Margit 
Galanter and the vivid grove 

Margit Galanter’s fascination with the potency of movement has drawn hir to embodied research throughout hir lifetime. Margit was raised in Lenapehoking, the indigenous name for the land now known as New York City, and shx is now based in Huchiun, - the California East Bay. Margit has toured in the US and internationally, working extensively in the interdisciplinary arts and in social and racial justice movements. Their unique contribution is in supporting people to experience clarity and vitality — in their individual bodies as well as in community. From 1990 - the present, Margit has spent extensive time and has lived in Indonesia, where shx taught at University of Gadjah Madah, community arts centers, and studied and performed martial arts as well as traditional and contemporary dance. Margit offers their work in the service of collective embodied liberation: they have established the vivid grove for moving and learning site in 2019 as a resource and interactive gathering place for all to participate, exchange ideas, and nourish their practices.

the vivid grove program is a synthesis of movement arts, Chinese energetics, collective learning, and creative research. The courses access these different streams to support vitality and exuberance as the basis for artistic development and an engaged, embodied life. The courses are influenced by the brilliance of the elements, seasons, practice, and our unique human signatures, aka human nature culture.

Margit's ongoing study bridges healing and cultural scholarship. Shx trained in the late Dennis Leri’s Semiophysics Professional Feldenkrais program, and became a Guild Certified Practitioner in 2000, having completed many advanced trainings and self-organized study projects since that time. Margit has practiced Chinese energetics and qigong since 1999 with hir primary teachers Micheline Bogey and Dr. Bingkun Hu, as well as with the late Liu Ming/Da Yuan Circle, Jason Frye, Gilles Marin, Janet Oliver, and Aileen Jong; Margit has also advanced her studies through The Universal Healing Tao, Body-Mind Centering, Feldenkrais Trainers, and locally The Acupressure and Chi Nei Tsang Institutes in Berkeley CA, receiving an Acupressure Certificate in 2010. In 2004 Margit earned an MA in Movement Research and Practice from New York University’s Gallatin School, and they earned their undergraduate degree in Movement Studies and Anthropology at Brown University, 1993. Margit has also studied Focusing, Philosophy of the Implicit, and Thinking at the Edge with Eugene Gendlin and others. Shx has ongoing inquiries in a wide range of subjects, from critical race and queer studies, to neurophenomenology, healing traditions, ancestral and aesthetic lineages, sacred landscapes, and poetics.

Margit has been engaged in collective movement practices with colleagues and students for decades. Since 1996, Margit has engaged in movement collaboration and study with the artists of Image Lab (Lisa Nelson, Karen Nelson, Scott Smith, and K.J. Holmes); since 1995 ze has studied dance improvisation with U.S. luminaries such as Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Daniel Lepkoff, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Julyen Hamilton, Keith Hennessy, Nancy Stark Smith, Stephanie Skura, and Barbara Dilley. During her years in Indonesia, Margit studied movement meditations, traditional dances, masked dances, and martial arts with teachers such as I Ketut Kantor (Bali), Pak Heru (Java), the Panca Daya school (throughout Indonesia), and from 2000 - 2019 focused in apprenticeship and collaboration with the late Suprapto Suryodarmo (Java, U.S., and internationally) up until his passing.

Margit's work as an artist, educator, and cultural worker has been supported in the US by many institutions and organizations including Berkeley Art Museum, UC Davis, Naropa University, Stanford University, Mills College, FRESH Festival/SF, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, The Prosodic Body, UCSD, UCSC, UMass-Amherst, Montalvo Arts, and SFMOMA. They perform and practice often outdoors and in environmental settings, both urban and natural. From 2015 - 2020, Margit was the resident artist at Temescal Arts Center, Oakland CA where shx has dedicated hirself in hir performance inquiry, Cave Forms, which uniquely integrates dance, Chinese energetics, community-building, transdisciplinary art practice, and living sculpture.

Margit has co-curated and directed events such as the Movement Research Festival (NYC, 2005), The Field-Seattle (1997-99) and SFDI (1997 - 2000). In the Bay Area, Margit co-curated the embodied language festival Words and Deeds (2011), and various events with SALTA Collective, Oakland, since 2016. As Co-Director of Earthdance (an artist-run workshop, residency, and retreat center located in the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts) from 2006 - 2009, they co-founded large-scale cultural projects such as seeds, an arts + ecology festival, and the Julius Ford/Harriet Tubman Healthy Living Project, a year-round initiative that creates opportunities for critical thinking, healthy living and co-creating community among inter-generational educators, activists, artists, community builders and underserved youth.

In the native Ohlone territory known as the Bay Area, Margit has collaborated with artists such as Tuning4Armageddon team Jubilee July, Amutabi Haines, and Zoe Huey, performers mara poliak, magic markers, Julie Tolentino, Keith Hennessy, Maureen Whiting, pearl ubungen, SALTA collective, Sherwood Chen, and Violet Ace Harlo; media artist Kadet Kuhne; poets Eleni Stecopoulos and Denise Leto; and teaching and performing with choreographer Abby Crain under the moniker Art Workouts. Margit has also collaborations with diverse international groups such as Dharma Nature Time (Indonesia), Emergent Scores Lab (Troy, NY), Hijack Dance (Minneapolis), PAN (Seattle), The Prosodic Body (NY), SLMJ (Bali), MAM (Amerta gathering, international), and BodyCartography Project.

Margit has written and edited various articles and creative writing projects, including most recently an article on their experience performing at SFMOMA and teaching at the Oakland Summer School/Oakland Free University. In 2017, hir interview with dance artist Sherwood Chen was published in Contact Quarterly, where they have written several articles over the years, as well as been a member of their Advisory Board. Margit co-edited the book Embodied Lives: Reflections on the Influence of Suprapto Suryodarmo and Amerta Movement (Triarchy Press, 2014); her chapter “The Presencing Dial,” describes how the modulation of presence is a valuable tool in performance, teaching, and the practice of movement.

Margit uses the gender pronouns shx/hir, they/them and ze/zir, which are used throughout the site. 

Testimonials

Lineage and Influences

2021 CV 


Contact

Phone Messages: (510) 761-6097  
Email: margit@vividgrove.org


Margit practices in the East Bay and in San Francisco, and offers workshops, sessions, and residencies inter/nationally. 


East Bay 
Kokoro Clinic
339 15th street
Oakland, CA 94609

Finnish Hall
Chestnut Street, Berkeley

San Francisco
The Corner Studio
1910 Bryant St.
San Francisco, CA 94110

the vivid grove website was created through the support of many hands. Calvin Rocchio, designer; Mara Poliak, letter drawings and vivid grove mer-troll extraordinaire; Emelia Martinez Brumbaugh aka Jubilee July overview and vivid grove consulting; Amy Walsh - Bureau of Tactical Imagination, visual narrative consulting; Allison Wyper - Rhizomatic Arts, early design consultation; Emily Nahmanson, technical support; and Asimina Chremos, explicator.

It truly takes a village.