Elastics Training with Maureen Fleming

Maureen Fleming and I with  the Elastics

 My trip to Oneonta to train with other students of Maureen Fleming was all I'd hoped it would be: seven hours of stretching and dancing and learning her slow movement technique.  The first night (Thursday) included a five inch snow fall that turned the drive and their homestead outside of Oneonta even more silverier and pristine and silent than it naturally is.  In between dance sessions, I worked furiously on my novel, inspired by the training in both body and mind, and stories told by Maureen, her husband, visual artist and dancer Chris Odo, and other participants (a ecologist/dog mama, a sailor, and a visual artist) in the workshop around the dinner table.

Dance studio at Pumpkin Hollow Dance Center

The Fleming Elastics technique is a developing project that uses resistance to go even deeper into the muscles than yoga and makes more clear to me, the quality of lightness and control that I see in Maureen's movement style.  The day after I got back from this four day trip, I went to yoga class and found I'd advanced quite far in my regular practice after only three days of doing this work.

Fellow workshop partcipant, Shakti.