Hi! I’m Malcolm Manning. Thanks for visiting.
I think of myself as a somatic movement researcher, educator, mentor and artist. Sometime during the many years I have spent learning to move, I realised that I was actually moving to learn, hence the name of this web site.
What do I do?
Whether I’m working with professional dancers or people who simply want to be more comfortable as they sit and work on their computers, I create classes in which I invite others to share in my ongoing inquiry of what it is to be a thinking, feeling, moving subject in this world.
My aim in teaching is always to create the conditions to meet ourselves with a childlike sense of wonder; to engage playfully with our innate curiosity unhindered by expectation; and to develop a dialogue with ourselves and our environment in which we are empowered to be our own experts.
Who do I work with?
I started by offering my work mainly as a resource for dance professionals in dance centres, at festivals, for dance companies and on higher education programmes. More broadly in the the performing arts, I have also worked with actors, musicians, singers. These days I teach regular classes at Tanzquartier Wien and offer workshops at ImpulsTanz.
I have taught regularly on a freelance basis in the dance departments of the Danish National School of Performing Arts (scenekunstskolen.dk ) and at the Theatre Academy Of Finland (www.uniarts.fi) where I was a senior lecturer in the dance department from 2008-12. I helped to create and develop the Dance And Somatics one-year education at ISLO in north eastern Finland.
For every body, I teach a workshop series called BodySchool, in which I seek to apply my synthesis of somatic and postmodern dance practices to everyday life situations, and I also offer Feldenkrais individual sessions for children with special needs
How did I learn all this?
I have studied a range of somatic practices and contemporary dance practices. I am certified as a practitioner of both the Feldenkrais Method® and the Body And Earth work developed by Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose. I studied for two years at SNDO Amsterdam and have an MA in Dance Pedagogy from the Theatre Academy Of Finland in Helsinki. I have made extensive studies of Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, Movement Shiatsu, Body Mind Centering and experiential anatomy.