Heart lives between Breath and Bones: an Axis Syllabus Workshop

Axis Syllabus Workshop Electric Lodge, Venice, CA Saturday June 21st, 2025 2-4:30 pm An Axis Syllabus Workshop: Heart lives between breath and bones. $55-65 sliding scale $45 low income rate Through exploring the relationship between the heart and diaphragm as a place to move with, we gain insight about our own rhythm, groove, and timing. We will attempt to sense and communicate through the echoes, waves and ripples of heartbeat and breath. We will invite transpersonal awareness through the direct and imaginal perception of the heart. As we observe the rhythm of our breath and the size and shape of our bones as being unique to each one of us we can also imagine the size and shape of our breath and the rhythm of our bones as distinctive. The heart lives between breath and bones. In this 2.5 hour dance workshop we will explore these notions through attentional awareness, light touch, rivering dance fractals and improvisational rhythm games. We will be accompanied by the luscious live music of Sri Kala. This class is for people interested in moving and feeling together. Pre-register by sending $55-65 ($45) to @Jen-Hong-2 through Venmo. Cash will be accepted at the door. Teacher bios: Jennifer Hong (洪慧珍) BA in Chinese, Reed College Portland, OR, 2000. MFA in experimental choreography, UC Riverside, 2020. She has danced with many choreographers in Portland and Los Angeles: Minh Tran + Co, Laurel Jenkins, Rashaun + Silas, and Rosanna Tavarez, among many others. Major influences include Anna Halprin and Frey Faust, founder of The Axis Syllabus©. An initiated student of the Teacher/Wong Loh Sin See 黃老先師 of the Chee Choong 慈忠Temple in Malaysia, a Daoist/Confucian/Buddhist practice, she synthesizes spiritual, artistic, and scientific elements into her work and life. She co-facilitates the Santa Monica Contact Improv Jam and has taught CI and dance as a guest lecturer at UCLA, CalArts, CSULA, USC Gloria Kaufman, Middlebury, Scripps College, and UC Riverside. Kerwin Barrington Over the past 17 years, I have facilitated dance experiences in a variety of contexts, where I try to encourage a main focus of exploring new ways of understanding the body in movement through the knowledge that we already hold. Certified to teach the Axis Syllabus, I have been in alliance with its Research Network (ASRM) for over 10 years and am inspired by the pedagogical philosophy of learner centered learning which is inherent to its community. I recently completed a Master's degree in dance at the Université de Québec à Montréal — a deep investigation of the expression "To Learn by Heart" — looking into possible relationships between the heart and meaningful, embodied learning in a dance class. These days, I am driven by the curiosity of how tradition, ancestry, territory and music live inside my dance and the dance I share with others.