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Radically somatic: Jane Hawley transforms dance at Luther College.

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One rarely sees dancers all moving in unison, or even doing a recognizable step in Jane Hawley's classes. You are more likely to see a community of movers exploring a particular idea, each finding a unique way into the material. If you look for dance classes at Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa, you won't find anything called ballet, modern, or jazz, either. Instead, there's Movement Fundamentals, Hawley's groundbreaking dance curriculum culled from somatic and scientific movement studies. When it comes to the mind-body connection and dancing, she sees no reason to compromise. Why sneak a little somatic knowledge into the dance class when there is enough material to fully transform a dance program, which is exactly what Hawley did when she took the dance program helm at Luther in 2000.

Hawley is more of a somatic synthesizer than a subscriber to just one school of thought, gathering her influences from a range of such pioneers as Andrea Olson, Mabel Todd, Lulu Sweigard, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Stanley Keleman, Peggy Hackney, and Joseph Chilton Pearce. Studies in contact improvisation with Nancy Stark Smith and...

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