 children per week, five to seventeen year olds) in Kentish Town, Crouch End, Islington and Hoxton. She is a member of the AEIB and is currently teaching a regular adult Biodanza class in Covent Garden in Central London that has been ongoing for seven years as well as regular weekend courses. In the autumn of 1999 she brought her classes to Venice and is currently running weekend courses there. Marita is also a qualified teacher for the international Helen O'Grady's Children's Drama Academy and teaches dance (Laban System), voice work, improvisation and performance. For the past five years she has been lecturing at Kensington and Chelsea College in South London where she lectures adults on communication skills and parenting, a subject she has taught in various settings for the past seventeen years. She is the author of Dance from the Heart due to be published by Frances Lincoln Press. Contact her at marita@macunlimited.net |