Selma Odom (Canada) "Communities Together -- Looking Back, Moving Forward"
Community Engagement
___________
"Communities Together -- Looking Back, Moving Forward"
A three-session short course with Selma Odom (Canada)
This short course explores the dimensions of moving together, weaving between then and now to discover how movement practices connect across time, place, and community. Through movement, improvisation, writing, and dialogue, participants will reflect on how experiences of the past can resonate in the present and spark possibilities for the future.
Each session combines:
- Movement activities to explore gesture, space, and interaction in pairs and small groups.
- Historical perspectives highlighting figures such as Suzanne Perrottet and Adolphe Appia in the evolution of communities of Dalcroze practice.
- Writing prompts to capture lived experience and strengthen observation and dialogue.
- Discussion and exchange in breakout rooms to deepen connection.
- Resources for further exploration with curated lists and follow-up materials to continue learning after the course.
Session 1: Moving Together
Experiencing and reflecting on explorations of body, space, and time by people of the early Dalcroze community.
Session 2: Collaborations
Exploring lessons, demonstrations, and presentations of the past and present, revealing movement choices and shared creativity in various times and places.
Session 3: Communities
Zooming out to the collective: how do communities form, adapt, and endure? Drawing on Canadian and American examples, and on new spaces such as ICDS and VDM, this session considers the histories and futures of Dalcroze-inspired communities and the ways they are continually re-imagined.
No previous experience is required - only curiosity, openness, and a willingness to move, reflect, and connect. Participants will also receive curated resource lists and follow-up viewing suggestions to extend the learning beyond the sessions.
__________________________________
Selma Landen Odom is Professor Emerita at York University in Toronto, where she taught dance studies courses from 1972 to 2012. She has written extensively on Émile Jaques-Dalcroze and the sources, practices, and influences of the teaching he initiated around 1900. She focuses on the evolution of this pedagogy through the careers of colleagues, students, and their successors worldwide.
With Joan Pope, she co-authored Practical Idealists: Founders of the London School of Dalcroze Eurhythmics (Coventry University, 2013), and she co-edited Navigating Landscapes of Dalcroze Practice: Histories of Music and Movement (Boydell & Brewer, 2025) with John Habron-James and Johanna Laakkonen.
This short course was originally given November 4-19, 2025.
To return to all VDM offerings, click here.
