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A Body In Paris

By Ann Moradian
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Published on June 9, 2013

A BODY IN PARIS
June 2013

Ann Moradian, in Paris, for The Dance Enthusiast

The French are known and respected for their precise and analytic minds, perhaps best exemplified in their brilliant engineering and designs. They have not necessarily been known for strong somatic practices or excursions into embodied being. James Joyce's description of Mr. Duffy (who "lived a short distance from his body") comes to mind.

But today I find what was ten years ago a teeny tiny trickle of mind-body reintegration practices turning into a steady stream. I see a small oasis stretching out to become fertile land. It feels like drinking from a free flowing freshwater spring.

Anna Halprin's Interplanetary Dance (http://www.leregarducygne.com/) returns to Jardin de Reuilly on June 16th, with preparations underway now. Tamalpa Institute (http://www.tamalpafrance.org/) has just opened a branch here as well, with its first certification program beginning this summer.

There is beautiful dancing to be lived here among the people of Gabrielle Roth's 5 Rhythms (http://www.5rythmes.fr/), which has been building a strong and steady following over the past many years. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's Body-Mind Centering has been alive and well here for years (http://www.soma-france.org/en/the-bmc) and Contact Improv can be readily found at Canaldanse (http://www.canaldanse.com/cours/contact-improvisation/). I think it is hiding elsewhere too -hiding pretty well. Rumor has it that Dance Movement Therapy has finally registered somewhere in the halls of the Sorbonne University, though I cannot figure out exactly where...

You can smell the change here.

Sweat and song, breath and being -- as good as the earth after the rain!