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City Dance San Francisco 1978

City Dance Edinburgh: Who We Are

Facilitators:

City Dance Edinburgh workshops and performance will be facilitated by Taira Restar and
Audicia Lynne Morley.

Taira Restar is a movement artist and arts educator with extensive training in visual arts and a Masters Degree in Movement Education. Born into a family of artists, Taira is passionate about the creative process and has made it her life-long study.  In 1983 and 1984 Taira trained at Tamalpa Institute a movement-based expressive arts training center founded by Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin in California.

Taira is now a core faculty member at the Institute. She teaches and performs with her mentor, Anna Halprin. Watch a video of Taira performing with Anna Halprin.  

Taira teaches classes and workshops to children, adults, and communities at a variety of venues, including San Francisco State University, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Esalen Institute.  She is thrilled and honored to bring City Dance to Edinburgh. www.tairarestar.com

Audicia Lynne Morley

Choreographer, Dancer, Artistic director of State Theta Galleries.
Assistant Director and Core faculty Teacher for the Tamalpa UK Branch.
She served on the board of directors for the Tamalpa Institute from 2003 to 2009.

Audicia began studying with Anna Halprin in 1999 and later at the Tamalpa Institute CA with co- founder Daria Halprin - expressive arts educator and Author.
She graduated as Practitioner and Teacher of the Tamalpa Life Art Process in 2008 and has taught this approach to Degree choreographic students, as well as run independent courses throughout the Uk and Europe.
In 2010 she participated in the first facilitator training of Anna Halprin's Planetary Dance and has subsequently offered this internationally.

She has over 30 years experience in the field of the performing arts and health, and is a qualified Teacher and Practitioner in various Somatic based Body Work and Movement practices.
She is director of Seed Scotland and on the main teaching team for The School For Experiential Education, founded by Bill Palmer (UK), a pioneering approach to bodywork based on Chinese Medicine, Taoism and Dzog Chen meditation practices.

Previous experience includes over 10 years at Scotland's International Centre for Dance "Dance Base" being on the original team of teachers and dancers who developed the concept of a centre for dance in Scotland in the late 1980's, and has produced and performed many dance performance works both for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as well as UK touring works. International companies worked with include: Rosemary Butcher Dance Company, Davis Glass Mime Ensemble, Tom Yang Dance ,Theatre Workshop Scotland, The Traverse Theatre Company and Tom McGrath.

Audicia is currently co-directing with Taira Restar (USA) - close associate and performer with Anna Halprin - on a major production at this years Edinburgh Festival Fringe based on Anna Halprin's City Dance 1977.

Since 2005 Audicia has been involved in establishing a dedicated centre for the development of movement, health and the arts - State Theta Galleries - where she currently lives and works. Her work is influenced by a deep interest in both Eastern and Western approaches to energy, the body and health. She continues to study with influential teachers around the world.


Consultant:

Ken Otter has been involved with transformative education for over twenty-five years in a variety of settings. He began his affiliation with the Tamalpa Institute in 1981, as a student, performer, and teacher. He has been on core faculty at Tamalpa since 1993. In addition, Ken is the program director of the Master of Arts in Leadership at Saint Mary's College. His work at Tamalpa and elsewhere focuses on individual and group development through creative, reflective and experiential learning practices. His work focuses on how collective creativity and art-based communication enhances personal and group learning. Ken's educational background includes ecological studies, somatic and organizational psychology, adult learning and development and collaborative group work and leadership.


Anna Halprin

The Dance Heritage Coalition has named Anna Halprin one of "America's 100 Irreplaceable Dance Treasures." Anna Halprin's diverse career has spanned the field of dance since the late 1930s, creating revolutionary directions for the art form and inspiring fellow choreographers to take modern dance to new dimensions. Now in her 90’s, Halprin continues to make revolutionary work exploring the beauty of the aging body and its relationship to nature.

Halprin Ph.D. (Hon.) co-founded the Tamalpa Institute. She is the author several books and has numerous dance works documented on film. The documentary Breath Made Visible by filmmaker Ruedi Gerber portrays the life and work of Anna Halprin.

For more information on Anna Halprin: www.annahalprin.org


Tamalpa Institute

Tamalpa Institute, founded in 1978, offers training programs and workshops in the Life/Art Process, a movement-based expressive arts approach that integrates movement/dance, visual arts, performance techniques and therapeutic practices. This approach supports personal, interpersonal and social transformation, teaching new models for health, psychology, art and communication.

The Life/Art Process was originated in the 1950's by Anna Halprin, who is among the first pioneers in the contemporary Western world to use dance as a healing and transformative art. In the 1970's, Daria Halprin further developed the artistic and therapeutic aspects of this work and articulated the methodology that is currently taught in the Tamalpa training programs.

Tamalpa Institute provides one of the most renowned movement-based healing arts programs in the world.
Tamalpa branches are located in Germany, Korea, and Latin America and will soon be opening in the UK and France.

For more information on Tamalpa Institute: www.tamalpa.org

For more information on Tamalpa-UK: www.tamalpa-uk.org (Launches new training in the UK on 5th April 2012 in Folkeston's Creative Quarter)

Audicia Morley and Taira Restar, the producers and facilitators of City Dance Edinburgh, met through Tamalpa Institute.


City Dance Edinburgh has been formed in order to:

Produced by Audicia Lynne Morley || State Theta Galleries
Sponsored by State Theta Galleries|| Tamalpa UK || Social Web Enterprise
Special thanks to the Anna Halprin archive for use of original City Dance photos
Web Design:Social Web Enterprise