It was like 8 a.m. on a weekday morning at the corner of University Avenue and Charter Street. One woman pantomimed getting off the bus and looking both ways before crossing the busy street. Nearby, another woman kissed her child goodbye and headed out the door. A third man climbed and climbed, perhaps up Bascom Hill or a long staircase.
Then they ran their parallel routines again and again, eventually leaving everyone flushed and giggling.
The setting was the meditation room at the Center for Healthy Minds, and it was the final afternoon of the Rhythms of Community class. The participants – UW-Madison graduate students, faculty and staff – had just drawn maps of a campus route they take often, then reenacted their journeys as singles, pairs and as an entire group.
The exercise was designed by choreographer Katherine Kramer and Center for Healthy Minds graduate student Lily Smith as a way to foster awareness, connection and an increased curiosity about the other people who make up the campus community. It combined mindful practices that encourage embodiment, and techniques from improv and dance to explore the rhythms of everyday life that we take for granted.
“When you are on campus, it’s easy to stay in your ‘silo’ and only interact with people in your department, or with other graduate students or other faculty,’’ Smith said. “We’re using playfulness and levity to help you be more present in your own body and aware of others around you in the community.”
The workshop was funded by an Arts for Healthy Minds grant, a new partnership of the UW-Madison Division of Arts and the Center for Healthy Minds that provides micro-grants to faculty, staff and graduate students to support creative arts research that explores belonging, wellbeing and flourishing on campus. Graduate students, faculty, and staff each had a separate workshop, then came together for a final Sunday afternoon session in mid-November.
First they shared their names, and gathered in groups based on their campus affiliations, then by identifiers such as having a pet, drinking tea for breakfast, or being born outside Wisconsin.
The group warmed up with a series of improv exercises, created by Kramer as part of her “Serious Fun,” dance workshops. They walked about the space keeping a certain distance from a person, then moved as partner dyads and a group that would have one person suddenly stop and freeze. Later they reflected on what it was like standing out, or going against the group while everyone was conforming.
The exercise that elicited the most laughter was called “palindrome,” in which partners mimicked each other’s movements: Squatting, waving arms and moving around the space as linked duos. A final photo shows the group glowing and smiling, very different from how they arrived on a bleak November day.
Afterwards, they stayed for a community hour of socializing and snacks in the Center for Healthy Minds’ common area, talking and finding connections.
Days later, some members of the workshop reflected on what they had gained from the experience.
“I enjoyed the opportunity it provided me to connect with strangers on a deeper level,’’ said Anna Moyer, a graduate student in bacteriology. “Somehow it 'humanized' the community around me that normally feels inaccessible due to our constant attachment to phones. This was a beautiful reminder that the people around me also are looking for love, compassion, connection, and rhythms—it's just a matter of playing into that desire.”
Moyer said she now finds herself “taking the headphones off” and searching for moments of “micro-connections” as she goes about her day on campus.
“I strive to look people in the eyes and give them a genuine smile,” Moyer said. “Nine times out of ten, the receiver of that smile can't help but smile back.”
Isabela Fraga de Andrade, a postdoctoral researcher in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, said they felt the positive effects of bringing mindful movement and the joyousness of dance to everyday life.
“The effect was very palpable to me, the day after,’’ they said. “ I could also observe the dilution of the effect. By Wednesday, I started to catch myself not paying attention, and I would try to do breathing, and adjust my posture, and if I’m interacting with people, trying to do it mindfully.”
Fraga de Andrade said she would love to have the workshop offered to her coworkers, perhaps to everyone whose lab shares a floor in the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research building.
“I would hope for this to be something widely available in academia,” they said. “It would be very good for science and creativity and for the people doing the science.”
But Sharon Kahn, graduate program manager for the department of physics, said it was also freeing to do the workshop with people she didn’t know.
“It’s interesting to think about,’’ she said. “I know the exercise was about building community, but do you need the privacy of being in a group of people you don’t know? It’s interesting to contemplate.”
Kahn said that she appreciated having an hour of mindful fun, when the larger world did not intrude.
"I think it’s good we take time when the world disappears, to have time when you’re not focused on the rest of the world,” she said. “Just look at the picture, everybody looks so happy.”
By Susan Lampert Smith
