Patricia Brown lives in mid-coast Maine on a 150-year-old farm, known as Rolling Meadows Retreat Center, where she teaches retreats and with her husband, Surya, stewards the land.
Bethany Murray
Bethany Murray is an artist, photographer and teacher whose practice is based on the body and the natural world. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in numerous fine art photography collections.
Sarah Skinner Kilborne
Sarah S. Kilborne is an author, performance artist, and equal rights activist. She is creator and principle performer of the acclaimed show The Lavender Blues: The Story of Queer Music Before World War II.
A Garden of Artists and Exciting News
Like the summer season, the Watermark Arts galleries are in full flower. With pleasure, we welcome the poetry of Patricia Brown (Maine), the photography of Bethany Murray (UK), and the vocal artistry of Sarah Skinner Kilborne (Hudson Valley, NY). Scroll down and stroll through our garden of new artists and their sensory-rich offerings!
We also bring exciting news: all four of our digital Watermark Arts Journal issues will soon be available in print! We hope the Journals will enhance your library, and those of loved ones, for years to come.
The first in person workshop at Dharmakaya Center for Wellbeing (July 30 – Aug 1) is fully enrolled. I am looking forward to sharing My Body, The Wetland with an illustrious group of experienced Continuum movers.
Registration is open for Continuum Explorations (September 17 – 19), the next opportunity to gather in person at this new, serene retreat center nestled in Pine Bush, NY, in the Shawangunk Mountains outside of New Paltz, NY. It will be the perfect time of year to commune with the glory of Fall, when the forested mountainside of Dharmakaya will be steeped in yellow, gold, orange, and red leaves. Join us!
Here is to the flowering within you and around you,
Elaine Colandrea & Watermark Arts Creative Team
The Watermark Arts Creative Team
Elaine Colandrea, Artistic Director | Prue Jeffries, Creative Director | Sandra Capellaro, Galleries Administrator | Rori Smith, Editor & Writer |
Read the newsletter here.
Celebrating the convergence of Continuum and dance
Dear Friends,
In this month when I celebrate 66 years of life, I am intrigued by the spiral form of the number 6. Spirals allow a pathway on which an organism may develop while staying close to a central source of nourishment.
For me, movement expression is that sustaining source – my root, my life-long umbilical cord, my place of origin. A few decades ago, Continuum and dance merged in my world. This confluence is the sacred realm in which I am most alive, whole, and at one with the creative flow of life itself.
I trace this line of my ancestry to founder of Continuum, Emilie Conrad (1934 – 2014), who was also born in the month of June. Emilie was a dancer whose quest to know life through movement birthed the process called Continuum. In the last months of her life, Emilie shared with me her thoughts on the power of creativity to enhance each of our life experiences, which became “The Spirit Soars,” included below.
My passionate interest in the convergence of Continuum and dance is shared with a community of movers, some of whom have generously shared their insights in interviews and dances included in this mailing.
Lastly, included is a new essay on the many ways Continuum can be a foundational practice for dancers, and all moving bodies.
In this season when nature is so visibly expressive, I am pleased to share this bounty with you.
Let’s all spiral onward together,
Elaine
Watermark Arts Artistic Director
Read the newsletter here.
Workshops at the Dharmakaya Retreat Center
Gathering safely in an idyllic landscape.
Watermark Arts has been invited to a new mountain top retreat location in Cragsmoor NY, in the company of oxygen rich forests.
With a spacious outdoor pavilion, currently under construction, where Continuum movers can safely practice, as well as a vast indoor studio.
Revel in the expansive quiet of the natural landscape; our gathering will be the only workshop meeting at Dharmakaya.
Farm to table vegetarian cuisine, prepared and served with enhanced health and safety precautions, for all workshop participants. Serene private rooms available. Commuters welcome.
To allow for physical spacing group size will be very limited.
July 30 – August 1st
My Body, The Wetland: A Somatic Movement Workshop
with Elaine Colandrea, Continuum Guide
The somatic movement practice of Continuum opens the door to experiencing the tangible reality of connection and wholeness deeply rooted in nature. Based on biological awareness and the primacy of the fluid system as the connecting thread uniting humans and the planet, this program combines fluid movement with Continuum breath and sound explorations. Students will learn to work with their own health and wellbeing, gaining awareness of the parallels between caring for themselves and for the environment.
September 17 – 19
Continuum Explorations: Dissolve. Dwell. Discover.
With Elaine Colandrea, Continuum Guide
Dissolve habits of mind and tensions of body with the Continuum process of breathing, sounding and fluid movement. Dwell in the liquid pool of being, universally available to everyone.
Discover your own stream of vitality, renewal, self care and creative living. In this program you will work with your own health and wellbeing, connecting with nature’s life force; it’s the perfect antidote to today’s overly programmed and homogenized world.
See you in the countryside!
Treasures: Past, present and future
From the new Watermark Arts newsletter:
Moving beyond pandemic fatigue by deepening engagement with living art processes is our inquiry of the moment. We offer you past, present and future treasures from our endeavors to support you as you move with what is.
Feeling a sense of belonging is nourishing. Belonging = longing to be.
In this present moment:
Sense yourself inhaling through the pores of your skin, which cover every surface of your body. Sense yourself exhaling through the pores of your skin. Lower or close your eyes for this exploration.
Upcoming Continuum retreats this July and September at Dharmakaya in Cragsmoor, NY are future treasures. This idyllic retreat center may be the most perfect setting for Continuum movers to gather for soul satisfying, heart supportive, tissue releasing, Covid-safe practice for overall well-being.
Presenting artist and Continuum teacher Barbara Mindell’s complete body of paintings – new to our galleries – is a treasure from the past. Steep yourself in artistry delivered from the process of Continuum.
Our hope is to support your creative flourishing in all times!
The Watermark Arts Creative Team
Elaine Colandrea, Artistic Director | Prue Jeffries, Creative Director | Sandra Capellaro, Galleries Administrator | Rori Smith, Editor & Writer |
Featured Artist: Barbara Mindell
Sharing the complete collection of Barbara Mindell’s paintings at Watermark Arts is an honor.
Visit Barbara’s gallery.
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- Photo of Barbara Mindell, Hanna Heiting
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- Despair
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- Primary Perception
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- Earth Runner
Teeming with Life
The Spring 2021 Watermark Arts Newsletter is here.
“Peepers are back. Spring has sprung:
What an awe-inspiring tribute to water.
Gorgeous – every piece of dance, poetry, and song. Moving me to tears.”
What an awe-inspiring tribute to water.
Gorgeous – every piece of dance, poetry, and song. Moving me to tears.”
~ Bea Ehrsam’s response to the March 21st Watermarkings.
After the multidisciplinary performance dedicated to water, the world-wide audience danced together to Frank Carbone’s To Listen is to Love, a beautiful theme to carry in each of our lives. View or review the performances of Watermarkings at your pleasure! Below you will also find the World Water Law video, which highlights an important global citizen initiative to protect water.
Next up, you can find us presenting The Elemental Nature of the Body and What is Refuge? at the World Dance Alliance Conference and Virtual Assembly. Scroll down to learn more about the conference theme Ecologies of and Through the Body and to join us.
As Spring breaks through, the new season makes visible the growth and creativity we are dedicated to sharing with you!
With excitement,
The Watermark Arts Creative Team
Elaine Colandrea, Artistic Director | Prue Jeffries, Creative Director | Sandra Capellaro, Galleries Administrator | Rori Smith, Editor & Writer |
World Dance Alliance Conference
The World Dance Alliance Conference will be held this year virtually, April 22 – 29. This year’s theme is Ecologies of and through the Body.
Watermark Arts will be participating in the conference with a workshop entitled “The Elemental Nature of the Body: A Continuum Workshop.”
Craft an embodied understanding of the four elements, Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, through the somatic awareness practice of Continuum. Continuum breath, sound, and fluid movement slow perception, so that sensations from deep within our living tissues emerge, leading to a sense of wholeness and belonging with nature.
By investigating the vital chemistry of all life, we can move with empowerment, creativity, and courage, manifesting meaningful contributions in the world.
We will tune into our bodies through guided breathing and sounding practices. This preparation will lead to the exploration of movement patterns from nature – spiral and waves, folding and unfolding, branching, and more. This class is appropriate for and inclusive of all bodies and all levels of movement experience.
What is Refuge?
Additionally the site specific dance film, What is Refuge? Che Cose il Refugio?, was accepted into the World Dance Alliance Online Concert Program. This collaboration between dancer Elaine Colandrea, film maker Prue Jeffries and composer Morena Boschetto examines the timely concept of refuge. Filmed in a Unesco World Heritage site in Matera, Italy.
