Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Hands and Fingers

A free workshop in the Richard Ehrman Memorial Feldenkais® Series at Berklee.

Teacher: Helen Miller, GCFP

In this Feldenkrais and drawing workshop, we will begin by drawing our attention to the subtle and revealing movement of our musical instruments. We might ask – as you have no doubt asked many times before – how do we hold these instruments? How do we hold ourselves, our hands, as we play? Where does the skillful manipulation of our fingers begin? In our hands or in our heads? What about the pelvis, the undulation of the spine, the opening and closing of the eyes and the connection of our feet to the floor?

What we see in our mind’s eye while making music can help to illuminate how we move as we play, so we will draw from imagination as well as from life in this Feldenkrais and drawing session.

Bring your instrument! Hellen will bring some Feldenkrais sitting lessons along with some paper, pencils and a few keen observations about the alignment of the senses from Kimon Nicolaides’ The Natural Way to Draw.

About the teacher:

Helen Miller, GCFP is a Teaching Fellow in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She received her BA in Art Practice and English from UC Berkeley in 2006, her EdM in Arts in Education from Harvard in 2010, her Feldenkrais certification from The Feldenkrais Institute in 2013 and is currently enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Art in the Public Domain program. Helen has performed and exhibited at Mobius, Cambridge, MA, 2013; White Walls, Boston, MA, 2012; Saprophyt Space, Vienna, Italy, 2012; The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA, 2011; Yale University, New Haven, CT, 2004, among others. She has taught drawing and movement at The Derek Bok Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2012; Dia Art Foundation, Beacon, NY, 2011; The Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, NY, 2011; The Guggenheim and Festival of Ideas for the New City, NY, 2011; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 2011; Trade School, New York, NY, 2011; Industry City, Brooklyn, NY, 2011; Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2010, among others. She has written on art for The Feldenkrais Journal and The Drawing Center in New York. She has curated exhibitions, performances, panel discussions and poetry readings in Cambridge and Rome as part of Rover Dig and BYO: Voices of the Contemporary at the Carpenter Center. She is a recipient of the Derek Bok Center for Undergraduate Education’s Distinction in Teaching Award and a regular visiting artist at Mildred’s Lane, Narrowsburg, PA. Helen is currently exploring the capacity for intimacy in portrait painting and the role of beauty in human development and teaches a weekly Feldenkrais class on the nature of turnout for dancers.