Mindful Movement:The Evolution of the Somatic Arts and Conscious Action: The Evolution of the Somatic Arts and Conscious Action by Martha Eddy

Author:Martha Eddy [Eddy, Martha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Arts & Photography, Performing Arts, Dance, Education & Teaching, Schools & Teaching, Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Popular Culture, Teacher Resources
ISBN: 9781783205851
Amazon: B01MDRD8XE
Publisher: Intellect
Published: 2016-09-09T21:00:00+00:00

The Delicate Organ

In the Rhythms Room, what starts off as the Science of Origins (human movement patterning and the history of the animal kingdom) soon becomes a Proscenium for Cognition (dance, drama, self-expression). And yet, performance is only a by-product of the true goal, which is not only to build muscles, but also to build innovative minds. The only way to achieve this was for Doing to develop a praxis for creativity – how to mine it, how to extract it and how to preserve it. She called it “the delicate organ of expressive need” (1932), an exciting and provocative phrase that turns creativity into a delicate “organ” that must be protected. The meaning of this extends beyond the name to state its purpose, that is, the extreme “need” for humanity to be creative as if there were no choice to be otherwise.

In the true progressive vein, the preservation of the creative spirit, like the democratic experience, was a moral task:

The proper procedure in Education, I believe, for both mental and emotional health and activity, is to start with the exercise of this creative faculty and let it grasp the factual tools and use them to further the vision. […] We cannot start with a regimented curriculum and hope to work backwards to spontaneous invention as this just adds to the burden of subject matter debris to be cleared from the teacher’s as well as the child’s plane of consciousness during the activity program. The child’s job is to initiate the activity, attack his media, and develop his techniques as he proceeds, and the teacher’s job is to preserve that atmosphere of detached absorption within which creative effort flourishes and becomes operative.

(Miller 1933, original emphasis)

Would that this wisdom would come charging across the decades to us again. For there is no greater benefit than to remain confident in one’s own learning – through origins, through creativity and through democracy – all fundamental principles of the natural mind and body.

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