BODY
TUNING
a bodywork practice by
Claire
Elizabeth Barratt
Body
Tuning is for anybody who has a body!
Body
Tuning is a holistic practice that integrates mind,
body and spirit.
Body
Tuning investigates the body as a medium for creativity.
Body
Tuning is a valuable resource for dancers, actors,
artists, yoga and bodywork practitioners.
However, Body
Tuning requires no previous movement method experience, involves no set
poses or sequences and is accessible to anybody who just wants to move.
More organic than a dance technique, Body Tuning investigates basic and
fundamental movement concepts and combines them
with imagery in a creative response.
Body
Tuning is a fun and immersive way to move your body and
engage
your imagination!
In much the same way as early scientists sought
the basic building blocks of all matter (eventually discovering molecules,
atoms and beyond), I have sought to find basic movement concepts inherent in
the body on a “molecular” level – the substance of motion in its purest form.
In this method, each exercise is a thorough investigation of one specific
movement concept and its possibilities.
I have classified and catalogued these concepts in a series of exercises I call Body Tuning. Using the analogy of tuning a musical instrument or an engine in order for it to function smoothly and efficiently, I have developed a series of physical preparation exercises. Each of these exercises isolates one specific fundamental concept of Self in relationship to body, time, space, gravity, surface, form, body sound and motion.
These
concepts are known as the “raw materials” and include explorations based on
such body fundamentals as: Breath, Transfer of Weight and Vibration.
Comments from
previous workshop participants:
Pat Petersen
Retired, former County Finance Director and
federal auditor
I
found the workshop very informative and very stress-less. As a 64-year-old
non-limber person, I wasn't sure if I would be able to do everything I was
asked to do, but the way you conducted it put me at ease - basically, just do
what I was comfortable with within the parameters of the exercise.
Clarisse Young
Musician
Claire's
workshop changed my whole perspective on movement and bodily control. I
received such a sensation of renewal and freedom. The more control I gained
over my muscles, particularly through my breathing, the freer I felt. The
workshop opened my eyes even wider to the power of even, deep, and intentional
breathing. If you completely relax, you end up with more energy, as if the more
energy you release the more you receive. As if you're breathing in divine
source energy. I believe with a clear and focused mind you are. She taught me
how to more efficiently practice moving mediation.
Claire's
workshop was truly a life changing and perspective broadening experience. I'm
extremely grateful to have been a part.
Corinne Beardsley
Sculpture and Ceramic Professor
The
workshop was wonderful and got me to open up in new ways.
I
hadn't slowed down my movements before, and felt each dimension of their
movements with my breath. It was experimental moving yoga.
I
felt so much of myself moving and opening up. New forms developed, I felt
myself connecting the vision of what I saw my body doing connecting with the
movement. Controlling the breath with my gestures, thinking about the
expressiveness of the movement, and the beauty of shapes between transitions.
The
warm up of shaking it all out, focusing on separate body parts felt so good
too.
It was a powerful and transformative
workshop for my dancing practice.
Musician, electronic experimental artist, composer.
I found the workshop to be very empowering thus enabling of a great amount of freedom within each participant. It felt as if each participant was able to dig deep into the their natural, instinctual and creative habitat and explore it with great innocence.
Body Tuning was developed through
a Masters Degree project at the Transart Institute for Creative Research,
Plymouth University UK, as a component of the Living Art pedagogy for performing arts.
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About Claire:
Claire Elizabeth Barratt - Biography
Claire Elizabeth Barratt is an inter-disciplinary artist with a performing arts background.
She is the director of Cilla Vee
Life Arts – an arts organization with a focus on cross-media collaboration.
Claire received her
professional training in London at The
Laban Centre For Movement and Dance and at the London Studio Centre For Performing Arts. Her pre-professional
training includes the Royal Academy of
Dance and the Royal Schools of Music
examinations. She also served an apprenticeship with the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation in New
York and holds an MFA in Creative Practice from the Transart Institute for
Creative Research, Plymouth University, UK.
She
is the creator of the Living Art
pedagogy for performing arts, including the bodywork method Body Tuning.
She has performed and
taught throughout the USA as well as in Canada, Europe, Japan and Pakistan.
Previous credits include: Co-Founding Director of Circle Modern Dance Knoxville
TN, Choreographer for the Knoxville Opera Company, Black Mountain College
Museum + Art Center Asheville NC, Asheville Art Museum, Art Basel Miami FL, the
Vision Festival NYC, chashama NYC, Wave Hill NYC, the New York Botanical
Gardens, the Washington DC International Improv Festival, George Washington
University DC, the Scared Dance Guild Festival, School for Visual Arts and
Design at BNU Lahore Pakistan.
Claire now uses
Asheville NC as her home base.
Please
contact me in regards to group workshops or private sessions for
BODY
TUNING
Claire
Elizabeth Barratt
(917)
650 7321
cillavee
@ gmail.com
* * *
