Voice Teachers
Voice Teachers 2010
Chrys Blanchard
Chrys is a freelance composer, choir leader and percussionist, whose professional work calls upon the great diversity of skills she has acquired after more than 25 years in the performing arts. She creates and directs projects, training and workshops for theatre, education, the health service and community groups. Chrys has a particular interest in sound healing, and the effects of sound and music in our lives. She runs 2 community choirs in Abergavenny, and various monthly drop-in groups, as well as guesting at other events.
On camp Chrys will be leading Find Your Voice sessions. In these she will create a safe space for people to explore the very root of how we make sound with our voices, finding our optimum resonance and building confidence as we build our voices.
Bruce Knight
Bruce Knight has been running singing workshops since 2000. He is known for his upbeat and energetic style, and his love of songs with simple dances or movement. Bruce runs the 100-strong Songlines community choir in Warwick and Leamington Spa, and is a regular teacher at the Unicorn Natural Voice Camp.
On camp this year Bruce will teach a couple of his favourite songs with the intention of sharing them at the informal “Sacred Arts Cabaret” on the last afternoon.
Su Lewis
I have been singing all my life. I am a member of the Natural Voice Practitioners Network and have been a natural voice teacher for 5 years. I am a regular voice teacher for Island Voices Community Choir on Portland in Dorset. I sing with two choirs and a women’s singing group, and write and arrange songs for small groups and choirs.
At the camp I will be leading some morning wake-up singing sessions. These relaxed and fun sessions are designed to wake the voice and body up gently, ready for the busy day ahead, and we will sing simple rounds and part songs.
Sarah Pennington
I have been singing since 1996 and teaching natural voice since 2001, with both small and large groups. I am a member of the Natural Voice Practitioners Network and co-founded Big Sing Dorset with Gilo.
My intention is always to create a safe space in which everyone can enjoy their voice and experience the magic of harmony singing and the sense of community that it can bring.
At the camp I will be leading some of the morning sessions, working with the Harmonic Temple, a body of harmonised chants written by Nickomo using mantras from various spiritual traditions for affirmation and healing - angelic sounds to summon up warmth and wonder.
Ralph Nimmann
Ralph leads a Taizé harmony singing group in Cambridge and is a member of the Cambridge Georgian choir CHELA. He also led the Berlin Chanting Group for 6 years.
“Ralph is wonderfully patient and takes great care to make sure that everyone feels included. …Ralph could get even the most hardened non-singer to surprise themselves.” (feedback from a Cambridge Taizé singer).
His teaching style could be described as “Sacred Fun”. Ralph especially loves leading peace dances sung in harmonies. Read more: http://www.rainbow-cambridge.org.uk/dances/
Ralph will be leading Taizé singing sessions at the camp.
Habiba Willow
Habiba has been involved with Dances of Universal Peace for over 20 years and leading them for most of that time. She was in at the start of the Peace Through the Arts camp, which subsequently evolved into the Sacred Arts Camp. She has also had a long connection with Sufism and its various practices.
Particularly in the last 8 years or so, the ancient Sanskrit prayers and mantras have inspired her a lot and been a regular part of her practice. Two of Habiba’s primary inspirations are Haidakhan Babaji and Amma, the hugging saint - but she will pick up Bhajans wherever she will!
At the camp Habiba and Buddhenath will offer Bhajan singing, accompanying the sessions on the Indian harmonium. Bhajans are devotional mantras in the Sanskrit language and have a very uplifting effect!
Filed under Information, People, Teachers, Voice | Comment (0)Dances of Universal Peace. The Dances and the Dance Leaders
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DUP leaders for 2010: Amida, Maite, Sylvia, Maris, Sandra, Jilani & Rabia
Jilani will be leading the musicians
Amida Harvey
My first experience of Dances of Universal Peace was profound. It was 1981 and the dance was Samual Lewis’s ‘Tis a Gift to be Simple’. At that point in time I was living a London life that was far from simple. I was busy, self-absorbed and felt disconnected from my truth. I found the sense of there being a ‘gift’ in simplicity deeply moving and as I let myself be taken by the dance, I experienced coming home into a form of spiritual connection that met a fundamental human longing in me
In 1983 my Sufi teacher Rabia Joyce Purcel handed me the large dance manual and instructed me to learn & lead these dances of peace. It was was very exciting and daunting and my initial training was trial and error as there where no teachers in the UK. I lead our local Sufi group for 2 years and in 1995 my good friend, Colin Harrison, invited me to lead the dances at the first Dance Camp Glastonbury. I remember my first public session on the Sunday evening. I led 150 people and at the end of the session I was swimming in bliss. People began to ask me if I would lead dance weekends in their town and this launched me into a full-time career teaching dance throughout the UK.
I have now been teaching the dances for 29 years. I acknowledge the ebb and flow of my interest and passion over those years, but have never felt anything less than a great honour and privilege to be part of the legacy that Samuel Lewis initiated. I am grateful for the richness of meeting and dancing with so many wonderful people and the opportunity to travel with the dances throughout our wonderful world.
In living the gift and grace that simplicity is, I am grateful to Rabia for seeing in me the potential to bring these dances to life in the UK. I hope, this is reflected in my role as dance director for the Sacred Arts Camp 2010.
Jilani
Jilani is a talented musician who has been playing viola for the Dances since 1997, and leading Dances since 2005. She has worked as a musician and teacher since 1989 and spent several years training as a healer beginning in 1994. Since meeting the Dances of Universal Peace, she has increasingly realised in them an opportunity to combine these skills. Her teaching style is clear and down-to-earth, light-hearted but powerful. People often comment on how heartfelt and moving her viola-playing and singing are. She is known for her lively, dynamic Dance-leading which attracts people of all ages to her Dance Circles. She has led Dances at camps in Wales, Yorkshire and the South of England since 2005, and has been invited to share Dances as far afield as Scotland and France, in addition to her regular groups near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. She is mother to three young boys, and with her husband Robert, they run their family home as a DUP retreat space called ‘The Heart Centre’.
Sophia Sylvia Murillo, Colombia, South America
I had the blessing to know the Dances in 1999 through Darvesha´s and Tara´s beautiful guidance. I was captivated by them when I danced the Kalama and knew this was what I wanted to do. I started leading and going to workshops where I had the opportunity of meeting different leaders. Each new meeting widened my horizons and deepened my commitment to this spiritual path. Then I was invited to go to different Spanish speaking countries to share the dances with the peoples of those lands. It has been an ongoing outreach program which continues to touch peoples hearts as I deepen in my own. Singing, dancing and praying … what a beautiful way to breath, walk and live.
Maris Warrior
Maris has been leading Dances of Universal Peace since 1995. Born in Estonia, Maris lived in Findhorn for over ten years since 1998, where she led regular DUP and Sufi circles, co-founded Shambala Retreat Centre and gave birth to two daughters.
Although a Sufi guide in her own right, she continues to be led and supported on the Sufi path by Murshid Saadi and Pir Shabda. She also has a deep connection with Tibetan Buddhism, guided by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Lhundrup in Nepal. Maris leads Dances of Universal Peace and Sufi events internationally, mainly in UK, Estonia and Sweden. She is passionate about kindling and nurturing the light in the soul of the Lovers of God in a soft and gentle, yet intoxicating manner.
Maite
During these years, I´ve danced in interfaith dialogue meetings, in churches, in schools, with groups of new consciousness, in squares, yoga centres and public parks in different locations throughout the whole of Spain. I feel privileged and honoured to share such Beauty… I also regularly invite Amida Harvey and Sylvia Murillo, my mentors, to come and share dances in my country. In August 2009, I organized the first camp of Art for Peace in Spain. I´m working with a wonderful team to organise the second event, in 2010.
My dream… “I wish the world danced, I wish that in every corner of our planet a circle of Dances of Universal Peace left it´s voice in the wind and brought the vibration and the certainty that all sentient beings (black, white, red, yellow or mixed races) belong to one family and have a single common home: the Mother Earth, beyond borders and languages”.
What are the Dances of Universal Peace?
These simple circle dances, which can be great fun and yet profoundly moving, are inspired by the wisdom and sacred phrases of the worlds’ spiritual traditions. Essentially they are a form of celebration and meditation through sacred sounds and devotional movements.
Through dancing together in a circle and singing sacred phrases such as Kyrie Eleison (Christian); Shalom Aleichem (Jewish); Om Namah Shivaya (Hindu); Kwan Zeon Bosai (Buddhist); La illaha il’ala (Islam) we create an atmosphere of peace and unity. “Words are not peace. Thoughts are not peace. Plans are not peace. Peace is fundamental…to all faiths, all religions, all spirituality.” Samuel L. Lewis.
The Dances of Universal Peace are based on individual experience and not concepts or premises. We come to know for ourselves peace, joy, harmony and unity; to experience more of ourselves and more of others. The Dances of Universal Peace offer a safe way to be open with other people; creating trust on a deep level. The Dances of Universal Peace are healing and revitalising. We feel more LIFE.
History of the Dances of Universal Peace
Originally created by Samuel L. Lewis (1896-1971) the dances were inspired by his Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan and American dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis. They were first danced in America in the late 1960s when Lewis was also in his late sixties. Lewis was acknowledged as a Sufi mystic and known by his students as Murshid S.A.M. (murshid is teacher). Additionally he was a lifelong practitioner of Zen Buddhism and a Zen Roshi, having studied for many years with Nyogen Sensaki; he had a Hindu guru, Papa Ram Dass; he taught Christian mysticism; and, Jewish by birth, was well versed in the Kabballah, Jewish mysticism.
Murshid S.A.M. also studied mystical and spiritual forms of dance throughout his life with Ruth St. Denis. He was a keen folk dancer and originally went dancing to overcome a sense of shyness. Following Hazrat Inayat Khan and the “Unity of religious ideals”, that the truth at the heart of all religions is the same truth, Lewis envisioned a dance form which would embody this ideal and which would allow people to directly experience for themselves such states as peace, joy, harmony and unity. He saw the Dances of Universal Peace as a form of “Peace through the arts”, a way of sharing the blessings of peace throughout the world and within each individual. Since then the dances have gradually spread throughout the world.
In 1982 Neil Douglas-Klotz set up the Center for the Dances of Universal Peace to further the work begun by Lewis and to help make the dances available to all people. Now called Peaceworks International Network for the Dances of Universal Peace, this registered non-profit organisation has members in 25 different countries. There is a U.K. Network for the Dances of Universal Peace affiliated to the International Network and membership is open to everybody.
Some of the Sacred Phrases used in the Dances of Universal Peace
While translations of the phrases are given below, many sacred phrases are capable of different meanings and different levels of meaning; and ultimately the meaning for each of us is how they resonate in our own being and what feelings and sensations arise. Really feel the sound in the body. Stay in the heart rather than the head. Other phrases you may find are strangely familiar.
Bismillah Er Rahman Er Rahim ( Arabic, Islam) - We begin in the name of Allah who is mercy and compassion. Or we begin by means of the Entire Unfolding Cosmos from whose womb is born the Sun and Moon of Love.
La illaha el Allah Hu, or La illaha il Allah Hu (Arabic, Islam) - There is no reality except the Oneness. Remembrance of the One Being.
Shem’a israel Adonai Elohaynu, Adonai Echad (Hebrew, Jewish) Hear O Israel the Lord our God is one Lord.
Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison (Greek, Christian) - Lord send mercy, Christ send mercy.
Abwoon d’Bwashmaya (Aramaic, Christian) - First line of the Lord’s Prayer. O Thou the Breathing Life of All, Creator of the Shimmering Sound that touches us.
Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram (Sanskrit, Hindu) - O God who is both truth and power, personal and impersonal, victory to thee, victory to thee. Also a call to victory for the spiritual self.
Kwan Zeon Bosai (Korean, Buddhist) - Kwan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion - She who hears the sounds of the world and accords them mercy. Bosai is Bodhisattva.
Om Mani Peme Hung (Tibetan, Buddhist) - Hail to the jewel in the lotus. This mantra embodies the compassion and blessings of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
“The Dances of Universal Peace change lives. And the world changes life by life. All over the earth people long for an alternative to the numbing effects of consumerism, to the fear of diversity that drives humanity apart. They long for an actual experience of reverence for the earth and life in all its forms. The dances show how.” Neil Douglas-Klotz.
For more information about The Dances of Universal Peace-
see www.dancesofuniversalpeace.org.uk
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