Details | Join us for a special session of our art-based Meditation and Mindfulness series featuring a musical performance and guided meditation. This session accompanies this body is so impermanent…, a film we are streaming this month as part of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital. Conceived as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film reflects on the Vimalakirti Sutra, a Buddhist text from the first century CE in which the Buddha’s disciples visit a man on his sickbed to learn about the fragility of the human body. Two of the film’s creators, singer Ganavya Doraiswamy and dancer and choreographer Michael Schumacher, will perform and lead the meditation. They will then be joined by Peter Sellars, the film’s director, for a Q&A session. This free session is appropriate for all levels of practitioners and includes a variety of mindfulness practices. All are welcome! No previous experience is required. Participants are invited to watch the film either before or after the session here: https://dceff2021.eventive.org/films/this-body-is-so-impermanent-602d3630b1319c005afc0e4b Register and join the session: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5YscuGprjIjQbviGSRDT8R4YRes8_sN6g Peter Sellars, Director Peter Sellars is an opera, film, theater, and festival director who has gained international renown for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of classics and his collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative artists. He is a distinguished professor and director of the Boethius Institute at UCLA and his many awards include a MacArthur Fellowship. Sellars conceived of and directed this body is so impermanent... in response to the global pandemic. Ganavya Doraiswamy, Composer and Singer Born in New York and raised in Tamil Nadu, critically acclaimed vocalist Ganavya Doraiswamy lives, learns, and loves fluidly from the nexus of many frameworks and understandings. A multidisciplinary creator, she is a soundsmith and wordsmith. Trained as an improviser, scholar, dancer, and multi-instrumentalist, she maintains an inner library of “spi/ritual” blueprints offered to her by an intergenerational constellation of collaborators. She is a cofounder of the nonhierarchical We Have Voice Collective. Michael Schumacher – Choreographer / Dancer Michael Schumacher is a performing artist with roots in classical and modern dance. He has been a member of several groundbreaking dance companies and has performed as an independent artist. Over the past twenty-five years, Schumacher has developed a unique approach to the discipline of improvisation. He currently resides in Amsterdam and conducts workshops worldwide in movement analysis and improvisation. Image: Still from this body is so impermanent... courtesy of Peter Sellars |
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