Lisa Corston

My Dance and Art practices are breath to me. Enlivening and enriching, they provide wild exciting sustenance for my experience of being alive.I love pushing and stretching the boundaries of who I am, expanding my movement vocabulary as I articulate and express myself and inner world with more clarity. Through this dance practice I feel more at home within my own skin, a stonger sense of steadiness as I meet lifes constantly changing terrain, and I find myself smiling so much more, both outwardly and inwardly. I love the extraordinary friendships that have been born from connections on the dance floor and through the wider dance community, through these connections has come a nurturing sense of belonging.I moved to the stunning Coromandel Town in 1999, arriving into such a richly diverse and creative community, I felt as if I had arrived home. Within the first year I also felt a sense of homecoming when I began my Art studies with TLC in Wellington and then two months later landed on the Mana Retreat octagon dance floor in a 5Rhythms dance class with Geordie Jahner. I feel immensely honoured and hold deep gratitude for Geordie’s guiding strength, love and presence as I have made my journey from being the incredibly shy woman in that first dance class to now stepping up as a teacher of Open Floor.From within these precious life-turning moments a deep personal creative practice has emerged, dance and art, two practices that have grown and blossomed together and are now intrinsically entwined within me.Being immersed in the art making process feeds me. I love providing my mind with a juicy challenging creative idea to delve into. I LOVE exploring the depth of the dance curriculum through movement, paint, installations and altars and I get such a huge kick out of the rigor of deep creative moving and thinking.I love the invitation to move and include whatever is present in any given moment on the Open Floor. This means every gesture, each and every form of movement, is just right, exactly as it is, there is simply no wrong way of being and moving. The open floor offers full acceptance that every body moves with uniqueness, every dance is different and new, just as each and every moment we are alive is full of fresh potential.