AUTHORS: Diane Butler

Diane Butler, Ph.D., is a movement artist, teacher and program director who has collaborated with artists from diverse cultures and faiths in the Americas, Europe and Asia for 25 years and lived in the villages of Bedulu and Tejakula, Bali since 2001. She co-initiated with Suprapto Suryodarmo an international cooperative foundation, Dharma Nature Time, to support interculture in cultural environments through sharing in the arts, religiosity, and nature. 

In the 1980s, Diane lived in New York and assisted and performed in site-specific dance works by Ruby Shang with American, Asian and European artists in natural and urban sites and festivals in the USA, France, Japan and UK. In the 1990s, she contributed to the field of contemplative education as an Associate Professor, Founding Chair of InterArts Studies and Director of Dance/Movement Studies at Naropa University in Colorado and Director of the 2001 Naropa Study Abroad in Bali. She was also a Co-Founder of the Mariposa Collective. 

Diane has taught movement and creative process workshops for the Lincoln Center Institute, George Mason University, Hofstra University, and Colorado Dance Festival, USA; Tanssavintti in Helsinki, Tanztendenz Munich, Moving Arts Köln, studios in the Czech Republic, Poland, Vienna, and Hamburg; LaSalle Singapore Institute for the Arts, Universitas Tarumanagara Architecture Department in Jakarta, and University of Malaya Dance Department in Kuala Lumpur. 

She holds a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School; MALS in Dance & Culture from Wesleyan University; is the first foreign scholar to earn a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Universitas Udayana, Bali; and is an alumna of the 2011 UNITAR Series on the Management and Conservation of World Heritage Sites. 

Diane has been leading Awakening Art workshops since 1997 – initially in Europe and USA and since 2001 in an annual series in Bedulu, Bali and as a guest teacher in other countries.

Awakening Art workshops: email  ~ website 
Dharma Nature Time: email 
Picture
Messenger 2001 by Diane Butler, Suprapto Suryodarmo and Jero Mangku; discarded postcards costume by Ann Wizer for 1st Sharing Art & Religiosity at Candi Teja Amerta, Tejakula, North Bali, 27 January. Photo by Ann Wizer © 2001.
Related titles:
Embodied Lives
​Attending to Movement
Nine Ways of Seeing a Body
All Movement & Somatics titles