About Joan

Joan Arnold has been a movement professional for over 25 years, teaching dance, exercise, Alexander Technique and Anusara Yoga. She has a private practice on Manhattan’s Union Square and in Park Slope, Brooklyn and is Executive Director of the Ancram Opera House where she teaches yoga and Alexander Technique. There she and House Manager (and husband) Jim Paul program concerts and classes, offering a variety of body/mind experiences to help people find new dimensions of health, inspiration and community.

Education, Performance & Administration Joan’s physical restlessness and passionate curiosity about movement motivated her to explore a wide range of movement styles at NYC studios – Zena Rommett, Alvin Ailey and Clark Center for the Performing Arts. She studied ballet, composition, improvisation, modern and African dance with some of NYC’s most outstanding teachers, including Charles Moore, Chuck Davis, Milton Meyers, Maris Wolff and Robert Ellis Dunn. She graduated from Hunter College in 1979 with a major in Dance and minors in education and psychology.

Joan performed with choreographers Midi Garth, Johanna Boyce and Margaret Hoeffel and, for three years, with Richard Bull’s Improvisational Dance Ensemble. She also acted in and choreographed for showcases and several off-Broadway plays. From 1980 – 83, she was Director of Special Programs at NYC’s Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, creating and administering workshops in Laban Movement Analysis, composition and improvisation.

Dance with Children

For ten years at schools and camps, Joan taught children 2 to 18 years old creative movement, modern and jazz dance, composition and improvisation. She ran a summer dance program for five years at Camp Hillcroft in upstate New York, teaching dance and directing students in creating and performing original work. Her four-year experience as a nursery school teacher was itself an education in elemental human nature and classroom organization. She taught creative movement at West Side Montessori School and, as director of Children’s Dance Theatre in Chelsea in the early ‘80s, she supervised faculty and taught jazz, modern dance and dance composition to kids ages 8-17.

After her 1988 graduation from the American Center for the Alexander Technique, Joan served on its assistant faculty. Over the subsequent years, she has presented and taught at many institutions, including the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, the Atlantic Theater Company, New Age Health Spa and Equinox Fitness Clubs. She has demonstrated the Alexander Technique on CBS This Morning and cable TV. For three years, she worked with colleague Hope Gillerman on the American Society for Teachers of the Alexander Technique (AmSAT) Marketing and Public Relations Committee, writing text and creating content for the national society’s web site. Her articles on the Technique appear on a wide range of alternative health sites.