Artistic Vision Statement | Mission Statement | Faculty | Graduate Profiles |
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GRADUATE PROFILES In the last eleven years, we have had so many extraordinary students graduate from our programs. Our diverse student body comes from all around the world and spans a range in ages from eighteen to seventy. Each student takes what they learn here and brings it to their community in their own unique way. Click on the following links to learn more about some of our graduates and their experiences here at MOC. |
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Birgitta Sivander In 2001, I was brought to California by MOC calling me; a grant by the German Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft made my new path possible. After having spent two years in Paris, exploring the world of contact improvisation and the French Nouveau Cirque, I left all that behind to attend the year long program at MOC, including the Somatic Movement Therapy Training. My skills as a German physical therapist helped me understand the body and supported me in practicing hands on work. Peggy Hackney's classes were especially intriguing to me. I was compelled to pursue the Laban/Bartenieff Training in Berkeley, from which I certified as a Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst in December 2003. The wish to dive deeper into the somatic experience and knowledge kept me in the Bay Area for now more than three years, bringing me back to MOC as an assistant faculty member every year. I work out of my practice in North Berkeley, in which I collaborate with Stuart Bell (www.spiralbody.net). I offer movement sessions including repatterning, somatic movement therapy and a somatic approach to massage. As a performer I dance with Scott Wells and Dancers (www.scottwellsdance.com), and with Brenton Cheng. Several times a year I travel toSeattle/Tacoma and the East Coast to teach acrobatics, contact improvisation, yoga and movement to dancers, bodyworkers and physical therapists. A path I am newly exploring is the one of a Movement Model, where I blend Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis, expression, dance and balance-acrobatics for an eye catching whole body experience, captured on pictures (www.movemodel.com). |
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Andrée Dumouchel Moving on Center - a turning point and shift of paradigms in my life. My attraction to MOC was at first very intuitive. I was attracted to the idea of sharing my inner roads with others, learning more about the somatic field, and simply breaking off from my cultural background in Quebec. Through the context of experiential learning, I discovered that the classes at MOC connected me to a much deeper level that I had expected. I was moved by my capacity for touching and being touched by others. I then started to connect more deeply to my own center within relation to others in the world. We are now in 2004 and I am still surfing on that developmental wave from my 1996-97 school year at MOC. Was it simply good timing? I can say for sure that it began a great momentum in my life. I am now a Registered Movement Therapist (ISMETA), Physical Educator and dancer. I obtained my M.SC in Physical Education at the University of Montreal in 1992 under Ninoska Gomez's direction and my SMTT Certification from Moving on Center in 1997. I was a research assistant and close collaborator of Ninoska Gomez in the creation of SOMARHYTHMS, a developmental approach to the use of the inflatable balls. At the completion of my own research ¨Being blind and mobile on large inflatable balls,¨ I created the Blind Date group in 1993. Since then, I have been leading this Dance and Movement Research Group and exploring movement dynamics in the context of the sighted and non-sighted, using questioning as a way to deepen the performer/audience connection. I have also been teaching movement and dance classes at Lionel-Groulx College since 1993 and gradually introduced the somatic perspective to students and teachers in the Music and Physical Education programs. I am developing my own private practice as a somatic movement therapist in Montreal and I am currently giving workshops and regular Somarhythms classes to movement educators, health professionals, visually impaired-blind adults, and whoever is curious and interested about discovering new avenues while playing with balls. |
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Susannne Kukies
After being educated as a physical therapist, I ended up dancing and performing professionally for over ten years. With a desire to bridge the performing and healing arts, I jumped on the boat of MOC in the pioneer year in 1995. In the nine months of the training, my own body and mind healed tremendously. During that time of growth and healing, my unique path in life became clear. MOC gave me gave me an experience of genuine supportive community and helped to strengthen my self-esteem so that I could begin to really embody my own gifts and bring them into the world. I currently live in Berlin, Germany. For the past seven years, I've been running my own body therapy practice here within a spiritually oriented healing center. I also teach workshops on developmental movement, a variety of bodymind themes, healing sounds, and chakra toning. I've also been offering new classes in collaboration with Feldeknrais and Alexander Technique teachers. This year (2004) I taught for the first time in the SMTT Training in New York. Prior to 2004, I've worked in the SMTT program an assistant teacher. Transition and connection are the major themes in my work. Transition within us, but also physically as in giving birth or preparing for death. Much of my current work revolves around using rituals, sound, touch, and awareness to accompany people through the transitional struggles in their lives. |
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Kristy Rose Leech About six months ago, I was visiting San Francisco where I took my first contact class. I left the studio beaming with new visions around touch, the body, dance, and community. I also left with a little blue flyer for Moving On Center tucked away amongst all the other literature I had collected. I held onto it and looked at it every day, mesmerized by the serendipity of a school that taught and investigated these forms of movement and healing that I was just discovering. I finally called and learned more about the school, realizing that while the modalities were new to me, Moving On Center offered an integration that I had long been seeking. Although I was a fledgling contact improviser, I was learning that the joy of taking risks and I answered the call to adventure and growth. I'm writing this on the last day of my three and a half month journey at MOC, more aware than ever of the shifting nature of time. Sometimes it felt like the wealth of knowledge far surpassed what could be obtained in a 7 hour school day, while now I want to luxuriate in every last second. However time felt, it was always shaped by relationships- engaging with passerbys in front of City Hall during our Social Action Project, connecting our core to the earth, sharing visions and needs in heart circle... At MOC, we engage in connection on every level- to the body, to the self, to each other, to the earth, to a global humanness. It proposes an environment where the roles as artist, healer, mover, performer and teacher are no longer fragmented pieces of my identity or far off dreams, but rather resonations of my whole self and attainable realities. MOC responds to a climate of objectification and alienation by developing leaders that honor relation and a community of many voices. I am blessed to be a part of this evolutionary process. |
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