LEANNIE AALGAARD

On behalf of Blue Egg Entertainment, I am honoured to be producing this retreat workshop and again be collaborating with Raïna and Wendy. When working with artists my interest is always the mind-body-spirit connection and freedom from thought domination. I am an entrepreneur, producer, coach and artist. I could say that my education and involvement in the physical and performing arts began when my life began; I am a fifth generation dancer and forever grateful to have been born into a family that espoused the value of the arts. Through my company, Blue Egg® and its training division, I have been designing and producing integrated training programs in collaboration with artists and teachers for seven years. BLUE EGG® has provided training to hundreds of students. I am proud of the success of both our training and the students who have achieved successes that include: guest starring roles on television series, cast in touring productions of Broadway musicals, performed live on CiTR Radio, founded successful dance-based performance art touring company, award-winning Fringe Festival shows, launched careers as dancers, actors, singer-songwriters, and teachers. As well as acceptance into competitive university theatre arts programs at Columbia University, Capilano University and Toronto Film School.

Scott Rodrigue

Scott Rodrigue is a psychophysical movement researcher, collaborative theatre maker, and facilitative artist who has been training in Grotowski and experimental performance techniques for the past decade. He is currently based in Philly where he has been co-presented by Plays & Players Theatre as a performing artist, and The Whole Shebang as a teaching artist. In March he will perform Elli in Shepard's Curse of The Starving Class as his inaugural role with EgoPo Classic Theatre. In NYC he was Co-Artistic Director of AliveWire Theatrics (2009-2013), alongside playwright & collaborator Chana Porter. The company held artistic residencies at Dixon Place, Space on White, and Cave home of Leimay. In NYC his work has been presented as part of Jeffery Jones' Little Theatre at Dixon Place, Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre's Theatre Jam, Primary Stages' studios, La Mama ETC, and PS122's former 9th St. Theatre. In addition to the staff and guest teachers at ALIVE BODY Scott has trained directly under, Anne Bogart and SITI Company, Rena Mirecka, Stephen Wangh and the faculty of Acrobatics of the Heart, Jonathan Hart, Mary Overlie, Jean-René Toussaint, Massimiliano Balduzzi, and Mario Biagini.

Guest Teacher

LINDA PUTNAM

Linda is the founder and artistic director of Evergreen Theater and School. She has been a performing member of many theater companies, including New World Theater, Reality Theater, Theater Workshop Boston, Appleseed Traveling Circus, New York Free Theater, and Gut Theater of Harlem. She has been invited to perform in various festivals and has received several awards for acting. She has authored two ensemble plays and three solo pieces. Her teaching career spans more than forty years during which time, in addition to directing a full-time acting school, she has taught residencies at Baltimore Theater Project, Skidmore College, Naropa Institute, Smith College, Simon Fraser University, The Canadian National Voice Intensive, Women In View (Vancouver and Boston), and Mascall Dance Society, among others. She has taught workshops for a long list of theater and dance companies, and has acted as a performance coach for numerous individuals and companies. She received an MFA in Theater from New York University in 1968. She studied with Peter Kass, Lloyd Richards, Andre Gregory, Jerzy Grotowski, and Kristin Linklater, among others. Her teaching is a blend of physical acting techniques and traditional acting methodology.

David MacMurray Smith

David MacMurray Smith is an independent educator with 45 years of professional experience in the areas of Theatre, Ballet, Opera, Mime, and Clown. He is a movement specialist and experienced counselor whose special interest is in how memory moves and patterns itself through our bodies and affects our perceptions, behavior, and communication. His experience drew him to develop his own body-centered, humanist approach to personal and professional development through creative studies in the psychology of human performance; very often collectively focused through the convention of Clown. David was the Associate Director and Head Instructor at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre School, Movement Director for the Music Theatre and Opera Programs at the Banff Centre of the Arts, Program Director and Core Trainer for the Ensemble Training Program of Full Circle: First Nations Performance, and 20 years on faculty in the Douglas College Theatre Program. He is a Founding Faculty member and instructor in the Expressive Arts Therapy Training Program through Langara College Continuing Education, Co-Creator, and Director with the award winning James and Jamsey comedy clown duo, and runs his own courses through Fantastic Space Enterprises, which he founded in 1995 to assist in expanding dimensions in self knowledge and communication.

Christina Hughes

The body is the vehicle, the container, the sensory and molecular memory of the unconscious internal self. When we move the body, we open the gateways to our own life force, to our hearts, to our psyche, to our most authentic selves where an infinite well of love abides, waiting, beckoning for our attention, for the blissful moment of recognition and resurrection into the ecstatic fullness of our being.  - Christina Hughes 2018

Christina received her Master’s Degree in Applied Theatre in Education and the Community at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London University in 2018 where her studies culminated in a body of work, expanding her praxis in physical theatre into diverse communities at large. Her pedagogy deeply rooted in facilitating  pathways for personal and social development to nurture deeper and more inclusive understandings of ourselves, the ‘other’ and the ever expanding cultural diversity in our societies. The creative process offering opportunities for connection, bonding, intimacy and community through the mutuality of storytelling underpins how theatre offers a platform to foster inter-related avenues of personal and cultural understanding, learning and inclusive ideologies, contributing, I propose, on a larger scale, to a more harmonious and richer existence within oneself and in the world. My praxis aims to engage participants in multi-disciplinary, creative processes to forge learning pathways through understanding and compassion of themselves and others.

Christina received her BA in Theatre at The Experimental Theatre Wing, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University with a focus on Grotowksi’s Physical Theatre Training Methods and Devised Theatre practices in movement, voice and writing. 

Christina has worked extensively as a performer and director in the Theatre-Dance and multi-disciplinary theatre genres in New York and Los Angeles and now resides in Kent where she teaches movement and devised theatre to youth at the Trinity Theatre in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK. 

Whether devising new pieces or re-imagining existing work she is drawn to creating pieces which originate from the interests and concerns of her students and participants. Facilitating through an inclusive, participatory, and collaborative praxis is at the heart of her work; with an emphasis on interdisciplinary mediums to promote dynamic workshops where students/participants can learn from one another in a supportive, co-creative and encouraging forum. Recent projects include devising socio-political engaged work with the Wallis Youth Theatre Company at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles and an Intergenerational Community Theatre piece highlighting the African Diaspora for the Rapport Theatre Festival in Brixton, U.K. with Boal practitioner and activist , Tony Cealy.

Additionally, Christina is a certified Kundalini Yoga and Meditation Teacher, working as an International Retreat Project Manager and Lead Yoga Instructor for Aslan Institute/Sacred Service in Minnesota, USA as well as a Youth Theatre Instructor at Trinity Center for Theatre and the Arts.

Her passions in Yoga and Theatre are symbiotic and have nurtured each other throughout the years. She loves facilitating, directing , devising and exploring  the multi-faceted and infinitely layered story that is the human condition in diverse communities to create and elevate self-awareness, vitality, self-empowerment and wholeness.

Christina is Half Spanish from Alicante, Spain and Half American from Johnson City, Tennessee, USA.

Designers

Photographer

RebecCa Maceachern

Gabriella Minnes Brandes

Gabriella Minnes Brandes, Ph.D. has been teaching the Alexander Technique for over 30 years and is currently teaching the Technique both in the Theatre Department at Capilano University and at the Alexander Technique Centre in Vancouver. Gaby also teaches in the Young Artists Program at the Vancouver Opera, and at the Pender Island Flute Retreat. Gaby works extensively in collaboration with musicians, voice, movement and acting instructors. Gaby’s workshops and private lessons are experiential, focusing on the application of the Alexander Technique in different contexts.  She encourages students to explore, experiment with, and reflect on their habitual patterns, and seek effective and efficient ways of using themselves in any activity that they take on.  Much of Gaby's current work and research focuses on exploring the connections between Alexander Technique and creativity as it pertains to performers. For more information see http://alexandertechniquecentre.ca