Bodies, Communication, and Somatic Awareness
By Jill Randall
I have been a huge fan of Andrea Olsen for years. Reading her 2014 book The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making was a pivotal experience for me – really the first time I felt that a dancer wrote a book that was a work of art itself – more than just the words and exercises on the page. There was artistry, composing of each page/section, and craft in the making of that book. I love that book.
I have had the honor of Andrea writing for Life as a Modern Dancer over the years. Check out this essay here about her process writing The Place of Dance; and muse here with her piece in the Somatic Writing Series, "Activate."
This year, I eagerly awaited Andrea’s latest book, Moving Between Worlds: A Guide to Embodied Living and Communicating. Thick and big like The Place of Dance, I dove into the pages.
This is a book about “communication” – to invite a wider circle to engage with the book beyond just us modern dancers. Will Communication professors or Business professors join in? I hope so. Will Dance professors and Somatics professors? Yes please.
The broad themes include: attitudes, perception, arriving and orientation, authenticity, and interconnectivity. As Olsen shares early on in the book on page 5,“…the body is our primary means for communication and connection.”
With Moving Between Worlds Andrea Olsen offers a sophisticated, layered book with poetic language, personal anecdotes, photos, plentiful references to other artists, thought leaders, and books, and of course 31 days of movement and writing activities to try on. As Chris Aiken writes in the Foreword, “Olsen has been a leader in advocating for meaning and knowledge-building through the development of embodied intelligence.” And most importantly, Olsen writes in her Introduction, “Every word is filtered through the body, my body."
In particular, as an arts administrator myself, I want to spotlight this book for dancers who are arts administrators. Holding these multiple roles can feel incongruous at times, but this book in particular can help build these connections between body and community, between feeling and expressing. I think it is the perfect offering for arts administrators as we turn the calendar to 2023 and seek new ideas, inspiration, and deepening in our work and within our organizations. Give it a try. Pull out a salient quote or offer an exercise as an opening activity in a staff meeting. Read a section per week for 31 weeks and riff off of the themes in your work life and personal life. (That's my personal plan for the coming months.)
So who is this book for? The list is long, including
Dancers
Dance teachers
Somatic practitioners
Arts administrators
Communications professors
Doctors
Therapists
Prek-12 teachers
Speech pathologists
Prek-12 teachers
Speech pathologists
Let’s be curious. Let’s be in our bodies. Let’s feel + see + perceive + respond. Let’s soften and lengthen and breathe and smile. Curiosity, care, and communication can heal ourselves and our world.
By Andrea Olsen
Wesleyan University Press
2022; 272 pages
Available in paperback and e-book
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Life as a Modern Dancer 
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