KA® is a way for you to discover a non-invasive way to make your body strong, healthy, and flexible through your growing exploration and understanding of the many coordinating systems of your body/mind.

>> read more about Kinetic Awareness® (KA) on Wikipedia
>> start reading the article "The Use of Balls in Kinetic Awareness" by Dr. Jill Green

TEACHER CERTIFICATION PROGRAM April 1st  until June 3rd Tuesday evenings, 6-8 pm   537 Broadway, 2nd floor New York NY 10012 (between Prince & Spring street) become a certified teacher of Kinetic Awarenss® new introductory course taught by Elaine Summers (originator) with Meg Chang and guest teachers for the full pre-requisites and the complete certification programme, please see 'Certification' for specific questions or to register please call Meg Chang (212) 279-2678 or send an e-mail __________________   regular KA-classes at 537 Broadway starting again Tuesday April 1st 10-12 & Wednesday April 2nd 11.30-1.30

KA & PERFORMANCE IN 2007   by Elaine Summers Dance & Film Company commissioned by Lincoln Center for Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors 2007 performers: Pauline Oliveros & musicians, Alison Knowles, Carman Moore & musicians, SHUA Group, Kiori Kawai, Taketo Shimada, Dale Andree, Anne Hurley, Harriet Bograd, Jessica Higgins, Meg Chang, Thomas Körtvélyessy & many, many, many more joined through 6 multiple video-projections by the dancers recorded on the original video of Flowing Rocks / Still Waters (1986) for a complete listing of all performers & production staff + the forthcoming video-trailer click here to visit the project-page on www.elainesummersdance.com

Kinetic Awareness is a system of body discovery and therapy that calls attention to the simplest components of movement and explores emotional attitudes toward the body. Because one of its special features is the use of graduated rubber balls to enhance body awareness and release excess muscular tension, Kinetic Awareness is often affectionately referred to as "the ball work".

The complete course of study takes several years and has five parts:
1. By the end of the first phase, the student has become aware of each part of the body and is able to articulate it. It should be possible to move each part of the body slowly and with little tension.
2. In the second phase, one becomes aware of total body systems such as breathing, circulation, tension, etc. The student should be able to articulate slowly and with little tension more than one part of the body simultaneously.
3. The student should be able to change speeds and move extremely slowly
through all his/her speeds too the very most rapid.
4. The third phase incorporates the first three phases and adds to them the
ability to change tension levels at will from minimum to maxim tension.
5. The fifth phase combines the previous four and adds the ability to relate to another person and be aware of them in a performance.

The Kinetic Awareness Center's present project is, through study and research, to discover and describe the parameters (possibilities and limitations) of the human movement system's ability to maintain health, to implement injury prevention, and to discover the kinds of injuries which can recuperate through movement and by understanding the limitations and the effectiveness of the body's own kinesthetic ability to heal injuries.

Kinetic Awareness as a system of discovery of the body/mind's integration and understanding of the language of the body is now over 35 years in practice. We have been keeping both experiential and empirical records of the abilities, effectiveness and limitations of the body's movement systems in healing, protecting and maintaining health.
We wish to sustain exchange between other systems of work, study, and research. There are many systems that view through different facets effective ways of understanding the human body's kinesthetic power.
I am looking forward to continuing our plans & hopes with our Sunday conferences. They are a way of developing integrative research and exchange using empirical, experiential, and allopathic methods.
Thanks for sending your recent research for our integrative, exploratory Body/Mind research!!!!!!!!

Who originated Kinetic Awareness?
Kinetic Awareness was developed by dancer/choreographer Elaine Summers in the 1960's. Her dance career was interrupted at an early age when she began to show symptoms of osteoarthritis, a potentially crippling disease of the joints. As a result, she became interested in learning how to move without pain so that she could continue dancing. During this period, she studied with Carola Speads, whose system of Physical Re-education evolved from the work of bodywork innovator, Elsa Gindler.

Congratulations to Trisha Brown for her elegant new book: "Dance and Art in Dialogue 1961-2001" Amazon link, Barnes and Noble link
U.S. DANCE AND VISUAL ARTS; COMPOSING STRUCTURE
BY Marianne Goldberg essay pages 29 to 44

Brown released the dancer's "set," a particular tensile way of holding the body in the forties and fifties, which she had learned through studies at Mills and at the Merce Cunningham Studio after she arrived in New York in 1961. Through Alexander and also intensive, long-term study of another emerging form, Kinetic Awareness, founded by the Judson choreographer and filmmaker Elaine Summers, Brown began to initiate movement from very different kinesthetic knowledge. These newly surfacing somatic ideas offered alternatives to how to hone her body for dancing. She shed the stylized use of her muscles and the tensile alertness through the spine and skin. Focusing instead on subtleties of elegant, relaxed alignment of her spine and limbs, she moved with ease and a spatial clarity that stemmed from innovative inner imagery. Brown looks at home physically in these moves, and a different virtuosity and creativity emerged, grounded in anatomically clear and efficient action. New sensations, perceptions, and energy developed within her body and between body, space, time, and geometry. These changes became a technical breakthrough for dance in America. They separated many in the sixties and seventies generation from others who stayed with Cunningham or Graham techniques. Brown's in-depth new studies did become major catalysts for creating her own movement. When she formed her company in the early seventies, she chose performers who also reconceived the human structure and the meaning of physical skill.

Published by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., 2002. Page 30

About Elaine Summers: originator of Kinetic Awareness (the ball work) MA. NYU, MIT (Center for Advanced Visual Studies) Fellow, Fulbright Scholar…"

"There are many applications and levels of Summers' Kinetic Awareness work. Most individuals, including those who eventually incorporate Kinetic Awareness into their own work, initially come to study because they have an injury or other problem with their bodies. Training and maintaining the body is the central concern of dancers and the reason why many major dancers in New York have ended up on Summers' floor. KA does not substitute one system of movement for another, but by learning how the body works-physically, physiologically and psychologically---students can reclaim their bodies as their own. …Trisha Brown believes all dancers should study with Summers because of the sensitivity to the body Summers' training imparts and Summers' ability to analyze error in dance movement.

"Summers uses anatomy and kinesiology to help students connect their subjective experiences with objective understanding of physical structure and function…. KINETIC. AWARENESS should find a place in every body therapist's library and in the classrooms of movement educators…".