pearl ubungen creates learning environments for a wide range of contexts, most often in conjunction with community-engaged research and performance projects. Ms. ubungen finds the most valuable learning and teaching occurs in gatherings that are supported by elements of formal retreat as well as when the motivation for learning and teaching is rooted in shared community desire and vision.
Ms. ubungen teaches in a variety of settings including: public schools, community centers, universities, arts venues, festivals and dharma centers. For many years she worked in the San Francisco public schools teaching creative movement to elementary school children through Gloria Unti’s Performing Arts Workshop (PAW) and was one of the first choreographer/teachers for SF Arts Education’s “Event of the Year.” Ms. ubungen founded the Tenderloin Dance Project which provided free dance and art classes to low income, at-risk youth living in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood and was a core program of her company Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians.
Ms. ubungen designed and implemented a four-year curriculum for an interdisciplinary BFA in Performance at Naropa University. The innovative program included training in meditation and contemplative practices and also integrated teachings in community engagement, social justice, as well as critical theory. Ms. ubungen invited diverse arts practitioner/teacher/thinkers to collaborate in this experimental, radical arts training; amongst them: Feldenkrais practitioner and ballet innovator Augusta Moore, actress and theater director Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, vocal specialist Jonathan Hart Makwaia, performer/writer Annie Lanzilotto, andpoet, playwright and professor of International Theater Esiaba Irobi.
Ms. ubungen is an authorized meditation instructor in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and a Director/Teacher of Shambhala Training. She teaches Awareness Through Movement (ATM) classes of the Feldenkrais Method (FM) and has been investigating and articulating how principles in meditation and FM can strengthen and illuminate aspects of each practice.Her current projects intertwine these mind/body forms, providing support for complexity, interdisciplinarity, and intricacy inherent in community-based arts practice.