EMBODIED IMAGERY: Exploring the Movement Life of Dreams and Fairy Tales, a course with Anne Warren

In this four-week course on embodied imagery, we will explore our already highly developed movement language and engage, through that lens, with chosen figures and landscapes from fairytales and dreams that enchant and haunt us.  We will invite our dream animals that coil and slither, stalk and pounce, to teach us their movement language.  The wizards and witches in fairytales will share with us their ability to cast spells, and remind us why we might find that skillset appealing.

The first class will be an experiential overview of the elements of our movement language.  For each of the remaining classes, participants will be asked to come prepared with some exploration of an animal or a character in a fairytale, so that we can spend the class time meeting the invited guests in our class and finding their movement patterns and lived experience in our bodies.

In her article, “Listening to the Body for the Sake of the Soul,” Jungian analyst Anita Greene spoke of the importance of working with both imaginal and embodied processing.  “The imaginal approach to psyche needs the grounding effect of embodied awareness to bring the intuitive insight into the present moment of actual experience.  The embodied approach to psyche needs the expansive effect of imaginal awareness to allow the sensate insight to take flight into the mythopoeic dimension of experience.”

I look forward to sharing this experience with you and your invited guests, even the ones that coil and slither.

Anne Warren is Professor Emerita in Dance at UMD.  She is a CMA (Certified Movement Analyst) in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies and a former dancer and choreographer.  She applied her movement- analysis training to the development of interdisciplinary courses in the Honors college, helping students from a wide range of majors explore the movement life of ideas in their disciplines.