This two-day workshop is open to anyone interested in developing, exploring, or discovering their movement art abilities, and also to anyone interested in healing through movement, somatic awareness, and meditation.
Katrina Wolfe (Photograph by Dmitry Artamonov,
Rialto Beach, November 17th, 2023)
No background in dance is necessary. All are welcome, whatever one’s age, physical ability, movement background, or lack thereof.
The Saturday and Sunday sessions each run from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Workshop fee is $75–$125 sliding scale per day.*
*Please note: if you choose to attend a single day of the intensive, only Saturday is possible.
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If you would like more information about this workshop, please contact Katrina at keenawolfe@gmail.com, or (206) 612-4687.
For information about accommodations, parking, etc., please contact: artlab.thuja@icloud.com or camillehilde@gmail.com.
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The Masukhuma Intensive will offer participants the opportunity to delve deeply into each of the four foundational components of masukhuma. Explanations and demonstrations of various exercises will provide participants with an in-depth understanding which they will then have ample time to explore and experiment with, working solo and with partners and groups.
Over the course of each day, the exercises will generally move from more rigorous to more subtle, as the concentration and sensitivity increases. In addition to partner work, some exercises will involve working with various (mostly organic) materials. The sensory experience of touching and being touched by other humans and also by contacting natural objects will begin to dissolve the boundary between oneself and all which is seemingly external: other humans, the nature, etc. Through the practice of masukhuma, one cultivates awareness of the physical sensations of the individual body and the whole microcosm it contains. But through doing so, it ultimately and simultaneously spreads this awareness far beyond the self and begins to physically feel it’s interconnectedness with all life, the planet itself, and the universe. The exploration becomes one of both microcosm and macrocosm.
A theme of the workshops will be working with contrasts: from moving extremely quickly to so slowly that movement is hardly perceptible; from feeling the infinitesimal size of the body to its enormous, expansiveness, experiencing aging and decay, birth and regeneration. By exploring these contrasts and many others, we will move towards a dance where both concepts exist simultaneously, and where the awareness or strength of one or the other becomes simply an ebb and flow rather than an opposition or suppression of either. Being able to dance with — and to live with — all these opposites intermingled and coexisting is to experience the meaning of the ma which both begins and ends the word masukhuma. Of its many meanings, ma universally means “the mother”, and learning to accept the non-duality in all aspects of existence is to be held, protected, and nurtured. It is by learning to fully feel our own bodies (on a physical level) that we can create this place of ma within ourselves. In Japanese the meaning of ma is space, pause, emptiness. Sukhuma in Pali means subtle, fine, exquisite. Ultimately, this workshops aims to help each participant cultivate the ability to, at any moment, both in daily life and in their movement practice, be able to access this place of subtlety and space within themselves, in which they are fully supported, safe, and free.