Biography

Through her clinical MA in psychology and current Ph.D. candidacy in Feminist Studies, Leah is continuing the life-art process she began at age 17, when she first worked with her life-long mentor, Anna Halprin. At Anna's Dance-Theater workshop, Tamalpa Institute, Leah learned that principle truths of body movement tell principle truths about the lives people lived. People expressed themselves even more sincerely in the physical-kinesthetic realm. The mind can play games, but the body cannot not lie. Nor can a visual image drawn, hide deeper truths often kept hidden from oneself.

Through Anna's work, Leah learned and refined tools for interpreting body-art messages. At the end of her summer's work, Anna told Leah to study Dance from those cultures of the world that integrated dance into their spiritual live, understanding the balance of dance, art and spirit. In these cultures, the creative process is available to every human being. In the West, such privilege is limited to the " artist." For example, only a dancer, painter, writer, actor, is considered "creative".

Determined to pursue the roots of creative life as it worked in the spiritual and economic lives of different cultures, Leah joined the Quaker's "Friends World College, to travel and study Dance Ethnology, living in Kyoto, Japan; Port-Au Prince, Haiti; Bali, Indonesia; and the Philippines; and received a dance scholarship from Portugal's most prestigious Modern Dance company-Glubenkin. Her language ability and natural talent as a performer enabled Leah to learn ten languages.

As a child, Leah's own roots in Judaism enabled her to learn religious song and "dovening" movements, as well as Gypsy dances while living in Spain as a teenager. As a young adult, Leah also traveled to Austria's Tyrolian Mountain villages and to a small Greek island of the Dodecanese where she learned songs and dances still sung among villagers today Leah still speaks German and Greek, Hebrew and Spanish, from this early time she spent living abroad.

Leah is a painter and performance artist and is a professor at the University of Art and Design in Miami, Florida. She teaches community workshops on how to turn your own personal story into an autobiographical performance work. She performs in theatre and museum settings and has performed at Miami Light Theatre and Bass Museum in Miami, Beyond Baroque, Highways and the Electric Lodge in California. Leah has become a professor, mediator, counselor and dance movement practitioner. She uses sand-tray and spontaneous drawing to supplement movement healing techniques. She combines her gift for healing with her ability to facilitate the creative process.

Leah's studying of the Strasberg method acting technique has enabled her to use the world of the senses to live her daily life. She believes that if we stay in our visceral world, we live more closely to our hearts.

Leah is married and has two children. She divides her time between Hollywood, FL and Hollywood, CA. Weekend workshops and private consultations are available.