Open Floor is a fun, no-steps-to-learn dance practice that offers so much more. It is a moving meditation and resource-based therapeutic practice inviting profound insight and engagement with many aspects of our being in the world. We move and include our bodies’ familiar and unfamiliar physicality. We build capacity to be present with whatever arises, moment to moment. We recognize that whatever arises on the dance floor and through creativity is a reflection of what is moving in life. Let’s Dance!
The Fundamentals
Open Floor practice works with 10 universal movements that we call Core Movement Resources. They are resources because they contribute to embodied emotional intelligence, capacity to be present, and resilience. We add subtlety, fluidity, and differentiation by focussing awareness through four dimensions of embodiment and four relational hungers. As students, teachers, and an international school of practice, Open Floor is committed to a radical responsibility for self at every level. We are always in practice.
The 10 Core Movement Resources:
Pause
Centre
Ground
Expand and Contract
Toward and away
Vector
Spacial awareness
Activate and Settle
Release
Majero Bouman
Majero is a writer, an embodiment researcher, a mother, an artist, and a life-long dancer. Majero’s life changed course from researching and teaching cultural theory literature and writing to being pregnant with triplets, then twins. A life-long dancer, this new physically and emotionally demanding experience lead her to a diversity of Mindful Embodiment Practices. In 2017, she became a working member of Open Floor International and graduated as an Open Floor teacher in 2019.
Majero merges the intellectual with the inspirational in her work in service to cultural transformation, community responsibility, and self-awareness. Her students appreciate the grit, substance, and inspiration she brings to her teaching. She is committed to making her workshops accessible to people from all walks of life: the ordinary and the unconventional, those who create, write, or dance, and those who never knew they could.
The 4 by 4 weave:
4 Dimensions of embodiment:
Physical
Emotion
Mind
Soul
4 relational hungers:
Solitude
Partnership
Group Belonging
Spirit
Open Floor International is a charitable organization committed to dynamic governance and open source.
Courses, Conference Presentations,
and Credentials
2022: Foundations in Somatic Abolitionism. Education in Racial Equity. With Resmaa Menakem and Carlin Quinn
2021: In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Recovers from Trauma. Embody Lab. With Peter Levine
2021: “Be/Longing in the Digital Divide: A Mimetic Play for Somatic Intimacy.” PostHuman Mimesis: Embodiment, Affect, Contagion. Homo Mimeticus
2021: Process Group. Therapy in Motion. with Andrea Juhan
2019: Emotional Intelligence and the Open Floor Core Movement Resources. Advanced Training Programme Open Floor International. With Sarah Davies and Andrea Juhan
2017-2019: Open Floor Teacher Training
2010: ABD PhD (undefended)
2003: MA
1997: BA Hon.