Dancer, choreographer and dance-movement psychotherapist Anna Garafeyeva tells about the legendary American dancer Anna Halprin, whom dance helped to overcome a serious illness.
All her life she has been dancing, experimenting, creating plays and performances that shock the public and turn into protest actions. Anna Halprin is one of the founders of the American avant-garde in modern dance, a legendary dancer, an outstanding choreographer and an innovative teacher who defeated cancer. Today, 84 years old, she continues to dance, travel and teach with passion, following her own saying, “Aging is enlightenment at gunpoint.”
Read more:
- “So I heard the diagnosis:“ cancer ”
Anna was among the first dancers to see dance as a healing and transformative art. At the age of 51, she developed cancer. The struggle with him and recovery became a turning point in her life. The news of her illness changed her life dramatically and inspired her to create a ritual that helped her recovery. Having drawn her cancer on a large canvas of paper, she gathered her friends and, standing in front of the picture, began to dance her “cancer dance”. It was not a simple spectacle – it was more like a shamanic ecstatic dance. Anna stomped, crouched, hissed, shouted, howled, expressing all her pain, anger and despair with a dance. “My struggle with the disease has been an amazing gift for me. Before cancer, I lived to dance. After that, I dance to live.”
After an amazing recovery experience, Anna opened the Tamalpa Institute in San Francisco in 1978 with her daughter Daria Halprin. They developed a creative process training that combined psychology, body therapy, dance, drawing and performance. The purpose of the training is to help each participant find their own unique path to healing and resolving personal and social conflicts. Anna called her approach “Life/Art Process”. It is based on the idea of combining life and art. Her dance grows out of life itself – impressions, experiences, events, encounters, social and personal themes – and becomes art.
Anna has two daughters, Daria Halprin and Rana Halprin, both of whom teach at the Tamalpa Institute. In addition, her husband Lawrence Halprin always supported her. Here is how he describes Anna’s dance: “More and more, her dance becomes like a myth and a ritual, which focuses on the issues and themes of everyday life: psychological or physical, social or personal. In this sense, she refers to the earliest meaning of dance in the human community, joyful and healing and at the same time tragic, based on the most primitive human needs. Such dances are universal.” Lawrence inspired his wife until his death in 2009.
Anna constantly explores her relationship with her body and encourages others to do the same. “I want to help you understand your body… I’m not saying dance can cure cancer, but it can help heal. A person with a strong will to live, who believes in the power of dance, who has decided to live and not give up in the face of illness, has a better chance of overcoming cancer than someone who only passively follows the advice of doctors, ”says Anna Halprin. She identifies five stages of healing: problem identification – confrontation – liberation – change – integration. Everything that happens in life can be danced.
For the past decades, Anna has been leading a collective dance ritual called the “Planet Dance” – it consists of three circles going in different directions in which you can run, walk or stand still. This annual, all-day ritual of healing and renewal brings together people of all ages and abilities.
Anna Halprin was born on July 13, 1920 in Wilmette, Illinois, to Ida Schiff, the daughter of a Lithuanian immigrant, and Isadore Schuman, a native of Odessa. She began studying dance when she was 15 years old. In the 50s, Anna developed the Life/Art Process, a movement-oriented approach to art that integrates dance and movement, visual arts, performance techniques and therapeutic practices. In 1972 Anna was diagnosed with cancer. In 2000, she published the book Returning to Health: With Dance, Movement & Imagery, in which she told her story of healing and the stories of others who have recovered. The book serves as a guide to understanding the emotional processes that trigger illness and offers clear guidelines for action.
