Creative Listening Workshop Descriptions

CREATIVE LISTENING:
CREATIVE TENSION IN LIFE & WORK (2 Days)

• Learn how to enhance creative tension and reduce stress in your life and work.
• Discover meanings and metaphors inherent in your movement signature - your individual preferences for the use of space, weight, time and shape in everyday movement.

CREATIVE LISTENING:
LISTENING & POWER (2 Days)

• Develop three-dimensional listening as a source of power in your work and life.
• Uncover how fear-based selective listening appears in your life and impacts your ability to think and act creatively.
• Explore sound and movement interplay.

CREATIVE LISTENING:
STRATEGIES FOR TRANSFORMING CREATIVE BLOCKS (2 Days)

• Expose the fear-based causes of inattention that produce your creative blocks and transform them into your best creative assets.
• Discover the differences between ego-generated making things up and real creative thinking.
• Explore language and movement interplay.

CREATIVE LISTENING:
TRANSITIONS: TREPIDATION OR INSPIRATION? (2 Days)

• Expose and depose the Beast at the Garden Gate - uncovering how fear of critical transitional moments blocks the full realization of your inherent talents and creativity.
• Discover the powerful creative potential of the in-between or idle times and spaces in your life.

CREATIVE LISTENING:
DYNAMIC BALANCE IN LIFE PRACTICE (2 Days)

• Discover how your beast can become your best - and vice versa - how both balance and imbalance, working together, create excellence in your work.
• Explore the role of balance - static balance, dynamic balance, and imbalance - in your life and their impact on your creativity and wellbeing.

IMPROVISATION:
THE CREATIVE POWER OF LISTENING (5 Days)

(Custom Designed for Undergraduates at Eastern University)

This intensive undergraduate course introduces "creative listening" and illustrates how the mental agility and confidence gained through its practice can be applied to all art forms, especially dance and theater performance, education and ministry.

Here movement improvisation is utilized as an experiential medium for exploring the "improvisational mind": the discipline of paying attention to what is happening in the present moment with ourselves, with others, and with the environment.

Adhering to this discipline, participants learn how to tap their innate potential for creativity and insight, interact more effectively with others, and think on their feet in all walks of life.

Designed for students with little or no dance or theater experience, as well as for those with many years of formal training; no prior experience in improvisation is necessary.

MOVEMENT IMPROVISATION:
THE CREATIVE POWER OF LISTENING
(1 semester — 12 classes)

(Custom Designed for Graduates in Acting at Yale University)

In this graduate theater course, we approach the practice of "the improvisational mind" as the very basis of creativity itself. Fundamental is the perhaps counter-intuitive view that creativity, critical thinking, and performance are all grounded in the skills of listening and improvisation.

To develop a more centered, agile, and responsive mind/body, our weekly practice of "creative listening" includes a physical warm-up followed by the exploration of improvisational movement structures designed to awaken and hone perception and physical expression.

Through performance, reading, and discussion, actors discover how improvisation teaches them to think, create, and problem solve with more spontaneity and imagination, transform fear and become more creative under pressure, attend and follow creative intuition, heighten awareness of composition and non-verbal communication, and convey ideas with a stronger sense of focus and presence.

CREATIVE LISTENING:
CREATIVITY IN THE CLASSROOM (5 Days)

(Custom Designed for Teachers at Bridgewater State College)

This intensive graduate course focuses specifically on the teacher's role as "listener" in the classroom, and why listening is so important to learning and to the development of mental agility, creativity and confidence.

Movement is the vehicle by which participants explore the mental discipline of improvisation, as they investigate the place of spontaneity and imagination in classroom curricula and methodology.

Designed for elementary, middle, and high school classroom teachers, this course does not presuppose any physical agility, skill or prior training.

INTERACTIVE MEDITATION:
CREATIVE LISTENING FOR ADOLESCENTS
(1 Day, 2 Days, or 1-2 Weeks at ½ Days)

(Custom Designed for Adolescents in the Juvenile Justice System)

This workshop is designed to help young people develop the mental discipline for optimal decision making and social interaction.

For adolescents challenged by self-management, this is a movement workshop on "interactive meditation," which aids participants in developing skills necessary to live more satisfying and socially productive lives. The practice of "creative listening" teaches them, first, how to establish a meditative focus within, and then, maintaining that centeredness, to expand their awareness to interact with others and the environment with greater alertness, perspective and judgment.

CREATIVE LISTENING:
CUSTOM DESIGNS

(Custom Designed for Professional Groups, Business Teams, Religious Congregations)

These workshops are designed for specific groups and use movement improvisation structures to address topics pertinent to your needs, such as learning how to:

• Heighten mental agility under conditions of pressure and competition
• Maintain composure and act decisively
• Solve problems through the power of "creative listening"
• Convey your thoughts and feelings with confidence and presence
• Introduce more creativity into your personal or professional life