Dr Martha Eddy, CMA, RSMT is particularly known for research in the fields of conflict resolution, dance education, dance science, perceptual-motor assessment, social-emotional intelligence, and special needs interventions through the arts. She completed her doctorate in Education specializing in Movement Sciences and Education at Columbia University where she studied the role of physical activity and non-verbal communication in educational violence prevention programs for youth. She has received grants to study the neurological effects of practicing developmental movement patterns. She advises different phases of a study on the role of observing qualitative movement in Early Childhood developmental assessment sponsored by the University of Calgary School of Medicine. She has been the principal investigator in studying the quality of life effects of her Moving On Aerobics program for women with breast cancer. In her capacity as Coordinator of the Riverside Church Wellness Center she collaborated with the Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Columbian Presbyterian Medical Center to design further research on this topic. She consulted with the New York City Department of Education to write the K -12 dance curriculum, drawing upon the findings from the National Dance Education Organization’s - Research in Dance Education (RDE) findings. Eddy participated as a researcher in the RDE project as well. LMA is often an instrument used in these projects. At San Francisco State University (SFSU) she designed a course on Qualitative Analysis of Movement in which LMA was featured as a key research tool in the kinesic analysis, and contributed to the qualitative aspect of many kinetic studies. She served as a research associate with SFSU for several years.
As founder and director of the Center for Kinesthetic Education (CKE) (www.WellnessCKE.net) several other research projects occur with graduate students from diverse universities around the world. CKE is a hotbed of somatic innovation and research with LMA at its core. Through CKE Eddy consults in K- 12 NYC public and independent schools, tracks movement patterns in children with special needs, continues to document developmental and early childhood movement behavior, and has sponsored a thinktank on somatic approaches to trauma using inner body sensing.
She taught perceptual-motor development on the Teacher’s College faculty of the Dance & Dance Education Program for over ten years as well as having worked in the graduate programs of Antioch New England Graduate School, New York University, the New School for Social Research, and in the department of kinesiology at San Francisco State University. She currently serves on the Faculty of the Dance Education Laboratory at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, implements her Peaceful Play Programming in upper west side elementary schools, and is a workshop facilitator and the Senior Program Advisor for Project Renewal’s Stress Reduction Days in the NYC public schools in response to 9/11. Martha teaches seasonally at Moving On Center – School of Participatory Arts and Somatic Research in Oakland CA, which she co-founded in 1995 with Carol Swann.
Martha Eddy founded her Somatic Movement Therapy Training (SMTT) in 1990. It teaches her unique approach to working with clients and helps students develop their own work using the tools/philosophies of Body-Mind Centering and Laban Movement Analysis. The SMTT is now affiliated with Moving On Center, as well as providing university credits through Cal-State - East Bay, Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, and State University of NY - Empire State College. Students may get a masters degree through SUNY and design a course of study that includes six SMTT courses (half of the program) as a central component of the degree. SMTT-SUNY students engage in diverse research areas (gender, ecology, health and fitness, and performance discourse) and methods while under Dr Eddy's supervision.
She also serves on the Advisory Boards of the Center for Movement Research in Los Angeles, The Tri-State College of Acupuncture, and the Yard – the performing arts colony on Martha’s Vineyard, MA. She has served as the President of the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association ISMETA www.ismeta.org
Janet Hamburg is a professor of dance and an associate of the Gerontology Center at the University of Kansas. She also is the Director of Senior Wellness and Exercise for the Center for Movement Education and Research in Los Angeles and a Senior Research Associate for the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. She is the founder and manager of Motivating Moves, LLC. She has been a guest teacher at the Juilliard School, the Sports Training Institute, and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute, all in New York City. In 2004, she received the Laban/Bartenieff Institute’s first Laban Award for Creative Achievement by an artist or researcher.
Her work has been featured on NBC national television and the U.S. Information Agency’s international program Science World and in Shape magazine and Mind-Body Fitness for Dummies (Moving and Motivating with Laban Movement Analysis). Her research has focused on coordination problems in children and adults, athletic performance, movement problems of older adults, and movement therapy for people with Parkinson’s disease. She has presented her research at national and international conferences. Her research on Parkinson’s disease resulted in an award-winning exercise DVD/video, Motivating Moves for People with Parkinson’s.
Research articles include
• The Effects of a Laban/Bartenieff-Based Movement Program with Music on Physical Function Measures in Older Adults, Music Therapy Perspectives, 2008. 26(1) 30-37.
• The Effects of a Laban-Based Movement Program with Music on Measures of Balance and Gait in Older Adults, Activities, Adaptation & Aging, 2003. 28(1), 17-33.
•The Effects of a Movement with Music Program on Measures of Balance and Gait Speed in Healthy Older Adults, Journal of Music Therapy, 2003. XL(3), 212-226
In the last 32 years, Janet has performed with many dance companies, choreographed, directed, trained dancers and dance movement therapists, designed educational training programs, and presented workshops and master classes throughout Great Britain , Europe, the US , Canada , and in India . In 2003/4 Janet designed and directed the first Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS®) Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) intensive at York University, Toronto. The Founder/Director of Laban/Bartenieff and Somatic Studies International/Canada (LSSI/LSSC), Janet is also a registered Somatic Movement Therapist (ISMETA), a Senior Registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist (ADMP, UK), and a Movement Pattern Analysis Practitioner (Motus Humanus).
After ten years of professional dance training, and music studies at Loyola College of Music, Janet began performing in 1977 with both Modern and contemporary Indian dance companies in New York City – including Sophie Maslow Dance Company, Daniel Maloney and Dancers, and Bhaskar Dances of India. In 1980, she co-founded as dance editor, the newspaper INSTEP with the Performing Arts of New York, and founded her own Repertory Dance Theatre Company in 1983. After incorporating Yoga, Zena Rommett floor barre, and Pilates matwork as adjunct practices to technique training in New York, Janet met and commissioned CMA Gregg Lizenbery to work with her Repertory company. Gregg’s expression of elegant artistry, technical ease and authenticity inspired her to integrate Bartenieff Fundamentals (BF) into other somatic practices, as part of an eclectic, body-centered training for professional dancers. This also laid the groundwork for her to develop training applications in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis (LMA) and Somatic Practice for the next 25 years.
Janet received her CMA from LIMS, while performing with Peter Madden’s Dance Process, and working at Sports Training Institute, and Sports/Dance/Fitness in New York City. In 1990, she established a private practice as a Movement Consultant in New York and New Jersey; and began teaching as core faculty on LIMS’ intensive and weekend CMA programs at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and at the University of Maryland, College Park.
In 1995, Janet relocated to London, England as full time faculty for LABAN’s professional Dance Theatre training and Dance Movement Therapy degree programs. She received her Masters of Arts with distinction in Jungian and Post Jungian Studies, from the University of Essex, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies. Janet’s dissertation thesis “The Phenomenological Body and Analytical Psychology” was subsequently published in the academic Jungian Journal, Harvest. Other articles “Phenomenology and Movement Observation” and “Shape as Lived Movement” have been published in international Dance Therapy quarterlies, and "Imagination and the Mundus Imaginalis" in Spring: Journal of Archetype and Culture, Philosophy and Psychology Issue, 2007. Janet has found rich ground for further contextualizing LMA/BF and other Somatic Practices in the fields of Phenomenology and post-Jungian theory.
During a decade of full time work in England, Janet developed and established the first somatically-based LMA, and Experiential Anatomy and Technique syllabii used as Fundamental Skills training in LABAN’s Dance Theatre training courses. She also created the first integrative LMA/BF course model used as a core teaching component in the Diploma/MA in Dance Movement Therapy in the UK. At Goldsmiths College, University of London, Janet collaboratively designed an integrated DMT/Movement Psychotherapy MA degree within the subject area of Art Psychotherapy, Unit for Psychotherapeutic Studies. In 2003, Janet spear-headed the full time 2-year Masters program as its first Course Leader.
In addition to recruiting for LABAN throughout Europe for many years, Janet has presented on-going somatic LMA/BF workshops for faculty and students in London, Camarthen, Paris, Bratislava, Zagreb, Warsaw, Hvar; and Prague, where she provides annual professional development and training for dance therapists and trainees. In India, Janet presented BF and Contemporary Technique training for dancers at the Shankar Centre for Performing Arts, Calcutta; and co-designed DMT workshops for NGO workers sponsored by a British Council development project in Bengal.
In 2007, Janet designed a somatic movement program for Sensori Spa, part of Suncani Hvar’s island resort in Croatia; and completed Certification as a Practitioner of Warren Lamb’s Movement Pattern Analysis (MPA). Presently residing in the States, Janet directs LSSI’s Modular Certificate Programs in Movement Analysis and BodyMind Practice™, which confers Certification in affiliation with LIMS. She also presents Workshops and Seminars in Movement in Public Speaking and Improving Nonverbal Communication Skills. For more information, see www.labaninternational.org.
Elin Lobel is an Assistant Professor of Kinesiology at Towson University in Towson, MD. She received her doctorate in Kinesiology from the University of Illinois@Urbana-Champaign and is certified in Laban Movement Analysis. Dr. Lobel’s research interests incorporate quantitative and qualitative motion analysis techniques to identify group differences in atypical populations, dancers, and taiji practitioners. She has presented her research at the North American Society for Sport Psychology, the Gatlinburg Conference for Developmental Disabilities, the International Association for Dance Medicine, and Science, and the National Dance Educator’s Conference. Prior to attending graduate school, Dr. Lobel was a professional ballet and modern dancer in Boston, New York City, and London, England. She teaches motor development, motor control and learning, and dance.
Debra McCall is an educational consultant at Ross Institute, former Director of the Ross Institute Teacher Academy and Dean of Cultural History, English and Languages at the Ross School, East Hampton where she taught World Dance, Choreography and directed Senior Projects. A Certified Movement Analyst and former practicing Dance/Movement Therapist, she is a member of the graduate faculty of New York University and also served on the faculties of Pratt Institute, Adelphi University, the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies and Arte Therapy Italiana in Bologna and Rome, Italy. She participated in the 2002 Harvard-Ross Seminar on Education and Globalization, proceedings of which were published in Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and New York State Council on the Arts in choreography, dance/film, and research. A Prix de Rome Advanced Design Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, she researched the mystery rites of the Mediterranean basin to create "Psyche’s Tasks: A Choreographic Tale," based on Apuleius’ Metamorphosis. As Director of Choreographic Research, she reconstructed the 1920’s Bauhaus Dances of Oskar Schlemmer which premiered in 1982 at The Kitchen. The reconstructions toured the US, Europe and Japan, including the First Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, the 1984 exhibition Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915-1933 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Oskar Schlemmer exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, the IBM Gallery, and a return to the Dessau Bauhaus in 1994. Her film of these pieces was selected for the 1996 American Dance Festival Film Tour and is part of the collection of the Dance Division of the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Her writing on the project was included in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s exhibition catalogue, Oskar Schlemmer, as well as the International Encyclopedia of Dance published by Oxford University Press. Debra developed the series of workshops “The Body of Myth,” and collaborated with the archetypal Jungian analyst, James Hillman, and the poet Robert Bly in delivering these. In 1993, she was the keynote speaker at the American Dance Therapy Association’s National Conference, and in 1997, Mellon Lecturer at Pratt Institute. Debra’s kinesthetic lessons on Roman architecture were included in the Smithsonian Institution/Annenberg documentary “The Mind’s Intelligences with Howard Gardner” aired on the CPB channel. She formerly served on the educational committee for Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center.
Suzi Tortora has over 19 years experience working with individuals at all levels of development, from pregnancy and infancy, through adulthood. She has been profiled on Good Morning America ABC-TV, and interviewed on the National Public Radio (NPR) Weekday talk show, on KUOW 94.9FM.
Dr. Tortora trains allied professionals and lectures about her work locally and nationally at professional meetings and in universities. She is currently writing a book for Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company, titled The Dancing Dialogue: Using the Communicative Power of Movement with Young Children, and has published articles in several journals.
Dr. Tortora received a B.A. with honors in Child Study, along with teaching certification (K-8 and special needs preschool to 7 years), from Tufts University. She received her M.A. degree in dance therapy at New York University. Dr. Tortora received her doctorate in Early Childhood Education with a specialization in infancy development from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is an ADTR, which is the advanced level accreditation certification of the American Dance Therapy Association. She is also a Certified Laban Movement Analyst (CMA); a Kestenberg Movement Profiler (KMP); has studied Body-Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen; authentic movement with Janet Adler, anatomy, kinesiology and ideokinesis with Irene Dowd; and received certification in Yoga for the Special Child with Sonia Sumar. Her postgraduate continued professional education courses include Dr. Greenspan's Infancy and Early Childhood Intervention training course, and numerous Zero-to-Three Training Institutes.
Dr. Tortora's own movement studies include gymnastics, ballet, several modern dance and improvisational techniques, Japanese Folk and Kabuki dance styles as well as social, contra and ballroom dancing.
In addition to her current private practice work Dr. Tortora is creating a dance therapy program on the pediatric ward of Memorial Sloan - Kettering Cancer Center working with children ages 2 months to 32 years old.
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