From Tina Stromsted honoring Mary Starks Whitehouse

 I just taught an AM course for the Center for Movement Education and Research and honored Mary and her contributions, as well as her teachers, her Jungian studies, and some of the threads that wove through the development of her work, and beyond. 

As always, it was very moving to see people, both experienced and new, light up in the work, discovering more of a sense of being at home in their bodies, and in community.  

There’s a video with some footage of Mary teaching here in what was then the Creative Arts Therapy department at Lone Mountain College in the 1970s during the years that she lived and practiced in SF before she passed in 1979.

Though the footage is a bit grainy (as it was filmed informally by a student in the class) Joanna Harris (a local Dance/movement therapist who was the department chair at that time) saved it and later put it together with some interviews with some of the people who knew Mary, including some lovely reflections by Jane Downing, who shared her studio in LA.  My dear friend and colleague, Neala Haze (with whom I co-founded the Authentic Movement Institute in Berkeley, 1992-2004, who passed away in 2004) is one of the people interviewed, as is Dance therapist Cathy McFann.

Perhaps folks already know about it, but if not, it’s called Metamorphosis in Movement: Mary Whitehouse - a Video Retrospective and is a lovely remembrance, and a rare chance to see Mary teaching and to hear more about her life and work; available on the ADTA website for $25 

 http://www.adta.org/page-446836

There one can also find The Power of Movement, a Dance/movement therapy classic that includes Joan Chodorow working with a client using AM in psychotherapy, Janet Adler's film Still Looking which illustrates the development of her work at that time, Sandy Dibbell-Hope’s film, Moving Toward Health, on the healing that AM can contribute to women recovering from breast cancer, as well as films about working with children through movement by Rena Kornblum, and other educational DVDs; a great resource!