Wednesday, September 18, 2024, 5 – 6:15pm EDT
Registration is required.Please register via the "Sign up" link.As part of its broader fall programming around the life and teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, the CSWR has partnered with the Gurdjieff Society of Massachusetts to offer a series of Movements workshops. These intentional dance exercises, a unique offering of the Gurdjieff teaching, have the potential to transform. They ask participants to be whole and to activate increasingly strong and lively attention throughout the body in motion or stillness. The exactitude of positions, changes of rhythm, and the demand for the dancer to move parts of the body independently or simultaneously with other parts all conspire to create inner conditions necessary for a changed experience of oneself. The dancer may discover moments when a finer quality of attention emerges, a more total attention rooted in mind, body, and heart. Through the beauty and rigor of the form and the richness of its music, the Movements call forth a total participation of all that one is. Gurdjieff described himself on several occasions as "a teacher of temple dancing." His dances, taught in Gurdjieff centers worldwide for a century, point individuals toward a more harmonious inner world. With its eloquent music, this form of dance may instinctively elicit an awakening. The gestural repertory of the Movements may offer a new or different way of feeling human. Beyond habitual ways of moving, thinking, and feeling, there is a new inner zone of lightness and contained vitality—of presence. "And through a strict succession of attitudes, they lead us to a new possibility of thinking, feeling, and action. If we could truly perceive their meaning and speak their language, the Movements would reveal to us another level of understanding." – Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff (Shambhala, 2011) Instructor's bio: Charles Langmuir was introduced to Movements as an adolescent and remained intensively involved with Movements working with Mme. de Salzmann, Paul Renard, and other Movements practitioners in Paris who worked directly with Gurdjieff. He began giving classes in the 1980s, and has been responsible for Movements for the Gurdjieff Society of Massachusetts for the last 20 years.Subsequent meetings are: 10/2, 10/16, 10/30, 11/13