INITIATOR

Wendy Hambidge is a certified Body-Mind Centering® Practitioner and Teacher, Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist, and an Infant Developmental Movement Educator. As an artist, she produced dance work for 30 years and holds an MFA in choreography and performance. Wendy first encountered Body-Mind Centering in 1990 where she found it to radiate with possibility for self-study, movement, and choreography. Wendy now utilizes BMC with clients, ranging from artists and athletes to parents and babies, to develop deep physiological awareness—supporting individuals through somatic inquiry related to coordination, development, muscle patterning, creativity, performance, injury, chronic pain, and psychophysical integration.

Based in Portland, OR, Wendy has taught Experiential Anatomy in the Yoga Shala Teacher Training Program and Embodied Anatomy and Yoga (EAY) program with Amy Matthews. She regularly assists Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (BMC℠ founder) and currently teaches Experiential Anatomy for The People’s Yoga Teacher Training Program, and the School for Body-Mind Centering Licensed Programs throughout the US and Europe.

A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation since 1972, Wendy graduated from Maharishi University of Management. Her belief in the ability to cultivate health, joy, and interconnectedness through intentional awareness is the divining rod that directs all of her endeavors.

Body-Mind Centering (BMC) is an experiential approach to understanding the body in relationship to its movement, thinking, and awareness. BMC works to cultivate deep bodily understanding through the embodied study of anatomy, physiology, psychology and principles of human growth. Developed by movement artist and somatics leader Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, BMC is practiced and taught throughout the world and has influenced the fields of bodywork, dance, performance, yoga, psychotherapy, and infant movement education. Utilizing movement, touch, and voice to examine the body’s interconnected systems, BMC builds capacity for knowing oneself through the universal laws of nature—facilitating access to efficiency, resilience, and ease.

CREATIVE FACILITATOR

Jorge Samuel, is a cultural producer, dancer, master of ceremonies, and researcher.

He is currently pursuing a degree in Dance at UNESPAR, where, through the Scientific Initiation Program, he developed the research project “Nativo Urbano”, mapping and studying the development of Brazilian Black art as a result of the African diaspora.

This research enabled him to participate in two exchange programs in the United States: first at Pomona College, California, to study Organicity, with Body-Mind Centering® (BMC®)founder Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and later in Portland, Oregon, to study Ontogenetics, the development of the individual through the lens of BMC®.

Through the Claiming Our Space program, he had the opportunity to produce and premiere a film in New York at the invitation of the United Nations and World Health Oroganization. The short film “Headphones” debuted at the United Nations High-Level Conference in Manhattan, addressing the importance of Black and youth voices in public policy-making spaces.

He was honored with an invitation to be a speaker at TEDx Prado Velho in Curitiba, where he lectured on Black Culture, Brazilian Society, Funk, and Cultural Production.

He is the founder and DJ of Baile da Durag – Baile Funk, an independent Black initiative based in Curitiba, Brazil that, throughout its existence, has supported 13 local Black-owned businesses and partnered with Budweiser for cultural actions.

COLLABORATOR

Damaris Webb is a theater maker as social justice advocate. Shehas created new works for the stage with diverse communities around the US and internationally, her work lives in the intersection of contemplative dance, improvisational performance art, and contemporary theater.

Ms Webb holds her MFA in Contemporary Performance from Naropa University, and her BFA from The Experimental Theater Wing of New York University. As an artist primarily trained in somatic studies (Body Mind Centering, Viewpoints Practice, Psychophysical Acting, Contemplative Dance Practice, Roy Hart Vocal Technique, Developmental Movement), she fuses an approach to creating work that is physically based, Brechtian, and deconstructionist. As an interpretive and generative theater artist,Ms Webb values collaborative creation, rigor and transparency in process and product.

Recent devised performance credits include Precipice: remembering, forgetting and claiming home (Third Rail), The Sounds of an Afrolitical Movement (Portland Playhouse), The Americans, a seagull and Aw, Hell (Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble/company member) and the ongoing collaboration Standing Together with BMC practitioners and dancers Wendy Hambidge (Portland) and Jorge Samuel (Brazil).