LiquidBody
media, movement and dance
LiquidBody explores movement in all of its many manifestations – as choreography, somatic cinema, as flows of systems, as information. It is organized into three interrelated entities that support one another – LiquidBody dance, LiquidBody media and LiquidBody movement.
LiquidBody dance works to refine the art of movement. It is a dance company.
LiquidBody Media experiments with the use of moving images in digital formats, creates Somatic Cinema, and is particularly interested in the nonlinear possibilities for expression opened up by these mediums.
LiquidBody Movement explores human movement potential nurturing a creative community focused on experiential learning and dynamic sharing of research.
LiquidBody’s vision looks at moving systems, the human body’s movement potential, the body’s fluid origins, connections with the earth’s systems, and flows of movement through our society. LiquidBody is about expressing the art of movement, about excavating deep knowledge about the body as a moving system and sharing that knowledge in tangible and exciting ways. LiquidBody is at the frontier of a new somatic dance paradigm expanding vocabulary, methods of training and how dance is experienced. LiquidBody is also creating spaces where people explore their own somatic movement potential, and where people can move together, creating community and nurturing aliveness. It is interactive, dynamic and sensitive to the needs of the people it serves, and accessible to a worldwide audience with diverse ethnic, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and to people of all ages.
LiquidBody owes its primary somatic orientation to a fluid systems approach to the pioneering work of Emilie Conrad’s Continuum. Caryn is following a fluid thread in American Modern Dance she sees in the work of Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham.
She also acknowledges the Graham lineage passed on to her through Paul Taylor who was a soloist with Martha Graham.
LiquidBody is incorporated as a nonprofit in the State of New York, founded in 2000 by Caryn Heilman.
about Caryn Heilman
artistic director, choreographer, video artist, dancer, teacher, singer and multi-instrumentalist
“The most wonderful thing about her is the mysteriousness of her dancing. She has the nameless ingredient that we all seek, the alchemic gold, a material that magnetizes. It sets her apart, is unseen, only felt.”
Paul Taylor, Paul Taylor Dance Company
Caryn Heilman is the Artistic Director of LiquidBody media, movement and dance and Topia Arts Center, a green arts and education center and LiquidBody’s fiscal sponsor. As a “standout dancer” she performed for ten years with the Paul Taylor Dance Company before founding LiquidBody.
“Caryn Heilman stands out for her reserved yet piquant performing…
(In Ariadne) she was beautiful.”
Jennifer Dunning, New York Times
With Taylor, Caryn performed as a soloist in over 50 countries at Paris Opera Garnier, New York City Center, Kennedy Center and London’s Sadler’s Wells and more. She collaborated on over ten new works, directed rehearsals for several revivals and represented the United States as a cultural ambassador in Japan, China, India, Egypt, Greece, Russia, Turkey and Hungary. She is featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Dancemaker.
“Caryn Heilman is an exceptional dancer…”
Ze’eva Cohen, Head of Dance Program
Princeton University
Having received a direct choreographic tutelage from one of American Modern Dance’s recognized masters, Caryn has taken what she learned from Paul Taylor into more experimental territory, focusing on the fluid systems of the body and choreographic structures that include audience interaction, multimedia, live music and aerial dance. LiquidBody has been presented at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Dixon Place and BRIC in NYC, SOMA Fest in L.A., at the Electronic Festival in Warsaw, at spas in Mexico and Italy and at a 2000 seat amphitheater in Greece and continues to perform internationally. She has choreographed for Julianne Moore in The Forgotten, for animations by DorosMotion and Volvox, and for the theater company Mad Woman of the Woods and was hired for The Acting Company’s production of American Dreams. She created multimedia for the premiere of award-winning hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris’s Something to Do with Love. Choreographic commissions include Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth and Sola Fest for students at Orange County High School of the Arts. Her multimedia work has been commissioned in New York and L.A. and is currently on exhibit at the networked art site turbulence.org ~ http://turbulence.org/Works/touching_gravity and is a featured dance artist with Watermark Arts https://www.watermarkarts.org/artists/caryn-heilman/. She launched her Somatic Cinema series with a showing at the Fort Worth Modern in 2018.
“Caryn Heilman of New York-based LiquidBody, won the prize for the most unusual…Every part blended beautifully with Nana Simopoulos’ original music and Chad Jung’s lighting.”
Margaret Putnam, Dallas Morning News
Caryn is a founding member of the Continuum Teachers Association, has an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, in Somatic Dance and Technology and is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist (RSME/T) and Registered Somatic Dance Educator (RSDE). She has taught graduate classes in multimedia and multidisciplinary performance and somatic dance at the University of California, Irvine in the Studio Art, Drama and Dance departments and has been an artist in residence and has taught master classes at Princeton, Hollins, Texas Christian and Dennison Universities, Smith College, Beijing Dance Academy, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Orange County and LaGuardia High Schools of the Arts, SOMA Fest L.A., NYC and Greece, Omega Institute and more. She has taught with and been mentored by Continuum Movement founder Emilie Conrad, award-winning filmmaker and postmodern dance icon Yvonne Rainer, intermedia artist Annie Loui, John Crawford, founder of the Embodied Media + Technology Performance Lab and Emmy-nominated choreographer Paul Taylor. She is on faculty at the School of Visual Arts NYC teaching Movement Story and Adobe Premiere Pro editing. She has created three new classes with a somatic movement curriculum, History of the Body in Movement from Sea to Land, Writing with the Body and Somatic Cinema. She also teaches Optimizing Performance soon to be offered as well as Somatic Coach training in collaboration with Teri Carter’s Somatic Movement Arts program where she is also faculty. 2020 inaugurated SOMAfest Greece at the new island Bouros Seaview Retreat and annual LiquidBody retreats there
“People are still talking about the absolutely extraordinary concert you put on here. I knew it was going to be great, but I wasn’t prepared for how great. Really, really marvelous performance – both the dance and the music. It was truly one of the best things we’ve ever had here, and that includes some pretty powerful work.”
Tim Blunk, Director
Puffin Cultural Forum – a center for dialogue through the arts
She has received scholarships, fellowships and grants from the American Dance Festival, Alvin Ailey, UCI, TCU, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Turbulence.org, Medici Circle and more. She has served on the Professional Advisory Committee of the Dance Notation Bureau, the Somatic Movement Arts Festival, Continuum Movement, Inc. and was the Board Vice President for the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association.
“I very much enjoyed the informality of the process of audience participation, combined with the beautiful video lighting – and, of course, appreciated the inspired dancers.”
Nicholas Croft, Photographer
Purchase, NY
Get in touch
if you want to book Caryn for an event, coaching session, take a class, workshop or would like to place her art in your home or business