The Score had the opportunity to speak with Open Floor teacher and Art in Motion (AIM) circle Operational Lead, Majero Bouman from Sudbury, Canada about helping build the AIM circle and how she uses Art in Motion in her Open FIoor work.
"Working with Art in Motion is like walking into a giant sandbox with a group of people, and discovering that we are fish."
Majero Bouman
Majero grew up in dance. She has also spent her life creating visual art and language-based art across many media: poetry, holography, clay, metal and more. “I’ve always been a student of body language, of language and the body, of form and constraint, of movement and the infinite edge of meaning where one thing becomes another.”
Following her Open Floor teacher training and attracted by the Dynamic Governance model, Majero knew that she wanted to contribute to the growth of the organization and to the expansion of the curriculum design. It took her a while to find her way to the Art in Motion Circle. She started with OFI in the Library Circle, where she learned a ton about the genealogy of disciplines that contribute to the Open Floor curriculum. Then, she stepped into the Membership Circle where she got a better sense of the organisation as a whole. After several years as a working member, a spot opened in Art in Motion when the circle was undergoing radical change. Since then, she has been elected Operational Lead and now heads the Circle.
“I’d been teaching Art in Motion, had an art practice, a lot of study in avant-garde multi-modal movements, and had been a working member for several years already. I felt well enough equipped to step into this role and take on the responsibility of the work in the knowledge that there is a great group of talented people collaborating in the circle.”
Majero credits the expert tutelage of Jenny Macke who was the Operational Lead of the Circle before her. A lot of work was done by those that came before us in AIM circle. We are grateful for their hands at our backs as we continue to develop curriculum for the upcoming lab in December 2022. “We had our work cut out for us, and it felt like a real challenge. But the long and the short of it is that AIM is a circle where I can engage with Open Floor curriculum through my soul and center.”
Majero believes Art in Motion is an important part of embodiment because it brings elements into scaled relation (the very small and the very large) and makes the process of personal exploration and transformation have magnitude as well as direction. It allows it to be more than just a linear process.
Majero is currently teaching an online series called ReMix with two modules aptly named “A-side and B-side” – a marketing strategy that conjures the nostalgia of vinyl and homemade mixed tapes. Each 5-week series works with 5 of the Core Movement Resources. One participant calls them “collaboratories.” Majero says, “They are a constant exploration of what is possible when we use zoom like a toy and play together with movement and language.”
When asked to explain what students get from AIM that they don’t get from a regular Open Floor Class, Majero explains it well:
“Epiphanies that last more than a moment and that therefore ask or invite a shift in awareness and commitment.” She admits that might be an ambition for what they get out of it, but goes on the explain, “They get a poem, a story, an ugly piece of sculpted clay that is so filled with love that it lives on the mantel or in a box hidden away. They get questions, answers, and an exchange in which they are intimately enfolded” Majero believes this is certainly true in a regular class, and through creativity and artistic expression we can also “take critical distance such that the questions, answers, and exchange are both within me, and outside of me, out there. Students gain the dimensional capacity to observe and participate. They knock up against their edges and, skillfully held, travel along with relative comfort to find out what might be there and make something of it.”
One of Majero’s ReMix students says, “I owe all parts of my thriving through pain and challenge to my regular dance and art practices. The creative practice holds and transforms it all. Weaving together writing prompts with movement, they feed each other and the group body so beautifully. I always come away feeling transformed and creative.”
I asked Majero to tell me one thing that is inspiring her in her work as an AIM working member and she told us about the new Art in Motion Lab coming up in December 2022 with Jenny Macke and Lori Saltzman. “There are some really interesting and exciting projects on the horizon that foster and deepen what the AIM community might be capable of, and what sharing might look like between and amongst us. Art in Motion contributes to a creative revolution for change.”