About me
As a little girl in the early sixties and long before mass tourism, my mother and I spent some years in Rhodes. Every Friday we took the bus to a small village called Kallithies, where everybody was dancing in the village square, and in my case until I fell asleep. After this early period however, dancing disappeared from my life for many years.
I have gained experience from a great variety of different kinds of dance throughout the years. However, not until my introduction to Circle Dance or Sacred Dance (known as Heliga danser in Sweden) did I finally arrive at a sense of homecoming or a feeling of belonging. This occurred in 1993 when I subsequently enrolled in the first training programme for teachers in Sweden, held by Maria Ronn. Since then I have been coached by a number of wise and interesting dance teachers such as Maria Gabriele Wosien, Judy King, Nanni Kloke, Ursula Hasenburg and Laura Shannon ...in particular I have participated in several of the intense training years/sessions offered by the latter. I have also done two rounds of The Dancer Within, offered by Nanni Kloke and Judy King and a lot more dancing with them.
I have offered a Teacher Training Programme for prospective dance leaders in Lund/Malmö for almost thirty years, from basics to a deepening intensive year as well as shorter training workshops. In addition to this I also offer workshops and seminars, as well as dance holidays every year in which the focus will be on in-depth understanding of dance.
At the centre of my dance work you will find symbols, myths, stories and tales, archeology, history, cultural history and meditation, developed and evolved from my experiences throughout life as a philosophy student, verger, research student of literature, teacher of analytical philosophy and gardener: theory mixed with practice through dance.
Having contemplated the aspects of time and culture in relation to dance for many years, my most personal interest or passion remain the inheritance of patterns and stories of life and living, carried and translated by generation upon generation of dancers throughout the centuries.This is surely what will assist and guide all of us alive today and dancing.
The basic starting point of my work is the conviction that dance has a healing and spiritual dimension where body and soul/spirit cannot be separated. Dance is not only a means of expression but an original and internal human need.
Ritual movements of the body and music as well as other means of expression all developed from dance. My dance work is based on the circle and traditional dances of the people of many periods and cultures. It presumes a conviction that knowledge and insight can be mediated through dancing without necessarily having to be “understood” or be cerebral. For more than twenty years dance instructors have been trained in Sweden but Sacred Dance and Circle Dancing have a history far more extensive. “Dance Knowledge” communicates the inheritance of traditions, styles, stories and deep wisdom. Increasingly we get more and more opportunities to explore and deepen our understanding of the sometimes centuries old inheritance of knowledge and traditions and how they matter to us who are dancing today. Through our dances we can move all over the world, encounter and experience different dance traditions, explore patterns, history, background, culture, symbols, the reactions in our bodies and the responses of other dancing peoples. Our own dance work acquires depth through the experiences of all those who danced before us. They are encoded in the dances for which we now are responsible. We grow.
My working languages are Swedish, English and occasionally German. On the "workshops" page you might find short summarys in English. If not, please just ask me to translate. If something looks interesting, please don't hesitate to get in contact for more information.
I live in Malmo, Sweden and in Molyvos, Lesbos, Greece and you can reach me via pia@pialamberth.se