Associate Director, Continuum Movement Arts
Priscilla Auchincloss wanted to be a ballerina when she was little and spent her early twenties studying modern dance and ballet in New York City. Believing then that she would never master pirouettes she decided to let her intellect dance, eventually earning a Ph.D. in physics. She had a substantial career in academia before finding her way back to dance, yoga, and theater improvisation.
Continuum provided her the means to reclaim the more authentic, elemental and physical life her soul was craving. Leaving the university, she began teaching Continuum and created PHYSIKOS, a studio dedicated to contemplative and somatic movement arts. Priscilla says, “I studied physics to understand the world, but when I heard Emilie Conrad speak, certain things fell into place, like the truth that we are part of an unfolding, evolutionary process. Continuum taps into the consciousness of that unfolding, in a way you can feel. My teaching and writing weave the analytical approach of physics with the intuitive approach of art.”
Today, Priscilla continues to teach and write about movement. “Emilie Conrad often said that the question that propelled her was how to live in society without being bound by it. Continuum offers me a way to access the profound sanity of simply being, and from this elemental experience has come an ongoing percolation of ideas and inspiration.”
Influences
Deborah Raoult (who brought Continuum to Rochester), Emilie Conrad (Continuum), Augusto Boal (Theatre of the Oppressed), Olivia Corson (Body Tales), and Susan Harper (Continuum Montage).