“Our task is to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.”

Donna Harraway, “Staying with the Trouble”

Soul Motion Lineage

Soul Motion is a contemplative dance movement practice, developed by Vincent Martinez Grieco, a Cuban-Italian choir boy, baseball lover, young Vietnam Veteran, and dancer, who grew up in the Bronx, NY, and now lives in Portland, OR.

This lineage grew out of Vincent’s Experiences of Modern Dance Studies and Performance, 5 Rhythms, Spiritual Inquiry, and embodied explorations of dance as a healing response to trauma.

Zuza Engler encouraged Vincent to develop a training program for Soul Motion Teachers, which Piloted in 2007-2009, and which Zuza co-created and co-taught with Vincent. Since then, many folks have helped shape, clarify, and broaden the applications of Soul Motion.

Aletia Anna Alvarez, graduate of the Pilot Program and founder of Madrona Mind Body Institute, brought forward a wonderful idea to develop an Embodied Leadership Program as the first step in the Soul Motion Teacher Training Program, to help people grow their embodied familiarity with the practice before beginning to develop teaching skill in the second year. Aletia invited Katrina to co-create this program within the original Soul Motion School, and they began this collaboration in 2014; Aletia and Katriona tended this program together for the first three Embodied Leadership cohorts, and developed the school’s Mentorship program.

Each Soul Motion Practitioner and Teacher brings their own view to this practice, and as an improvisational living body of work Soul Motion is made anew in each moment through each community who gathers.

I’m happy to share my Soul Motion practice with you and to share a space where you can explore your own way of being with the invitations of this body of work.

  • The Pilot Program begins At Esalen

    Folks in this image were attending Soul Motion Mastery, at Esalen Institute in California, August 2007. Within this workshop were many of the students of The Pilot Program, as this workshop was were we began the First Soul Motion Teacher Training.

  • Vincent & Katrina

    at Pegasus Center, in Germany, June 2016, celebrating the happy conclusion of the second cohorts of the Soul Motion Embodied Leadership Programs, which Katrina and Aletia had developed and helped run.

  • Katrina & Aletia

    meeting up 10 years after cocreating the Embodied Leadership program

a practice offering embodied creative improvisation through relational landscapes and innovative inquires for practice

a practice offering embodied creative improvisation through relational landscapes and innovative inquires for practice

4 Relational Landscapes - A Soul Motion Odyssey

  • Dance Intimate - I Am One

    Solitude is important for health and wellness. Becoming a companion for our own selves, comfortable in our skin, at home in our company is an art form.

    All relationships are supported through being at home in ourselves.

    The dance of accompanying our own breath, our own heart, our embodied being as we listen within for movement instincts and give them form and rhythm. Feeling our inner world in this moment. Landing into the here and now of our somatic sensory experience, accompanying our embodied presence of now. Tending our own inner space and weaving ourselves into the place where were are.

  • Dance Communion - I Am One With

    The progression from inner experience to accompanying both oneself and another. Being present with another while still being present with one’s own inner experience. Sensing the place between, around, over and under, a third space of magic that comes alive in the I-Thou. Playing together, resonating with each other, gathering and scattering gestures and movement shapes and phrases, soft focus that allows perceiving of another near by, in closer proximity, or further away, or across the room. Momentary dyads and triads and prolonged shared voyages.

  • Dance Community - I am One With All

    Playing with the ripples of inspiration through the whole room, playing in groups, finding our place of belonging in the whole, being visible and, or, dissolving into the currents, being a vital part of the collective.

  • Dance Infinite and the Everyday - I am One with All One

    Coming full circle, returning to the intimate dance altered from the journey. Expanded? Released? More Supple? Stirred? Each voyage is so different from the next. The Infinite dance is a place where we commune with the fullness of Life, perhaps feeling our relations with the Great Spirit, Creator, God - a sense of reverence for life, or gratitude for those who have helped us along our way.

    We head out into the everyday, bringing with us the fruit of the voyage, carrying seeds within for applied practice in the grocery store, the forest, our parenting…

3 Core Improvisational Movement Platforms

  • Pause Presence

    “A go-to place in the dance that opens the dancer to the benefits of active stillness and a relaxed view of the witness.” (Vincent)

    Whether a brief moment of exhaling all the way out to the end of the breath, or a longer rest, pausing is countercultural. Pause Presence is an embodiment practice of slowing down into a receptive state of sensing, listening, and attending.

    We land into the present moment, empty out, release what has been and arrive here. As we are, with what is and what is unfolding.

    Pause presence is a mindfulness practice offering renewal. We can more easily Begin Again fresh after a pause, bringing a new view and a renewed embodied sense of present moment awareness with us.

  • Orbit Orientation

    We are 360 degree beings - breath moves our body in all directions, our kinesphere for self expression and communion with Life is spherical.

    Modern sedentary life often flattens our perceptive and movement range to full frontal, to a flat screen. Many of us hold our breath and spend time traveling in lines, moving forward through space.

    Soul Motion Lineage is interested in supporting folks to flesh out again, in all directions. To reclaim our 360 degree range of movement and awareness. To experience our spiral, spherical nature, our wholeness. To play with curved lines, and movement possibilities through all directions within the collective.

    Somatic psychology and neuroscience research have found that when we inhabit our kinesphere, with the freedom to play our range from core to distal, from earth to sky, we lower our stress response and feel more confident.

    Orbit Orientation is a transformative inquiry on and off the dance floor.

  • Echo Inspiration

    Life is a rippling play of call and response. Earth moves in this way, as is visible and audible. Tree leaves ripple with the wind and branches dance. Bird murmurations ripple through the sky; sand ripples dance across beaches left by the waves when the tide goes out; water reflects light changing in the sky…. There is a dynamic conversation of call and response that is Life.

    Soul Motion Lineage weaves us into creative conversation through Echo Inspiration. We come alive in our bodies, all part of us in the movement conversation. We source inspiration from scattered gestures and movement phrases from one another, echoing tempo changes or directions and shapes of movement.

    There is a sense of vitality and belonging that germinates through participating in this alive conversation of echo inspiration.