Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making A True Move — Complex (Traditional) Chinese edition
This is an English version of the article published on September 25th 2022.
Preface on Publication ｜Jayce Pei Yu Lee, Crystal C.Y. Huang
Dr. Otto Scharmer asked “Seventeen Questions that steps into the Future” in his Theory U process, one of which is: When you come to the last moment of your life, what is the footprint you want to leave behind in this world? We were stuck and contemplated this question for a long time. Bringing this book “Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making A True Move”, written by Arawana Hayashi, into the world to Chinese speaking regions and readers, is our response to one of the footprints of the U-shaped life journey.
During the journey of co-creating and collaboration with the Presencing Institute since 2012, one of the most profound inspirations was from the Social Presencing Theater facilitated by Arawana Hayashi. She led people by demonstrating how to explore body intelligence in an approachable way, to help people to see together, to perceive the current moment through non-verbal dialogue and realistic gestures, to listen to the white space/pause and the intelligence from the social field, and to reflect together on the reality and the field created collectively by human beings. In 2017, Crystal attended the Social Presencing Theater Foundation Program in Shanghai. After that, fascinated by Social Presencing Theater, she continued to seek advice from Lai Mei Kwong, an improvisational choreographer and David Anderson, a Waldorf theater teacher, as well as to learn with/from Arawana and the core team online.
This book is published with a simple intention. In this time of uncertainty, destructiveness, and human confrontation, through Arawana’s guidance and practical exercises, people will experience that intelligence exists not only in the mind, but also in the body and space, and that it opens up sensory awareness in the body as a human being. The journey of learning through “The Art of Making A True Move” will open up a deeper understanding and knowledge of a “whole person”.
The book was being planned at a time when the Covid-19 epidemic was at its peak in Taiwan and when geopolitical and global economic challenges were raging. Just as the translation job was about to launch with limited resources, Crystal was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. At her life/death moment of the surgery and chemotherapy, she felt her physical state and inner calling so deeply that we decided we had to continue with our original intention and work. With sheer enthusiasm and the meaning of life in mind, Crystal volunteered to take on the role of a translator and proceeded slowly and steadily through the chemotherapy treatment. We are very grateful to all the proofreading teams who fully supported the review of this book — Tsunami Lin, Jennifer Zheng, Yuchung Zheng, and our beloved friends Philip Chan, Zi Xiao, Yi Mei Chen, Yi-Tzu Lee and Elsa Dai, who offered us their expertise and advice. At last, Crystal’s treatment came to an end and the borders of various countries gradually opened up. We celebrate the moment with the long-awaited physical/online advance program for practitioners of Social Presencing Theater in Germany in June this year, and the arrival of this book this month. We hope that this book can support more Chinese readers to deepen and cultivate their sensory intelligence.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Arawana Hayashi and the Presencing Institute for their official authorization, and to our friends, Vanessa Lu, Tomas Li, Gloria Sun, Philip Chan, Meiquang Li, David Anderson, and Manish Srivastava, for their generosity in recommending this book. We are grateful for the support of Elitecolor Reproductions＆Prints and E Core Digital Marketing, as well as all of our friends who accompanied us along this journey.
This book supports the transformation of individuals and groups in our ever evolving society through Arawana Hayashi’s decades of life practice and cross-cultural case stories, as well as practical guidance. We hope the birth of the traditional Chinese edition of this book can support readers transcend language barriers and extend the ripple effect of the book’s essence and impact on the Chinese-speaking world. Our aspiration is to support people who are facing various kinds of changes to find strength, to settle the brave heart in the space of making a true move, and to navigate through the mist uncertainty with light, hope and resilience.
Jayce Pei Yu Lee | Crystal C.Y. Huang
