AUTHORS - not your usual book club S4E2

Onetime session

Pedro de Alcantara and Monika Gross

Would you like more books in your life? Would you like to meet the person who wrote that book you like? Our series of talks with authors of books relevant to the Alexander Technique community might let you do just that!


  23 MAY 2021 6PM UK Time zone

We are happy to welcome Pedro de Alcantara and Monika Gross


First we'll have Pedro de Alcantara, prolific author of books, poems, short stories, and novels for young readers talking about his passion for writing itself. He will be sharing with us about the process of re-writing one of his books - he writes "My professional life, too, has been one of transformation. I started my career as a classically trained musician, became a teacher and coach, and discovered a passion for writing. Books, articles, and essays have propelled my exploration and contributed to the continuing transformation of my thinking."

Then Monika Gross, a great communicator and motor behind many projects, will tell us about her experience of writing for over 30 years in order to promote awareness of AT to a broader population. We'll hear about the Poise Project and working with people with Parkinson's disease.

After each talk, there will be a Q&A session with the authors. If you can't attend, please feel free to send your questions by email, we'll ask them for you and you can see the reply in the recording. You can also have an informal chat during the breaks in the breakout rooms. Bring your cup of tea and catch up with your friends and colleagues or meet new pals!

Programme outline:

  • 6pm: Pedro de Alcantara
  • 6.35pm: Breakout room chat
  • 6.45pm: Q&A
  • 7pm: Monika Gross
  • 7.35pm: Breakout room chat
  • 7.45pm: Q&A
  • 7.55am: Wrap up, conclusions, and information about the next AUTHORS session!

A recording will be available until 17 July 2021.

Sign up for the mailing list to keep in contact - AUTHORS - the newsletter:

Authors - The Not Your Usual Bookclub runs online every two weeks. It's open to everyone - all teachers, pupils and friends. There's a small charge of €6 a session or €20 for the 4 sessions (live and recorded) in each season.
We hope you can join us!
https://buytickets.at/authorsat/509842

If a difficult financial situation keeps you from attending, please get in touch by emailing for a complimentary ticket at authorsat@gmail.com. We'll be happy to have you on board.

More info at https://www.alexanderschool.edu.au/authors

Course type
Online
Audience
Everyone who loves books
Cost
€6 a session or €20 for a season of 4 sessions, includes links to recordings.
Phone
+447717553022
Finished
Finished
Start Date
End Date
When
So we're staring at 6pm London time; 7pm for Germany, Italy, & other Central European Time (CET) countries. It's 5pm for Melbourne USA times will be: EDT: 1pm, MDT: 11am, PDT: 10am

Pedro de Alcantara - After growing up in São Paulo, Brazil, I studied at the State University of New York's Purchase College (BFA in Music, 1981) and the Yale School of Music (MM in Music Performance, 1983). My main cello teachers were Barney Lehrer, Robert Gardner, Daniel Morganstern, Aldo Parisot, and William Pleeth. The teacher whom I credit with shaping up my musical mind is the pianist Robert Levin, now an emeritus professor at Harvard. With him I studied theory, analysis, ear-training, and chamber music. I've also studied singing with the late Roy Hickman (a professor at the Guildhall School in London) and I've soaked up the teachings of Cornelius L. Reid, from whom I've learned as much about the voice as I have about the sensing and thinking processes and the art of pedagogy.

I trained as a teacher of the Alexander Technique in London, with Patrick Macdonald (who himself was trained by Alexander in the 1930's) and Shoshana Kaminitz. After obtaining my certification in 1986 I taught for three years at the Alexander Institute (directed by Dr. Wilfred Barlow, who was also trained by Alexander) before moving to Paris in 1990, where I still live.

My first book, Indirect Procedures: A Musician's Guide to the Alexander Technique, with a foreword by Sir Colin Davis, was published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in 1997. Its French version came out in 2000, the German one in 2002, and the Japanese one in 2010. In 2013 OUP published a completely rewritten new edition. Also in 1997, the French publisher Editions Dangles published my second book, La Technique Alexander: Principes et Pratique, which I wrote in French (my third language, Portuguese being my mother tongue). Afterwards I re-wrote the book in English; titled The Alexander Technique: A Skill for Life, it was published by Crowood Press in England in 1999, and subsequently in Japanese and Estonian In 2008 I was named the editor of a new book series at OUP. Titled THE INTEGRATED MUSICIAN, the series is based on the musical philosophy I have developed over the past twenty-five years and will include volumes for string players, singers, pianists, and other musicians. Besides editing the series, I’m slated to write several volumes for it. In the fall of 2008 AlumniVentures, a new initiative at the Yale School of Music, awarded me a grant to support the series’ dedicated website.

The publication of Indirect Procedures led to engagements to teach all over the world. I've given seminars in presentations in the US, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Australia, and New Zealand. I've often received return invitations from institutions such as the Royal College of Music in London, New York University, and the Conservatoire Populaire de Genève.

 

MONIKA GROSS (Executive Director) is a senior teacher of the Alexander technique and has taught postural integrity and performance skills for over thirty years. She had her first Alexander lesson in 1976, and was certified in 1985, training with Lydia Yohay (ACAT). Monika taught in New York City for 25 years and in Asheville NC since 2010., From 2011-12, she was on the faculty of the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University. 

In 2009, Monika, Belinda Mello and Lindsay Newitter co-founded Studio AT Large, a grassroots effort to promote awareness of AT to a broader population by organizing AT teachers and their students to provide information and free AT "tastings" in a variety of informal indoor and outdoor locations in NYC. This was an early model for what is now THE POISE PROJECT. Monika is a member of a Western North Carolina AT teacher consortium: Alexander Teachers of the Mountain Region (ATMR). Monika presented the model for THE POISE PROJECT in a workshop on 14 August 2015 at the 10th International Congress of the FM Alexander Technique at the University of Limerick in Ireland. Her strategic professional development model draws on six years of research that grew out of her interest in facilitating broader access to the educational principles of AT. Her particular area of interest is in preserving poise and teaching skills for lifelong personal growth for children and youth. She is a teaching member of the American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT) and Alexander Technique International (ATI), and a Registered Somatic Movement Educator (RSME) with the International Somatic Movement Education & Therapy Association (ISMETA). 

She is a professional theater director, playwright and performer and holds a BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She is the Artistic Director of At-A-Site Theater, and is a member of Actors Equity Association (AEA), Stage Directors & Choreographers (SDC) and the Dramatists Guild. 

Monika was awarded the 2016 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship for Playwriting. She has trained for many years in Butoh dance. In November 2019, Monika will be one of five recipients of the Caregiver Visionary Award at the National Caregiving Conference in Chicago for her work in developing and implementing “Partnering with Poise”, an AT-based course for family care partners to offer them skills for greater resilience and agency while managing the physical and emotional challenges of longterm caregiving.