Ramon Gallegos Nava: “The mission of eco-education is to help students to learn to learn,
so that they can establish a responsible relationship with the natural world,
with the social world, and with themselves.” (p. 104, Pedagogy of Universal Love).
 

 
Lit from Within

combines color therapy visuals with mindful movement that cultivates the inner flame, the light within. Lit from Within reflects the healing process that created it. From dance and new media, Julie Cruse transmuted the power of stage elements – colored lights, sound, and movement – to evoke her own healing, and converted them for yoga and meditation. Lit from Within surrounds you in a transformative glow of colors that move with the breath and flow of the class, improvised specifically for the “presence” in the room, shifting as each of us rebirths in the now. It is time for transformation. This class is lit from within, virtually, and so will you too be guided toward your light within from the mindful movement practice Cruse has culminated – the sacred space of body, heart, and mind flow through yoga postures, dance in spirit, and healing in heart.

 

Holistic Contemporary Dance: MindBody Integration

Dance is a journey of personal transformation. Combining dance with somatic arts expands that journey, making dance accessible to everyone, and enriching mindbody wellness for beginners through advanced practitioners. Julie Cruse’s Holistic Contemporary Dance is a fusion of contemporary dance fundamentals coupled with somatic principles of Release Technique, Alexander Technique, Barteneiff Fundamentals, and Yoga. Cruse’s somatic-­‐dance fusion accesses contemporary dance physicality through investigating fundamental dance skills, releasing chronic holding patterns, fine tuning rhythm and awareness of gravity, deepening balance and dynamic stability, shifting weight, and defining spatial clarity. We will explore alignment, build strength, harness the power of the breath, mobilize the pelvis, and thoroughly explore all three dimensions of physical space. Through center floor combinations and locomotive phrase work, students will be guided through their individual exploration of movement principles to deepen awareness of body, self, other, and environment. Finding balance, breath, dynamic stability, focus, and release into natural alignment on the physical level opens dimensions of the ethereal self for expansion and integration.

Julie Cruse draws from her experiences studying an array of somatic practices. Cruse studied under international experts Madeleine Scott in Barteneiff Fundamentals, Dale Beaver in Alexander Technique, Release Technique founder Barbara Mahler, and many inspiring advanced teachers of Yoga, and Pilates. Cruse also incorporates material from her studies of Dance Kinesiology and Dance Pedagogy, teaching anatomical safety, and teaching of, with, and for diversity. Traditionally, Cruse is trained in Ballet, Modern, Contemporary, and African Dance forms, which appear in her class. She has also studied the techniques of Merce Cunningham, Alwin Nikolais, Trisha Brown, Alvin Ailey, Lester Horton, Martha Graham, Liz Lerman, Jose Limon, Joe Goode, Jim Hansen, Sean Curran, Bebe Miller, Dr. Zelma Badu-­‐Younge, and many others. Through studying with numerous teachers in many forms, Cruse came to develop her own blend of Holistic Contemporary Dance as a form inspired by her own journey of personal transformation.

 

Interactive Performance “technique 2.0″

Real-time composition-performance within an interactive media system is an art form with its own skills. Interactive Performance “technique 2.0″ addresses the skills needed to work in this environment as a collaborator, creator, performer, designer, and observer – as these roles slip from one to another and back again.

In Julie Cruse’s groundbreaking interactive pedagogy and performance model, VICKi enables a feedback loop of instructions from the “student” to VICKi and back again. Students workshop their own creative ideas to develop their own techniques, from their own world view and aesthetic; thereby subverting traditional, consumeristic pedagogy models intended to indoctrinate students into perpetuating existing economic monopolies on the creative. Using VICKi as an artificial intelligence, students can impose on themselves an external model that filters their vocabulary into a remixed version of their technique created and “taught” from the outside (with NO top-down subjective authority figure). This leads to all kinds of investigations and experiences for students to refine and expand their *own* techniques, suited to their creative models, based on their creative aesthetics, coming from their own personal life journey.

The VICKi Project’s DIY model of technique (with a lowercase ‘t’) subverts consumerist education models, encouraging agency in authoring the body, and prioritizing diversity, individuality, experimentation, play, discovery, collaboration, creativity, and permeability. EMPOWERING PEOPLE to create, not just replicate.

read more here.