A Pioneer of Dance & Healing

Recognizing the crucial nexus between art and well-being, the Institute for Health & Healing is deeply pleased to celebrate the healing art therapy pioneered by Anna Halprin. The Institute honors her seminal concept of dance, movement, and deep body wisdom as a gateway to healing body, mind, and spirit.

Anna awakened to dance early on. As a college student, she focused on human dissection to understand the objective principles of movement and, as she describes it, "to go to the source, to teach the truth of movement." She continued to develop her concept of dance after she moved to San Francisco following World War II with her husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. Eventually, below their home on a steep hillside in Marin County, her husband constructed an outdoor deck, which became the platform that helped launch a movement and healing revolution.

In the outdoors, Anna attuned to the life surrounding her on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais. Awakening to the realization that nature flows through the body, she began to integrate nature and body movement, stimulating her students to express themselves, free from conventional dance constraints, and to release blocked emotions. "You're teaching not only an arts process," she says, "you're teaching a healing process. Movement affects the way you feel – it's as simple as that." Simple, and simultaneously complex since movement can generate deep transformation. "You can alter your whole life perspective," she explains, "by moving into your body, by identifying, confronting, and altering the blocks and conflicts."

Anna’s holistic view of movement and nature found performance expression in everyday settings – streets, parking lots, and building sites. Outdoor dance rituals further evolved on her famous Marin County deck, where the pas de deux of human motion and verdant surroundings flowed into a unified lifetime vision of movement, nature, and healing that has inspired expressive artists and health practitioners the world over. Ultimately, Anna presented these revolutionary ideas in summer workshops that drew dancers west from across the country. Her concepts blossomed into a genre that evolved into postmodern dance.

Further influenced by her experience as a cancer survivor, Anna created what became known as the Halprin Process, a technique of healing arts in motion that can be integrated into the arts and arts therapy, healthcare, education, and community service. In 1978, she co-founded the Tamalpa Institute, which teaches the Halprin Process and is now directed by her daughter, Daria Halprin.

Anna’s connection to the Institute for Health & Healing began in the 1990's, during the early days of the Institute's expressive arts program. Anna addressed the Institute's World of Wisdom conference as keynote speaker and offered her expertise as a presenter in a Movement and Healing class.

Clearly, Anna Halprin’s accolades are lengthy. She has created 150 full-length dance theater works, published six volumes, is the focus of television features and award-winning videos, and this year an exhibit of her work was held at the Contemporary Museum of Modern Art in Lyon, France. Whether from the pages of a book or the floor of a performance space, her influence is inclusive, extensive and rich with diversity. She continues to affect dance and theater professionals, healthcare practitioners and many others who are all drawn to her compelling notions of movement, nature, and healing as an ineffable elixir.

The Institute for Health & Healing is honored to acknowledge Anna Halprin's life and work with its 2007 Pioneers in Integrative Medicine award. For more information, contact (415) 600-1562.