ELAINE SUMMERS
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Elaine Summers

Originator of Kinetic Awareness (the ball work) MA. NYU, MIT (Center for Advanced Visual Studies) Fellow, Fulbright Scholar... "I consider everyone a dancer since we are all dancers, secret or declared." -E.S.
About

"Elaine Summers has two identities: a respected choreographer coming out of the Judson Dance Theatre and a highly influential teacher of Kinetic Awareness, a system which allows each individual to experience and understand their own kinetic processes, permitting an extraordinary range and ease of movement that has been studied by many people in the performing arts." By Ann-Sargent Wooster

The Drama Review DANCE/MOVEMENT ISSUE VOL 24 #4 "Summers uses anatomy and kinesiology to help students connect their subjective experiences with objective understanding of physical structure and function…."KINETIC. AWARENESS should find a place in every body therapist's library and in the classrooms of movement educators"…. Professor Martha Myers, book review of Kinetic Awareness: Discovering Your Body/Mind by Ellen Saltonstall, in KINESIOLOGY AND MEDICINE FOR DANCE Spring-Fall, 1991
TRISHA BROWN
"QUOTES AROUND ENTIRE PARAGRAPH CREDITS CHAPTER TRISHA BROWN, U.S.DANCE,AND VISUAL ARTS; COMPOSING STRUCTURE BY Marianne Goldberg essay pages 29 to 44 Congradulations to Trisha Brown: "Dance and Art in Dialogue 1961-2001"
Brown released the dancer's "set," a particular tensile way of holding the body in the forties and fifties, which she had learned through studies at Mills and at the Merce Cunningham Studio after she arrived in New York in 1961. Through Alexander and also intensive, long-term study of another emerging form, Kinetic Awareness, founded by the Judson choreographer and filmmaker Elaine Summers, Brown began to initiate movement from very different kinesthetic knowledge. These newly surfacing somatic ideas offered alternatives to how to hone her body for dancing. She shed the stylized use of her muscles and the tensile alertness through the spine and skin. Focusing instead on subtleties of elegant, relaxed alignment of her spine and limbs, she moved with ease and a spatial clarity that stemmed from innovative inner imagery. Brown looks at home physically in these moves, and a different virtuosity and creativity emerged, grounded in anatomically clear and efficient action. New sensations, perceptions, and energy developed within her body and between body, space, time, and geometry. These changes became a technical breakthrough for dance in America. They separated many in the sixties and seventies generation from others who stayed with Cunningham or Graham techniques. Brown's in-depth new studies did become major catalysts for creating her own movement. When she formed her company in the early seventies, she chose performers who also reconceived the human structure and the meaning of physical skill. Published by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., 2002. Page 30
About Meg Chang, Ed.D., ADTR, CKA

In addition to my involvement with KA, I am a registered dance-movement therapist (ADTR) and member of the American Dance Therapy Association; I have worked in psychiatric facilities, medical and wellness settings, and maintained a private practice since 1979. Over the past 10 years my primary focus is teaching in graduate dance therapy programs including Lesley College, Antioch College, Pratt Institute, and The New School. My current fascination is how dance-as-healing manifests across cultures, and how to better facilitate transformative creative education with adults. I have been reminded (or re-bodied) of the value of Kinetic Awareness this year. After graduating from Columbia Univ. Teacher's College in 2002, I took a whole year to recover and return to my body, thanks to weekly KA classes. About Kinetic Awareness?

"There are many applications and levels of Summers' Kinetic Awareness work. Most individuals, including those who eventually incorporate Kinetic Awareness into their own work, initially come to study because they have an injury or other problem with their bodies. Training and maintaining the body is the central concern of dancers and the reason why many major dancers in New York have ended up on Summers' floor. KA does not substitute one system of movement for another, but by learning how the body works-physically, physiologically and psychologically---students can reclaim their bodies as their own. ?Trisha Brown believes all dancers should study with Summers because of the sensitivity to the body Summers' training imparts and Summers' ability to analyze error in dance movement. "Ann-Sargent Wooster "Moving to Dance" THE DRAMA REVIEW DANCE/MOVEMENT ISSUE VOL 24 #4 DEC. 1980.P.66