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About
I am an artist, dancer, landscape thinker and overall movement enthusiast
I have been dancing my whole life, and have always been fascinated with the ways in which humans move through the world.
We all have bodies, yes? But we don’t often think about how wonderful they are, and on a deeper level how they make us who we are, how they connect with other people and how they build the human experience around us.
In general I wish to share my passion and belief that there is joy in every movement no matter how small. Everybody, every body is a dancer as they move through life. I wish to create space that allows people to feel this joy with me, and through that find a deeper connection to themselves, the world and people around them.
Where things started to get real - the true passion I have for this topic began when my experiences as a dancer and choreographer collided with my identity as a student studying environmental design which brought me to the seemingly simple topic, body and space. I really began to wrestle with this relationship, because the more you think about it, the more it becomes a chicken and the egg scenario, right? There is an easily-held belief in our mind that the body reacts to the qualities of space, but it is just as true that a place’s qualities only exist and can only be defined by our bodies.
Even as a student, I found myself getting out of touch with the spaces I was creating because I spent all my hours sitting behind a computer screen. This made me think, How on earth can we design spaces for other bodies, if we don’t continuously try to understand our own?
Photography: Lindsey Strei
Arndt Method of Design
Which is what brought me to the prequel, if you will, of this project - my undergraduate thesis. In this particular project the aim was to understand movement languages of Anna Halprin and Ohad Naharin and utilize them as a basis for adding onto existing design education at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.
And the end product of this project was a combination of...
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Warm Up (structured after Halprin’s movement rituals and Naharin’s movement language Gaga)
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Movement Studies in Rapson Hall stairwell, and Entrance
I wanted to help students reflect and internalize their own movement capabilities and at the same time recognize the movement experiences of others.
Arndt Method of Design
BUT...
Embodiment is so much more than movement is it not? I am far more interested in the journey that movement brings, rather than the movement itself. Embodiment is everything from our mind and body to our beliefs, traumas, personal stories, and the connections we make with other people.
Which is was brings us to this swell audio experience! There are three major things we humans have at our disposal that I wanted to capitalize on: the way we individually move through space, the memories we have and our imagination, the last two of which are tied together because our imaginations operate on things we have already experienced. These are the existing things that help us move through our everyday lives and that make this human experience so diverse and wonderful. And it was exactly what I want us to challenge.
So I now ask you these questions. Yes, whoever you are, reading this. This podcast may be guided by me, but you are the author of your own journey through your own landscapes. So, listener, what do you imagine? How do you feel today? How do you move and experience the world around you?
Are you ready?...
Let's go on an adventure