The Village is one of the oldest practices in Social Presencing Theater (SPT).
It arose in the 1970’s from a time in which dance improvisation was more or less “do whatever you feel like.” A friend suggested to me that in order to teach dance improvisation, I would need to know what the elements were that enabled “good” improvisation — particularly because I was interested in improvisation as performance. I was also on a path of art as meditation in action.

This led to simplifying the movement choices, practicing the Village regularly (sometimes for days on end) with City Dance Theater in Boston, studying Mudra Space Awareness and Shambhala Art at Naropa University, collaborating with Lee Worley, and recognizing that the basis of a “good” Village had little to do with talent, technical prowess, attractiveness or cleverness, and had all to do with embodied presence and awareness of the whole.

Fast-forward about 40 years to 2004 and the auspicious coincidence of meeting Peter Senge (Systems Thinking), and Otto Scharmer (Theory U) at the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership in Nova Scotia. They generously and bravely invited me, the Village, and other movement practices into their ‘village’ of Systems Thinking and Theory U practitioners. The Village was introduced at Society for Organizational Learning’s ECW program and at Otto and Beth Jandernoa’s Theory U capacity building programs as a way to directly experience a social field through open awareness.

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