Waiting for Breath: Dance as Life, with Vinn Arjuna Martí - a podcast by STEFANA SERAFINA

Vinn Arjuna Martí, award-winning choreographer, performer, master teacher, and  founder of  Soul Motion, in conversation with Stefana Serafina about the value of pausing amidst the moving moment, the exploration of self,  relationship, and the psyche through the shapes, energy, and movements of the body in motion,  and on the power of bringing dance to "the citizens", people from all backgrounds who find medicine in practicing one of the most ancient expressive arts. 

Vinn Arjuna Martí is an award-winning choreographer, global performer, master teacher and founder of  the  conscious dance practice Soul Motion®. Vinn Arjuna has been teaching movement for over 35 years and along the way has trained and worked with many teachers, including Gabrielle Roth of the 5Rhythms. Arjuna has been passionate about bringing  dance and movement to people of all backgrounds and including those who have never trained or performed as dancers. He teaches around the world, and also  trains teachers and facilitators, while  also continuing  to be a student, guided by his curiosity and respect for others's teachings and ideas.  

More about Arjuna's work at www.soulmotion.com

 

WISDOM QUOTES 

‘Movement is life. What is alive is in motion. So what I say to people who say they don’t dance is,  I would like to explore with you, when two notes get together and  strike at the same time, and what shows up as a third force, I’d like for you and I to play with that, and to realize the unseen.”

    “I always aligned myself with the citizen. Even as a technique oriented dancer, even as a member of the inner circles of 5Rhythms, something always spoke to my heart about wanting to include the excluded. Because everyone thinks, everyone moves… My heart has always been full of desire to reach all people, because all people can shift weight, and all people breathe, and all people focus attention, and all people can have a response… So it’s always been a passion of mine to not keep what I have for the “initiated people”, or to somehow separate myself from the citizen."  

“The pause-presence is a holy place. It is a whole place. When we pause within being present, the place, the space, the room have a “whole” vibration, a whole signature, a totality of all of us being, listening, doing, understanding, standing under un umbrella that we all share. Something occurs that is not the traditional reaction to stimulus. Pausing is spiritual work, no  doubt about it…. For me too It’s too easy to be swept into reaction and to leave what my teacher calls the “base state”, which is that place of presence where the thinking mind is  on relax, and i am truly present to the continuation of what I call the movement moment… There is such great  medicine and  value of pausing within the movement moment, within the continuity of thought patterns, emotional feelings, sound, and shapes of the body, and saying: I am going to pause in the presence of what is occurring and shape-shifting right now, within and without.  For me, pause-presence is the most dynamic part of my dance: That opportunity to sense and understand my total body being guided and lifted and impressed by everyone in the room.”

 

 

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