Category: posts
ElsaLimbach reflection
Reflecting on choreographer and dancer Elsa Limbach’s upcoming Body Mind-Brain workshop, her approach will offer a transformative exploration of human movement, highlighting its connection to expression and physiology. Elsa’s deep understanding of the interplay between body, brain, and mind offers a unique opportunity to reimagine movement not merely as action but as a language of meaning, development, and vitality. Her workshop invites participants to reflect on foundational questions: What shapes our movement? How do we express ourselves through it? From the universal rhythm of breath to the complexity of gestural communication, Elsa’s framework promises a journey that ties developmental patterns with cultural and individual nuances. By incorporating Anne Green Gilbert’s Brain Dance, participants will explore the physical stages of human growth, reconnecting with elemental patterns that organize both our bodies and our brains. Rudolf Laban’s and Irmgard Bartenieff’s movement analysis tools offer further depth, providing a structured lens to interpret motion. Laban’s effort qualities, such as “float” and “thrust,” juxtapose delicacy with power. At the same time, Bartenieff’s focus on connectivity brings awareness to how movements stem from and affect different parts of the body. Elsa’s emphasis on gesture as a daily, cross-cultural form of communication demonstrates her intent to bridge movement with meaning. Combined with the workshop’s reflective activities, this approach aligns movement with storytelling and personal expression, expanding its scope beyond technique to something innately human. Elsa Limbach’s workshop promises a profound reminder of how movement embodies both the biological and the poetic, fostering a space for discovery, connection, and creativity.
Sleep project
Different, Not less
Memory project
project 1 proposal
Project 3 proposal
Artist who explored sleep
When we paint a person or an animal sleeping soundly, sometimes it seems that we can also paint what they are dreaming about and the mysterious and internal world in which they are currently immersed. It is an indiscreet glance, we observe when that person is unconscious. But in the world of painting and illustration, it has been used a lot to express innocence and beauty. In addition, if those who sleep are children or beautiful maidens, the idea of innocence is enhanced.
The siesta (after Millet), by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), was painted between December 1889 and January 1890. 73 x 91 cm © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski.
Van Gogh made this painting inspired by a drawing by Millet and while he was in the Saint-Rémy mental asylum. Those who sleep are two farm workers, who surely, after work fatigue, enjoyed their nap.
about sleep
Throughout your sleep, your brain cycles repeatedly through two different types of sleep: REM (rapid-eye movement) sleep and non-REM sleep.
The first part of the cycle is non-REM sleep, composed of four stages. The first stage occurs between being awake and falling asleep. The second is light sleep when heart rate and breathing are regulated and body temperature drops. The third and fourth stages are deep sleep. Though REM sleep was previously believed to be the most important sleep phase for learning and memory, newer data suggests that non-REM sleep is more important for these tasks and is also the more restful and restorative phase of sleep.
As you cycle into REM sleep, the eyes move rapidly behind closed lids, and brain waves are similar to those during wakefulness. Breath rate increases and the body becomes temporarily paralyzed as we dream.
The cycle then repeats itself, but with each cycle, you spend less time in the deeper stages three and four of sleep and more time in REM sleep. On a typical night, you’ll cycle through four or five times.
Dr. Arianna Maffei’s reflection
Dr. Arianna Maffei’s show, “Taste in the Cerebrum,” opened up captivating bits of knowledge into how our young life food encounters shape our grown-up taste inclinations, tying taste discernment near mind capability, memory, and culture. Her investigation of how early food encounters leave an enduring engraving on the mind impacted me on an individual level, particularly as I ponder my developing inclinations.
One of the most fascinating parts of her discussion was the possibility that our taste inclinations are a question of individual decision yet are profoundly connected to brain processes framed in youth. Dr. Maffei underscored that these early food experiences make a system inside the cerebrum that impacts our impression of taste throughout life. This was both amazing and enlightening, as I had frequently considered taste inclinations something that moved basically because of natural elements or openness to new food varieties in adulthood.