*This workshop has filled and the sign up link has been removed. If you signed up, your response has been recorded and you can expect a confirmation email by Monday 6 April. If you hoped to sign up but were not able to before the offering filled, please stay tuned for other virtual programming possibilities. We will not open a waitlist for this workshop. Thank you!*

We are pleased to be offering our first virtual movement workshop for adults! This workshop will be held on Thursday 16 April from 17h-19h and will be free and open to Library members. Space is limited and advance registration is required.

Joy of Movement

In this workshop, we learn to connect to our home, the body, through movement. The class is based on Nia dance, a technique developed in the US in the 1980s. This method blends movements from dance arts, martial arts, and healing practices. We use simple choreography and free dance. In Nia, as in any somatic method, the focus is always on how you feel when you move and on finding comfort, energy, ease, and support through movement. No previous dance experience is necessary; all ages can participate (though this workshop is intended primarily for adults). We dance barefoot and in comfortable exercise clothes. I hope the class will give you energy, joy, calm, and a sense of healing.

Hiie Saumaa (Ph.D, Columbia) is a somatic dance educator, writer, and scholar. She teaches classes and workshops in mind-body movement techniques (Nia dance, BodyLogos, JourneyDance) and writes about dance, health, and the creative process. She has taught movement in the US, Estonia, France, and Romania. Hiie writes a regular column for the Journal of Alternative & Complementary Therapies and her articles have appeared in international peer-reviewed dance journals. She is currently finishing a book on the artistry of Jerome Robbins. In 2018-19, she was an inaugural fellow at Columbia’s Institute for Ideas & Imagination in Paris and an artist in residence at the Cite Internationale des Arts. She has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Tennessee, and Paris College of Art.