Embodied Imagination with Leah Mann

Date and Time: Sunday, February 16, 2025 - 11:30 am - 1:00 pm

Embodied Imagination with Leah Mann – an improvisational playshop. 

Come spend some time with the incredible Leah Mann, moving, improvising, and exploring the February theme of Imagination from a whole-body perspective.

This FREE session invites us to crack open our ideas about PLAY  — what it is, how it feels, and who gets to do it — guided by one of this region’s most amazing masters of the artform.

Worship Arts Director Erin McGaughan says, “To me, Leah simply IS imagination, embodied, walking around on earth, and inviting us all to dance with her. You gotta say yes.”

Leah Okamoto Mann is a dancer, choreographer, somatic practitioner, and arts educator, focusing on embodied social justice.  Seattle Unity long-timers know her well, as she has directed the Seattle Unity Youth & Families Ministry, and also appeared as the featured artist many times.  She is also Co-Director of Lelavision, a performance and production company based on Vashon Island, WA, that combines kinetic sculpture, dance and music. Leah is the Artistic Director Emeritus of Moving in the Spirit, a youth mentorship, urban outreach program, utilizing the praxis of dance to develop life skills (Atlanta, GA). Through their kinetic learning style, they work to cultivate community through the common denominators of the human experience. Most recently they have been facilitating movement, music, and play with medically fragile youth, Muslim immigrants, and pregnant people in recovery. They are in an ongoing science-art collaboration with Morehouse College / Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership focusing on wellness and healthy ecosystems micro to macro.

Leah has been a main presenter at conferences such as National Sacred Dance Guild Festival, International InterPlay Annual Meeting, Parliament of World Religions, and The Society for Arts In Healthcare Conferences. Leah has been awarded numerous grants and commissions from entities such as the NEA Alternate Visions Grant, The Criminal Defense and Justice Project, The Pacific School of Religion, Seattle Arts Commission, Change Inc, Bossak Heilbron Foundation, King County Special Projects, Artist Trust, 4Culture and The Puffin Foundation.

 

   

 

Playshop is February 16th, 11:30 a.m. to 1 pm.   FREE.

Questions?  Contact Erin McGaughan, Worship Arts Director, erinm@seattleunity.org.

Tags: WA, Worship Arts Design, Erin McGaughan