Anna Halprin’s Dance Deck

In 2013/14, I had the honor of taking weekly classes with Anna Halprin on her dance deck. I took it upon myself to take the 45 minute journey from Oakland to Marin during rush hour traffic after my office job every Tuesday evening.

Every week was different, every week was creative. Sometimes we danced on the deck designed by her husband Lawrence Halprin (Landscape Architect), but usually we were inside the small building adjacent to the deck. Regardless, entering the space of her mountain home was a ritual in and of itself. Walking down a steep set of wooden steps, visitors/dancers were instructed to breath and let go as we descended in to the forested cove. Once inside the space, and once we started dancing, all spaces and objects became part of the creative act.

Usually the dancing would start with simple prompt. Like — just walk — walk and look — walk look, touch — walk look and avoid touching — follow somebody — stop — go — run — feel your feet — — reach to the sky — find your power place in the room — — make eye contact — play. Eventually, the dance would just become creative and we would be interacting with eachother, coming up with small acts, and exploring whatever motions we felt like. Sometimes she would pull out the skeleton model and break down postural ideas. At the end of every session we were instructed to make a drawing on newsprint with pastels, and then share our drawing with the group. At the end of those evenings, by the time we were drawing, we were all so deeply in touch with our creativity that beautiful and insightful messages would come out.

Being in a body seems to be really unimportant these days with everything going online. We are existing in a sort of virtual reality where our visceral bodies don’t really seem to matter that much anymore. Reflecting back on my time dancing with Anna Halprin is special, but words can not really describe what it felt like.

Landscape designs are somatic spaces. The virtual worlds we create with drawings are supposedly setting the stage for a future landscape that we will experience in person and with our full bodies perception. I am fascinated by the lifelong creative journey that Lawrence and Anna Halprin took with one another. Their creative works informed one another.