Traces on the Body:
Last January, Hiie Saumaa hosted a month-long residency program with the L’AiR Arts residency.
She reflects on the workshop that took place at the Institute in a recent blog entry on their website.
“One of these was a joyous and liberating embodied dance class at Columbia University’s interdisciplinary Institute for Ideas and Imagination located at Reid Hall in the sixth arrondissement of Paris, in Montparnasse. We danced in the Institute’s seminar room, usually reserved for the fellows – a group of fifteen Columbia scholars and international artists in residence at the Institute for an academic year. In this space, lit brightly by the sunlight coming in through the large windows, the fellows exchange ideas about their projects, manuscripts, and musical compositions. For an hour, this room turned into a lively place for ideas and imagination but received and practiced through dance, in movement. We mixed simple choreography, free dance, playfulness, and sensitivity toward how we felt physically, emotionally, and mentally. There was energy, joy, tears of relief, connection, community, sweat, and laughter.”