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CAS has a core USA-based Faculty, as well as an Alexander Alliance International Faculty. CAS Founding Director, Robyn Avalon, is the lead teacher, with a Supporting Faculty of CAS/AAI graduates. In addition, there is a Guest Faculty representing complementary studies within the training program.

Scroll to see all faculty or click to jump to a specific person.

Core Faculty:
Robyn Avalon ∙ Bruce Fertman ∙ Midori Shinkai ∙ Margarete Tueshaus

Guest Faculty:
Adriana Hardy ∙ Yehuda Kuperman ∙ Sonali Balajee ∙ Delia Rosenboom

Supporting Faculty:
Lyra Denman-Butler ∙ Linda K Johnson ∙ Wendy Waggener ∙ Rosalia Galassi

DISCLAIMER

Robyn Avalon is not a medical doctor, does not practice any type of medicine and does not hold credentials that grant her authority to advise on health issues of any kind. She does not diagnose, treat, cure, heal disease or illness of any kind or otherwise prescribe any medication.

Contemporary Alexander Technique is an educative process, not a therapeutic one; and although it may contribute to personal growth and healing, it is not recognized as a medical or therapeutic modality, and does not include diagnoses, treatments, cures, healings, prescriptions, or offer protocols for any health issues. 

Robyn makes no promises or guarantees of specific results from the work she does, as results vary based on the commitment and state of mind and body of each individual.

CORE FACULTY

Robyn Avalon (she/her) has been studying Alexander’s Work for over 45 years, with numerous 1st and 2nd generation teachers from 1975 to the present. She trained through the lineage of Marjorie Barstow and the Alexander Alliance, of which she is now Co-Director. She is the Founding Director of the Contemporary Alexander School, the USA branch of AAI, offering teacher training programs, workshops, and AT post-graduate courses worldwide; as well as the creator of Living in a BodyTM, a professional body mapping certification course translated into 6 languages and taught worldwide.

In addition to training teachers, Robyn travels the world offering beginner through post-graduate workshops in the contemporary presentation of Alexander's Work.  Robyn enjoys the direct application of the Principles into people’s real lives, working with people while they do whatever they do.  Whenever possible, she likes to travel to where people work and play, which has provided decades of rich and colorful teaching experiences: on a snowy mountain top with skiers, at a symphony rehearsal, at a dentist’s side, in a potter’s studio, on a football field, in a professional kitchen, at a horse arena, in a meditation retreat, on the Pilates Reformer, in advanced training for cardiac surgeons, rock climbing in the NM mountains, at the circus, and more.

A seasoned performer, Robyn is particularly comfortable in group settings.  She enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for teaching the Work to groups with AT graduates and trainees, and has created a wealth of group experiences and games designed to offer students a direct experience of the Principles of the Work.  

“Robyn´s the Queen of Group teaching. If you want to learn to enjoy what you do, especially in a group setting, she´s the one you want to meet.” Marieke Klemm, MD

From her background as a professional performer/director/choreographer, Robyn is particularly interested in working with performing artists - and those who teach performing artists.

Robyn has been honored to teach members of leading opera, dance, circus, & theater companies worldwide, and for over 50 of the world’s top orchestras, chamber ensembles, and instrumental studios. Robyn has been a guest teacher at numerous music programs in the US, working with faculty and students from Juilliard, Curtis, Colburn, CIM, Eastman, Peabody, NEC, Thornton, Jacobs, Oberlin, Mannes, Manhattan, and more; as well as being the Founder/Director of the Musician’s Wellness Program at the prestigious Meadowmount School of Music. 

In addition to teaching performing artists, she has taught members of the US Olympic Dressage Team, Ladies Professional Golf Association, National Opera Association, NATS, and Suzuki; as well as offering continuing education workshops for Osteopathic Physicians, Dentists, and Physical/Occupational/Speech Therapists, National Centered Riding Association, Movement/Fitness/Yoga Professionals, Fiber & Fine Artists, Rock Climbers, Para-Gliders, and Sky Divers. 

Beyond her ongoing Alexander studies, Robyn is also certified in Cranial Sacral, Visceral Unwinding, Deep Imagery®, Matrix Energetics®, and has actively studied Intuitive Arts for over 30 years. She maintains private practices in the US, Europe, and Asia, combining her eclectic skill set to create a truly unique somatic experience.

When not teaching, Robyn enjoys being a professional theater director/choreographer and rhythm tap dancer. She has performed extensively with Honi Coles and the Copasetics, Savion Glover, Gregory Hines, Brenda Bufalino, and most of the “old timers” of rhythm tap. Her work has been seen in venues as diverse as Off-Broadway, NYC’s Blue Note Jazz Club, Carnegie Hall, and The White House. 

Bruce (he/him) works with people from all walks of life, including artists from varied disciplines. He helps artists learn how not to hurt themselves, how to be less anxious, and how to recover expediently from injuries. He helps them become sensitive, powerful, and free.

Bruce has worked with members of the Berlin Philharmonic, Radio France, The National Symphony, and for the Curtis Institute of Music. He has worked with singers, conductors, choral directors, and instrumentalists. 

For 6 years, Bruce taught Movement for the Actor at Temple and Rutgers Universities. For 13 years, he taught for the Five College Dance Program in Amherst, Massachusetts. Recently, he worked with the Argentine Tango community in Buenos Aires, and in Germany.

He taught for the School of Physiotherapy at The University of Goettingen, in Germany, for ten years. He also worked with the physically challenged which, in one way or another, is all of us. 
For 20 years, Bruce has taught annually in Japan, coaching students and teachers of traditional Japanese arts.

He studied Japanese Tea Ceremony at Urasenke in Kyoto, Japan for 8 years, as well as Aikido. For 36 years he has practiced T’ai Chi Chu’an, and for 30 of those years, he has taught Tai Chi.

In 1982 he co-founded the Alexander Alliance, an intergenerational, multicultural community which conducts teacher training programs in the Alexander Technique, in Tai Chi Chu’an, in The Walking Way, and in The Peaceful Body.

Bruce apprenticed under Marjorie L. Barstow for sixteen years, the first person certified to teach Alexander’s work. He is the Director and Senior Teacher for the Alexander Alliance International, for the Alexander Alliance Germany, and for The Movement School in Santa Fe.

“I have literally touched humanity, and humanity has touched me. I love people. I respect them. I am moved by them, by their courage, and by their goodness. My life has been a labor and a privilege.”
-Bruce Fertman 

For more information about Bruce, click here.

Midori Shinkai (she/her), director of The Alexander Alliance Japan/Kyoto, has been studying Alexander’s work for 35 years. Having trained and translated for dozens of internationally renowned teachers, her understanding is exceptionally comprehensive. Her doctoral research in Anthropology explored how Korean, Chinese, and Japanese women sit, stand, walk, and move. Midori’s teaching is informed by her years of study of Sen-Tai, a traditional Japanese approach to health.

For more information about Midori, click here.

MargareteTueshaus (she/her) has taught intensely for over 19 years through private lessons and workshops in Alexander, dance, music, meditation and horseback riding. Coming from a diverse background ranging from biology to ballet, she feels equally at home at her farm working with horses, as in the world of artwork, meditation, and dance.  A passionate tango dancer since 1999, Margarete helps tango dancers develop more consciousness in their thought, movement, and behavior.  Her interest is in the body-mind connection and the profound study of human nature in all its expressions.

For more information about Margarete, click here.

Margarete has been a teacher of the Alexander Technique since 1999, and is a member of the GLAT (Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique).  She is on the Core Faculty of Alexander Alliance Germany and Alexander Alliance US: The Contemporary Alexander School.

GUEST FACULTY

ABOUT ADRIANA

Adriana Hardy (she/her) has had an extensive, eclectic professional career spanning opera, classical recital venues, musical theater, and theater direction.  She is also a Feldenkrais practitioner, a long-term student/teacher of yoga, Inner-Body Work, and vocal science.  She is a master voice teacher, specializing in troubleshooting technical issues for professional singers.  She offers private lessons, coaching, and opera workshops and has developed a unique study of the body mechanics of breath and sound, which she offers in the US and Europe.

Adriana is the Creator of Body, Breath & Sound, a unique experiential somatic study of how we use sound and breath in our everyday and professional endeavors. It is ideal for singers, actors, and wind players, but also for those who use their hands and voice to work with others. BBS is taught in the US, Europe, and Asia, and is an integral part of the CAs curriculum.

ABOUT YEHUDA

Yehuda Kuperman (he/him) mentors CAS in understanding the beauty and form of the classical styles, passed to him through his teachers Walter Carrington, Peter Scott, and primarily, Patrick MacDonald.  Yuda help us bridge classical with contemporary styles, anchoring our understanding and skill within the classical forms.

A bit about Yehuda, in his own words:

The combination of two distinct areas which I have studied as a young man, religion and later on physical education is probably what motivated me to look for the connection between body and spirit. The experience I had in my first lessons, touched the suppressed aspects of my hidden wishes.

I graduated in May 1967, at 16 Ashley Place with Patrick Macdonald as my teacher. It took me years of sharing with my students, to understand that the physical senses of joy I felt from his touch, was the taste of spirit. Spirit, which exists in pure and honored togetherness.

Today, I enjoy sharing with groups and special time with my 9 grandchildren. 

ABOUT SONALI

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee (she/her) is a proud mother, artist, organizer, facilitator, mindfulness / yoga instructor, and emerging health practitioner who works at the intersection of belonging, equity, and deep transformative change.   She roots in her home cultures and lands of India and Sri Lanka, and honors those from the Midwest (States) who also contributed to her growth and commitment to justice. Her formative education is in the arts, business, and educational reform.  Her life work has focused on bringing forward ideas and strategies that speak to wholeness, specifically calling for leading with multiple truths and perspectives required for collective health. To those ends, she strives to elevate the connection between social and spiritual wellbeing, focusing on artistically embodying and animating the web of health, belonging, collective care, and liberation.  

Sonali also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society of UC Berkeley focusing on the intersection of belonging, spirituality, decolonizing, and community well-being. She has recently left 13 years of leading social justice and racial equity efforts in local government and national governmental movement-building, and consults locally in Portland, Oregon, as well as nationally and internationally.

ABOUT DELIA

Delia Rosenboom trained when 17, graduating from Fellside Alexander school in 1989. She teaches privately, has taught on many AT trainings, including teaching anatomy, embryology and singing, and is Director of the South East Alexander School, UK. She runs post-graduate workshops and offers supervision.

Delia has pioneered ways of using the AT to work with people in shock, states of trauma, bereavement, recovering from surgery... She is passionate about developing the quiet, listening qualities of one's hands and about honouring emotional and energetic releases alongside physical changes, as part of the work. Delia is also a Natural Voice Practitioner, a NLP practitioner and Mental Fitness Coach.

Delia’s Website: www.deliarosenboom.co.uk  

SUPPORTING FACULTY

LYRA BUTLER-DENMAN

Lyra Butler-Denman (she/her) is an Alexander Technique Teacher, dancer, actor, and visual artist. She's been studying Alexander Work for almost two decades, first as a young dancer finding efficiency, strength, and presence, and later after a spine injury that left her severely incapacitated. Alexander Technique not only restored her health, function, and dance career after the injury, but also allowed her to awaken to a stronger, smarter body and a deeper understanding of herself. Lyra works with the way our bodies wear our personal histories, past injuries, culture, social “norms”, and belief systems. She is interested in the dismantling the internalized supremacies and inferiorities that live in our bodies. Lyra enjoys working with a diverse clientele in terms of identity, lived experience, activities, and areas of interest. She studied at, and is certified by, the Alexander Alliance US (Alexander Alliance International, Contemporary Alexander School) where she is now on faculty. Lyra is heterosexual, white-identified, cis-gender woman and uses the pronouns she/her/hers.

Lyra’s Website

LINDA K JOHNSON

Linda K Johnson has been immersed in all aspects of the fields of dance and somatics for almost four decades. A highly regarded artist and educator, her work as as a maker, performer, and teacher/mentor is imbued with her lively sense of curiosity, as well as by her deep awe and studied knowledge of the natural world, including the body/all bodies. Trained as an artist and scientist, she is - by both nature and nurture, a synthesizer and integrator. She likes patterns, layers, analogies, metaphors and similes, all the while interested in presence, beauty, and the sublime. She loves teaching the Contemporary Alexander Technique as part of her life’s work because it allows her to be and be with all of these things all at the same time. She is grateful to have studied this profound work with Robyn Avalon, Bruce Fertman and the other amazing members of the Alexander Alliance International, with additional deep dives into Body-Mind Centering, the Feldenkrais Method, and Ideokinesis.

She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and teenage daughter, and teaches the Contemporary Alexander Technique out of her home studio. She considers herself to be a citizen botanist and is currently studying Ikebana (The Art of Japanese Flower Arranging), as well as Spanish. She hopes one day to be able to teach Alexander lessons in Spanish. For more about her AT studio practice, please go here: https://www.lindakjohnson.net/contemporary-alexander-technique

For a more traditional professional bio marked with training, accomplishments and such, please go here: https://www.lindakjohnson.net/complete-bio

Website: lindakjohnson.net

WENDY WAGGENER

Wendy Waggener earned degrees in Violin Performance from Oberlin Conservatory and New England Conservatory.  She maintains a large private studio, in addition to coaching three youth symphonies and freelance performing. Wendy completed her Alexander Technique training with the Contemporary Alexander School with Robyn Avalon in Santa Fe and Midori Shinkai in Kyoto, and has worked with musicians at Meadowmount School of Music, Montecito International Music Festival, Oberlin Conservatory, Cleveland Institute of Music, La Sierra University, and the Colburn School.

Wendy’s website

ROSALIA GALASSI

Born in Florence, Italy, Rosalia Galassi began her movement career with ten years of dedicated ballet training. As a young adult she moved to New York where she had a professional career as a book binder and teacher before moving to Santa Fe, NM. In Santa Fe, Rosalia began her studies in Pilates with Master Trainer Michele Larsson, and pursued her Alexander Teacher Training with the Alexander Alliance Southwest. 

Today Rosalia fuses her studies in Tango, Pilates, and Alexander Technique with her knowledge of injury and rehabilitation to specialize in working with clients who are recovering from injury as well as those who are seeking a higher level of fitness.

Rosalia’s website