Emilie Conrad's Continuum
Emilie Conrad was a visionary, a dancer, a radical thinker and a master teacher. For over 45 years, she imagined, evolved, explored and created the captivating inquiry she called Continuum.
The seed of her focus was driven by a hunger to experience the scope of human existence beyond cultural boundaries. From an early age, movement became the avenue for this experience.
Emilie grew up in New York City and studied dance with some of the early pioneers in the 1950s. An opportunity to teach led her to Haiti where she witnessed the undulating movement in their dance and prayer. This “fluid” movement became the central theme of her exploration and creation of what we now call Continuum.
Emilie was a truth teller. With her brilliant, synergistic and curious mind, she pointed to the madness of our times, hidden in plain sight. She invited us to step away from the cultural trance and to know our birthright to be part of the greater orchestration of life in its most basic expression of the fluid intelligence in our own bodies.
Her feisty and passionate nature penetrated all who worked and studied with her. She never posed as a guru or promised any outcome for this practice. Rather she tenaciously held herself and all her students to the ongoing quest of living into the fullness of evolving nature, embracing the unknown and the constant changes that life insists on.
The pain of life as well as its exquisite tenderness were all part of the tapestry. This was a teaching to go forward with courage and with your eyes wide open. She led us into the mystery of our own unfolding and her thirst for the deep places of wisdom was contagious.
She taught by transmission, revealing through her own movement a complexity and potency beyond words. Her incredible capacity for somatic perception enabled her to travel into the depths of any experience. Her students felt held as she met them without judgment in the shadows and tides arising in newly recognized awareness.
Over the four decades of her development of Continuum, she authorized over 90 people to teach. Our community now laces the globe. We desire to pass her visionary legacy on so that others may know this self-empowering pathway of healing that honors the human and animal kingdom, the planet as a living entity, the invisible and the tangible elements that are all part of the intelligence of life in its eternal return. To know Continuum is to know your own body's ability to come alive to the present moment with the vitality of engagement in this dance.
Susan Harper
Susan Harper is a Continuum teacher, a heart-soul-counselor, creative instigator, and inspired teacher of perceptual and movement inquiry. Susan joined Emilie Conrad, founder, in 1975 to study, and eventually became a partner in developing the organization and work of Continuum. Emilie and Susan developed teacher training programs, and co-founded Continuum Teacher Organization in 2000. She continues to mentor many of the authorized Continuum teachers.
In the early 90s Susan brought Continuum for the first time to Japan, Finland, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In 1992, as a part of the 18th Street Arts Complex, Susan designed and built Continuum Studio, providing a creative gathering place for community.
Susan has the ability through personal demonstration of sounds, breaths and movement to transmit a primal and spiritual fluidity that inspires participation resulting in embodied innovative discoveries.
To visit Susan's Continuum Teacher History website, please visit Continuum Teacher History.