#BEFRIEND DIVERSITY - MAKING FRIENDS FOR LIFE
#BEFRIEND DIVERSITY - MAKING FRIENDS FOR LIFE
#BEFRIEND DIVERSITY - MAKING FRIENDS FOR LIFE
emilie conrad
"The fluid presence in our bodies is our fundamental environment;
we are the moving water brought to land." Emilie Conrad
"EMILIE CONRAD, the founder of Continuum, was born and raised in New York City where she studied ballet and Afro-Haitian dance. After moving to Los Angeles in 1963, she began teaching at the Actors Studio, where her novel approach to movement helped performing artists and led to her choreographing and directing numerous plays and performance works. In 1974, she pioneered a protocol for spinal cord injury, and from 1974 to 1979 she was Movement Specialist in a research study conducted by Dr. Valerie Hunt at UCLA. This groundbreaking study demonstrated that fluid, primary movement is essential in our ability to innovate. Enhancing these fundamental movements has a potential to create a rich intrinsic environment that brings forth new insights in our understanding of the human body and its potential to create alternate systems.
Considered as visionary in movement education, Emilie Conrad's inspirational work has been incorporated by an international audience from fields such as Rolfing, Zerobalancing, Hellerwork, Psychoneuroimmunology and physical fitness." From Emilie Conrad, Life on Land, 2007
"If we really want to understand fluid systems, water's legacy, and the gifts it has to bring, we must merge our consciousness with it. No one really knows the immensity of the fluid that pulsates within. What we can do is fully enter, sensually and with love, the beckoning pool, wet our knees, our throat, until at last disappearing into the welcoming acqueos, we sink far, drown well, lose our mind, and become the fluid, utterly and completely. You must love madly, utter its name at night, sing its praises in the morning. Its secrets will whisper in your heart. Enchantment awaits." ~ Emilie Conrad, Life on Land, 2007.
"Emilie Conrad boldly unfolds the large mystical and practical implications of her lifework for our time, positing a "life on land" in which both the human body and consciousness can be restored to their original fluid, innate, intelligent participation in the cosmic dance of life. A provocative and thoughtful distillation of an extraordinary life and inspired work from one of our somatic elders and healers, rooted in direct shamanic experience and wisdom."
~ Amanda Foulger, faculty member of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, from Emilie Conrad, Life on Land, 2007.
"You must love madly, utter its name at night, sing its praises in the morning. Its secrets will whisper in your heart. Enchantment awaits."
In Em Moves, filmmaker Hanna Heiting creates a poetic tribute to the life and work of Emilie Conrad, visionary founder of Continuum. Hanna’s artistic decisions are those of an insider who lives the movement she is filming. Her visual compositions, her informed stillness, her directorial attention, all mirror and follow Emilie Conrad’s life-long exploration of movement in an unfolding call and response. There is a pulsing life rhythm to the film’s orchestration that awakens the viewer’s own somatic awareness.
The film captures the full range of this somatics genius by juxtaposing Emilie’s movement with her healing work. The contrasting scenes of her reading original works on Kafka, Callas and Nijinsky, walking around her Brooklyn neighborhood remembering childhood pains and leading Continuum workshops with intoxicating enthusiasm, create a sense of the full complexity of her personality and the passion of her vision.
Em Moves is an intimate love letter to a life-long teacher, an astute commentary on life and art, and an intellectually sophisticated tribute to the vision of this extraordinary pioneer. Em Moves is for people who know Continuum, for people who want to know Continuum, and simply for people who want to stay alive. Em Moves invites the mystery of the unknown, the inhale and exhale that are the heartbeat of Continuum, to live on screen. This stunning film will inspire anyone who walks and breathes on this planet.
Rebecca Mark ~ Professor of American Literature at Tulane University
(current affiliation Rutgers University)
EM MOVES
With gratitude to Hanna Heiting for making this beautiful tribute to Emilie Conrad available for 7 Days of Rest & Radical Healing
WATER BLESSING from Elaine Colandrea
The Watermark Arts Water Blessing is a Continuum exploration honoring water. The Water Blessing movement meditation is an invitation to honor the fluids within and the waters of the world, created by Continuum teacher Elaine Colandrea.
tributes
Emilie Conrad's understanding of the fluid system as the unifying thread of all existence gave me the missing link to my intuitive understanding that human life is part of a much greater whole. Continuum - the breath, sound and fluid movement practice Emilie created - became my life line for deeply felt experiences of interconnection. My internal waters are onnected with the larger landscape of planetary waters. Emilie created a practice that allows everyone to participate with the life supporting properties of water.
~ Elaine Colandrea, Continuum teacher & Artistic Director of Watermark Arts.
To learn more about Continuum including teachers worldwide and events:
https://www.continuumteachers.com/teachers & https://www.watermarkarts.org/
With gratitude to Batyah Schachter and Elaine Colandrea, Lauren Devon for the photographs of Emilie Conrad and to Hanna Heiting for granting permission to showcase her beautiful tribute to Emilie Conrad in this event.