Golden Heart
Summer Embodied Creativity Practice
A somatic-artistic series inspired by Halprin’s Life/Art Process

Golden Heart is a summer embodied creativity practice – four sessions during which we will combine somatic work through movement and the body with artistic expression, discovering how the body becomes a source of authentic and deeply personal creativity.

Through expressive dance, somatic movement, drawing, writing, and image work, we will express the stories recorded in our lives and bodies and give them symbolic meaning through artistic expression. The series is inspired by the Life/Art Process, created by Anna Halprin, a pioneer of therapeutic dance, and systematized by Daria Halprin, her daughter, one of the world’s leading experts in therapy and education through creative expression and movement (Movement-Based Expressive Arts Therapy) – an approach that treats creativity as a natural language of life and a way to integrate our daily experiences.

What will you experience in this process?

– You will learn a process that you can take with you and practice on your own – as your own personal path of working with the body and creativity.
– You will learn to follow internal images emerging in movement and discover how they can lead to drawing, writing, and creative expression.
– You will experience how the body stores stories and how they can gradually find expression through movement.
– You will create your own maps, drawings, texts, and images – traces of the process that you can return to long after the series ends.
– You will discover authentic creativity that comes from carefully listening to the body.
– You will experience the therapeutic function of dance and creativity. You will develop your ability to express yourself freely – through movement, words, and images.

Program

Meeting I – Introduction, Body Grounding, Resourcing

What supports me? What nourishes me? What resources do I have? These are the first questions we will pass through the body, allowing us to discover the space of inner support and our natural resources. As an introduction to the series, this meeting will help us ground ourselves and prepare for further work.

Meeting II – Map of Thoughts, Emotions, and the Body

In this meeting, we will explore how to express our thoughts and emotions through the body and how to give shape, character, and gesture to our physical state. We will learn how to transform everyday life and inner experiences into movement that releases them and into image and words that integrate them. In this meeting, we will also learn about the Aesthetic Response Process, a way of witnessing through presence and artistic expression.

Meeting III – Center of Life: Stories Recorded in the Pelvis

The pelvis is the center of movement, energy, and creativity. In this meeting, we will explore flow, softness, and expression, allowing the body to guide us. Towards creativity, and discovering the stories, images, and symbols stored in the pelvic area.

Meeting IV – Stories of the Heart: Chest and Integration

The chest is a space of openness, heart, and relationship with the world. It is an area that constantly responds to experiences and contact with others. During the final meeting, we will ask this body space what movement is expressed through it and what images or visions emerge within it.

Organizational Information

⏰️ 4 meetings
Tuesdays | 6:00 PM–7:30 PM
August 4, 11, 18, and 25

Price:
PLN 600 – registration by July 24
PLN 680 – after July 21

Place: KONTAKT, Space of Movement, Dance and Music, Szpitalna street 40, Kraków

Registration: mjburtan@gmail.com

No artistic or dance experience required. We invite creatives, dancers, artists of various disciplines interested in the healing and developmental functions of creativity, therapists interested in bodywork, and anyone interested in the topic.

About the instructor:

Magdalena Burtan — an artist working in the fields of dance theater, performing arts, and the development of human potential. She is interested in art as a response to the inner human condition and broader social, political, and cultural issues. She has been dancing since a young age, developing in various styles—from street forms, through flamenco, to contemporary dance. She has trained in Poland and abroad—in London, the United States, and Portugal. She participated in the Formação Olga Roriz program at Companhia Olga Roriz in Lisbon. She is a graduate of the L’ART Krakow Acting School, Queen Mary University of London, and the London School of Economics.

She is currently training in the Halprin Life/Art Process method at the Tamalpa Institute in San Francisco, California. Fascinated by the connections between dance, theater, art, depth psychology, and the development of human potential, she creates her life between Krakow and Lisbon.

www.magdalenaburtan.com
Instagram: @magdalena.burtan