LAUSR

Hello, everyone! I am so aware that this is on Zoom and I’m trying so hard to think of the faces whom I’m addressing now, and I want to tell you how much I miss seeing you. I was so looking forward to being together in Montreal, to dancing together and hugging! So, like so many real-life situations we’re all facing right now, we’ll have to make the best of it with Zoom. I want to start by thanking such dear and long-time friends for this remarkable honor. First, my intrepid friend Marcia Leventhal, with whom I have shared so many adventures. Starting with Irmgard, we created our Collective in the 70s, crossed paths through Gestalt and traipsed around China and Istanbul. And then, a thank you to so many other women who I’ve long respected and admired for so long, and who are dedicated to carrying on the vision of Marian Chace. As I discover ways of working with trauma in global settings, I actually find that my early trainings with Marian Chace approaches have become a staple of the work that I share with you today for this convention’s theme of global work. This training also fits so naturally into my early days as a folk dancer. From the Habonim youth group in Israel when I was 14, to studying Israeli folk dance with the great Fred Berk at the 92nd St. Y in New York in 1964, and then having the 92nd St. Y becoming the site of a new and flourishing dance therapy program, under Dr. Miriam Berger, more than 50 years later. Seeing the spirals of time, connections in friendships. Through Jungian training and analysis my growing understanding that archetypes are not static, but movements in life making these wonderful archetypal forms. Patterns of process. Of course, beginning with the circle and the spiral, just as Irmgard used to say. Ancient forms. So ancient and so basic that they appear in most cultures, and therefore help build bridges across cultures.