Testimonial

My experience with the Ashley Wint Movement Co. has been inspiring, insightful, and spiritual.
Every day we wake up in our bodies, use our bodies throughout the day, and go to sleep with them at night, but rarely pay attention to them, really listen and notice. When we do pay attention to our body it is in an almost cruel way, at the gym we push ourselves through the pain, repeat mantras in our head like “push harder” and “don’t be weak.” We don’t notice or forgive our bodies for just being.

In Ashley Wint’s class I was allowed to take the time to notice and expand my understanding of how my body moves and how it reflects who I am. Now, to the untrained eye, it may have looked as if we were just rolling around on the floor, and at first that is how I felt, but the way that Wint guides her students, I was able to allow myself to relax and let go with focusing on the conversation that was happening between the space of the room and my body. Besides her obvious knowledge and passion of movement, her ability to recognize the different levels of her students is what made the time in class that much more comfortable—I feel as if I received a one on one.

As a theatre professional, I have seen the lack of importance given to the training of the body. The voice, which is important, is given more focus. However, without the body and only the voice, actors are nothing more than talking heads. As a director who has worked with actors ages 7 to 56, movement is one of the hardest things to address in a constructive and successful way. Even if you tell actors to walk across the stage a certain way, if they are not strongly connected to their bodies they have not hope of truly manipulating it.

Wint’s movement company has a strong mission that you start to feel a part of the moment you leave class. I am excited to continue my study about how my body moves and how I can utilize that understanding in the theatre.

Whitney Hershberger
Theatre Teaching Artist and Director
MFA in Arts Administration, Southern Utah University