In order to define my interest in the ASTTP I must go back to the past.

Because of an early fascination with communication, I have dedicated most of my life to the study of foreign languages, literatures and cultures. I always had a desire to move and at the age of 5 I started to practice artistic gymnastics, followed by artistic skating, snow boarding, judo, aerobics (!). This notwithstanding, intellectual work won a bigger and bigger place in my life – the dualistic, Christian back ground of my society had a quite big influence on my soft soul and body.

Around the age of 24 I discovered movement/dance as a language: I went par hazard to see a performance and I was amazed how dancers were able to “tell” profound emotions without speaking, they were not reproducing a reality they were creating a new one. Those dancers were not dancers “like usual” - thin and tall: the prima ballerina had big tits and the main male dancer was older, carrying a belly with dignity - not everything was esthetically oriented to a known model. My clear wish was: I want to find someone who can teach me how to do that, communicate through movement.

I attended jazz classes and modern classes: this was not what I was looking for. I also found good work, for example the work by Giovanni Di Cicco: he speaks a language that I´m more and more able to feel. Though my body was resting and refusing to enjoy the inner and outer space, the dynamic flow was blocked by my strong brain.

When I first met Axis Syllabus in 2001 I felt that this is going to change my life: I lost orientation, I cried, I laughed. I had huge blues on all the places which are not suggested as “landing pads”, It was clear that a lot of work was needed to let emotions flow freely through the body and to be able to give it back to the word, to communicate while moving…I get excited if I even only thing about the magic of that!

I´m a hard worker and have a deeply curious spirit so I made myself on the way with Axis Syllabus as a tool and Frey Faust as a mentor. My deep motivation: communication and spiritual development. The first short-time goals were to get my foot arch back, to rearrange my whole weight distribution and anatomic architecture. It took four years: a good patience training for my whole life path and a baggage of knowledge about the process related to the development of new movement habits.

The soft, quite, deep reaching yoga classes by Elise Raltson and the Kinomichi training were and are good practices when I could not attend Axis classes. The second step was to learn the flow, the harvesting of kinetic energy, the truly dynamic movement; this is still in process though a lot changed in the last year. I feel that the dynamic flow of movement carries emotions through the body and out into the world: muscular vibrations as “message carriers”. Dance is a language; choreography is a complex, open code, a lively idiom (in the sense of language of the self). I start to feel deep inspiration in composing movement, the same i feel while writing or translating a poetic text (the only difference is that I do not have back pain after three hours of work).

The ASTTP is for me a space to learn how to compose fluent movement sequences with the wish of communicating emotional states, social relationships, my past, my world view... Moreover i´m interested in the pedagogical concept related to the AS: respect for each student in his/her learning path, no routine in building up a class concept, the sustain to a collaborative working atmosphere in class, the trust in the intelligence and sensibility of each human being in the management of a common space and a common time, the allowing of alternation between chaos and order, the significance of the process and not of the result, the basic idea that art and dance don´t have to relate solely to esthetic models, rather to the respect of personal and collective wellbeing and open minds. 

I wish to be able to apply all these pedagogical principles in those entire situations where I might share my knowledge with other human beings, keeping that feeling that the research never ends, or we are dead.

Now to synthesize:  learn how to develop anatomically kinesthetically logical movement material and learn how to apply those AS pedagogical principles in a common exchange space as the ASTTP is and wish to be, I think. As usual i´m more interested in the process (of becoming a teacher) than in the result of it, when I first thought about entering the ASTTP I was not sure if I will teach one day, I was more willing to study deep and deeper, from new perspectives; one month ago I was given the chance by Frey Faust to work with AS in the context of an “Axis Syllabus Working Group”.

I think something happened: the development of material for the group, the look for favorite music and the sharing with the participants are giving me a deep joy. So, thinking further in the future and welcoming my huge wish of developing a personal artistic, choreographic language, I would like one day to combine in my class the work on AS with a research of a personal movement vocabulary, allowing the students to build up a own language, with her/his grammar and syntax: a theatrical creative laboratory where AS is the tool. This is a long way, joy is my friend.

Here I would like to enumerate the changes happening in my life after some years of AS practice:

• physically (from a complete flat foot to an arch, from a closed to an open thoracic spine, from a completely non functional posture to an acceptable anatomical architecture, from a superficial to a deeper sensibility for body wishes, messages, processes, states…)
• emotionally (an opening process towards the everyday learning experience; acceptance of limits and joy about the word beyond; positive, constructive relation with personal inherited fears)
• socially (friendships with special people gathered in a healthy community, the acceptance of others´ limits and a sustaining approach to them; strengthening process of general constructive social skills which are of basic significance for professional life too)
• intellectually ( the development of a free, intuitive way of  handling with written material in my work as a translator).

The AS and my dance related to it sustained me in developing my strength and manage my weaknesses. The AS is keeping me in a continuous dialogue with reality.

Of course I wish to share all this with as many people as I can, possibly also in class as a teacher.

Yours

Elisa Ricci

Elisa was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1974. She carries a university degree in modern languages and a diploma as translator. Several grants allowed her to travel and live abroad. Since 1995 she works as a free lance translator in the cultural field. She collaborates with important cultural realities in Europe as the Nomadic College, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Almatanz/Adriana Borriello. She is co-founder of the cultural association Corpi in Danza (Genoa, Italy) a co-director of the Contemporary Dance Festival Corpi in Danza. She performs and collaborates with Scalo Veld(t)Veer (I), Ligia Soares (P) and Ten Pen Chi Art Labor/Yumiko Yoshioka (D/J). Since 2001 she is a regular student of the Axis Syllabus, in November 2005 she entered the Axis Syllabus Teacher Training.