How do we want to perform together? Which dimensions of our selves can participate in asking this question, and thereby in enacting its answer? My life today is a mash up, a fusion, an ongoing lab with art, ritual, and creative integration (via a 20+ year career in the performing arts [dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, performance artist, show boy]) functioning as an historical base for leadership, interpersonal dynamics, team building, qualitative research, postmodern community-oriented performance, and transformative learning (“catharsized” via my Ph.D. program in Learning and Change in Human Systems at the California Institute of Integral Studies). I danced in the States, Mexico, Europe, Scandinavia, and Israel (with and for the likes of Twyla Tharp, the American Dancemachine, Ron Field, Philippe Découfflé, the Pet Shop Boys). Now I “dance” (quotation marks implying that the pirouettes are fewer but the actual bending of joints is still part of the mix, though listening, feeling, conceiving, responding, playing, drawing, and collaborating are in much bigger proportions to flexing, arching, and wiggly-swooshing) in institutions of higher learning (faculty for the MA in Leadership program at St. Mary’s College of California, facilitator for the Interpersonal Influence and Leadership course at Stanford), with companies like Kellogg’s and EDF Energy through Have More Fun (for whom I head the “body” arm — and I love the corporeality of that phrase!), in independent/custom events for private celebrations, and in activist (HIV/AIDS, antiracism, and LGBT) communities. Dreamfish for me is a cool co-asker of the question above, about how we “do” us — together. I love the scope of what we hold in our work, and of both who we are and who we, potentially, serve. Keeping the imagination alive, the heart open, and breath full, we innovatively care about (all of) our membership in multiple facets of our struggling (yet awesome) world, helping bring change for more creative solutions, sustainability, and human flourishing.

 

Paul Loper's Blog