In conversation with Doriana Crema
“The classical issue to reconnect mind and body seems to be the great call of this time” – Doriana Crema
In the new ImaginAction podcast, I interview Doriana Crema talking about: – her path integrating dance and counselling – the elements that can create a trustful, supportive, caring and creative container and the impossibility to copy-paste it – the acknowledgement of everybody in our beauty and differences – the dream to make different disciplines and languages meet in an international network.
****This is the first interview in Italian of the ImaginAction podcast series. We do hope to have more talks in other languages for non-English speakers. This post wants to give a taste of the most relevant elements of my interview with Doriana Crema.****
Doriana Crema is a dancer, a choreographer, a counselor and a trainer.
In this interview, I asked her to tell us about her path, focusing on meaningful encounters and crucial moments. My curiosity was about the uniqueness of the Social Arts Facilitator’s path, which has no homologated studies plan.
Doriana discovered dance, relatively late, when she was 20. A friend of hers was inviting her to try some dance lessons. Since then, she never left dancing. She met her teacher Anna Sagna to dive deep in pedagogy and training. She got fascinated by the approach of Claude Coldy, at that moment exploring what it would be called “sensitive dance”. Unexpectedly, she was called by Raffaella Giordano to work on an artistic process that became the performance “Quore” (Special Prize UBU 2000). Working also as a trainer of dancers, Doriana felt the necessity to know more about relationships dynamics. She studied Psychosynthesis and became a counselor. Since training with Anna Sagna and Claude Coldy, she felt the desire to bring the dance outside the “former theatre” into the streets. At that time, at least in Italy, it was relatively new to get dance in open public space.
Today, Doriana is involved in Communities projects. She is collaborating with the training project “Dancers of Community”, the creative laboratory “Solitudo” and in projects with schools through the centre “Lavanderia a Vapore”. The attention is on building together, listening, holding creative and communicative space. In Solitudo, there is the integration of different dimensions: personal with the listening of the self; interpersonal with the relation in small groups; and collective with the invitation of the spectators in the performance that becomes a ritual.
A peculiar track in her path is the integration of body and mind.
We talked about the body as a tool and as a source of awareness and insights, and also as a shape containing all our memories of pain and tensions.
Doriana talks about the factors that allow creating a safe container to work with a group. Her key words are kindness, delicateness, playfulness, trust, creativity and above all, listening. It is a very profound and intangible work, but at the same time so simple and human. There is a horizontal dimension of caring and accompanying and also a vertical dimension with the transcendental and the earth. It is unique for each group. More than the possibility to repeat some magical formula or structure that works, it is always a dialogue, a listening and tuning process.
When I ask her about a personal and a collective challenge at this time, she speaks about clarifying the vision, sharing it and gathering. She imagines a network where it is possible to exchange practises, dreams, competences. It is time to make different arts and disciplines dialogue. It is time to meet the other. It is time to bring in schools the acknowledgement of the value of the all different kind of languages.
In the end, I ask: what is the footprint that you want to leave? Doriana: “The importance of listening, listening to ourselves and the others”.