Cate Caraker
(Deepening Class)
Class Description: "Dancing while aging: forgetting your perfect offering"
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"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in."
- Leonard Cohen
We’re all getting older, that’s a fact - and as we age our dancing changes in a variety of ways that can be frustrating, liberating and perplexing. It’s also true that we each age differently and there are a myriad of creative practices available to support and inspire our dancing bodies as we go forward. But wait - what about those pervasive, pesky voices - of patriarchy and ageism, sexism and looks-ism, perfectionism and able-ism, that can make us feel invisible, or like it’s time to put our dancing on the shelf? What helps us to avoid internalizing those values? We’ll share and explore strategies for extending our healthy dancing lives, from looking at how we warm up and down, to acknowledging our fears and goals and shining a light on our attitudes toward ourselves and others, so that we can continue to dance as fully as we can with the bodies that we have today.
Biography:
Cathie Caraker is a dance artist and teacher. Her performance work and teaching have been presented at venues including the New York Improvisation Festival, DTW, Movement Research, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Contactfestival Freiburg, de Beweging Antwerp, Contredanse Brussels, NESTheaters Amsterdam, CounterPULSE and SFDI. She has collaborated with artists including Nancy Stark Smith, Daniel Lepkoff, Katarina Eriksson, Ray Chung, Rosemary Hannon and Henry Kaiser. A certified practitioner of Body-Mind Centering®, she spent 10 years on the faculty of the Amsterdam School for the Arts / Dept of Choreography (SNDO) and holds an MFA in Dance from Bennington College. Her writings on BMC and dance education have been published in the Belgian dance journal Nouvelles de Danse. More info at www.caraker.com