Former Olympian Tamara Levinson discusses her transition from a gymnast to a dancer, touring with Madonna, and her passion for teaching movement. They also explore living in NYC, the power of somatic therapy, the importance of cooperation, and accessing pure awareness beyond expectations.

David Kam is a London-based movement specialist, yoga teacher and speaker exploring mindful mo(ve)ments in playful situations. His degrees in architecture and dance have shaped his interest in discovering what it means to feel at home in our bodies, and at peace with our actions. For David, it’s never from achieving the best technique, but the reclaiming of function and freedom of expression. Perhaps making some new friends along the way. It’s about self dare and collective care. David activates communities around the world, holding brave spaces for others to embody the wonder in wellbeing by queering the practices of movement. He works regularly with charities like besea.n and WECREATESPACE to advocate for joyful activism and culturally sensitive wellbeing amongst underprivileged communities. David is also founder of  kindredpacket, a grassroots organisation raising joy, care and connection amongst East and South East Asian communities in London and beyond.

On this special episode, Kyle shares an in person conversation while in Berlin with Joseph Bartz to discuss the economics of movement.   

From a young age, I was very interested in all kinds of sports. From soccer to, over different kind of martial arts I found my way to skateboarding and through my teenager's wish of becoming strong and buff, into the world of strength training. One thing I really never did, was to commit to anything for very long through, I jumped from practice to practice until I found physical development by way of strength work. So some years went by and along the way I decided to become a trainer, as this was the thing I was very passionate about. With this realization, I started to look at things differently. Even more than before, I was interested in understanding in the why behind what I was learning and doing. Eventually 18. Birthday came around, and I actually became a licensed pt and started to work in a gym, while I finished school. Pretty soon after, I got a little bored with what I was doing in the gym and decided that I want to do more with my body. For a couple of years my focus was solely on getting stronger back then. So I opened my eyes and stumbled upon a fellow coach in the gym who was teaching a parkour class. I joined. A couple of weeks later, a friend of mine showed me a video of this weirdo from Berlin... his name was Ido Portal and very soon I found myself at an international workshop in Zurich. This was 2014 or 15, and I dove in deeply and met all those beautiful souls, teachers, friends along the way, who really shaped the person I am today. Some years into the future, I opened my own movement school in Hamburg.

Marcello is known for his studies of movement in a relationship with the environment. His interest and investigations of different artistic and scientific dimensions brought him far and wide. Notably, he helped shape the face of Parkour in Europe, got his Master of Science degree in strength and conditioning at St. Mary university in London, and was part of Ido Portal’s team for three years. Currently his body of work continues to develop integrating in a coherent philosophy movement dexterity, dance, urban practices, the science of strength & conditioning and athletic principles. Through his teachings Marcello wishes to improve other people’s quality of life, allowing them to find their individuation and identity through deep transformative work. Recently he started releasing a lot of free practical materials to help everyone fuel their movement journey under his vision and school of practice. So here follow ten protocols that can get you busy for months: 1. Climbing – wall riddles 2. Climbing – advanced hanging & brachiation 3. Lightness skills 4-5-6. Physical Preparedness – elastics, strength, ranges. 7. Elasticity – kips 8. Acrobatics - ground 9. Balancing – single pole 10. Movement in Water

Bruno Caverna is a pioneer in creating authentic multidisciplinary practices sustained by an embodied movement philosophy drawn from over 35 years of studying movement devottedly. Bruno’s background amalgamates various disciplines from Capoeira through Acrobatics, Contemporary Dance, Contact-improvisation, Qi-Gong, Russian Systema, Watsu, Buteyko Method, Oxygen Advantage all the way to Freediving. Bruno began teaching in 1995 as a capoeira project leader at a psychiatric hospital. The highly demanding context ignited his auto-didactic nature to flourish whilst the teaching processes were becoming over the years more and more consolidated as self-exploratory in its essence. This first highly transformative teaching experience became his pedagogical ground for all his others artistic, pedagogical and psychosocial projects, regardless the context. Being constantly confronted with adversities was vital to related to people in most humane manners. This ever-evolving impulse would manifest inas much as horizons would organically expand beyond the conventional body-mind frameworks. In the past 27 years Bruno has been teaching people from all walks of life over 33 countries worldwide. In 2012 Bruno created Play-Fight and Liquid Body, body-mind practices that coalesced out of professional and personal maturity to assume and pursue an original path while at the same time honoring his vast background and teachers. In 2016 Bruno gave another decisive step by founding Formless Arts, a cross-disciplinary hub that foments a community of self-responsible movers from eclectic backgrounds. The current Formless Arts team is committed to explore movement from a larger dimension that includes a vasgt array of interests such as in ontological philosophy, somatics, neuroscience, various forms of psychotherapies, somatics as well as studies in human biomechanics, biotensegrity, science or water flow, just to mention a few. You can subscribe to host of Behind the Movement Kyle Fincham's Movesletter by clicking here.  

Born in Romania, Cluj-Napoca. I started my physical education at the age of 5, as a swimmer. Along the years I practiced various sports, focusing mainly on capoeira. My interest in arts was cultivated while studying music during my first 10 years of education.  I studied medicine for 4 years. Afterwards I quit and decided to take education in my own hands. In present I am studying with Fighting Monkey, applying the principles and philosophy in my practice and in the way I move in the world.  My plans for the future are to spread the love for movement and educate people towards a more artistic engagement with life and their practice.

Lucía Toker is a dancer and acrobat dedicated to movement and pedagogical research. She has been developing her teaching for more than 15 years. Her work concept is to constantly update and search for essencial technical tools and methodological strategies to facilitate the connection and development of the movement practice for people with all levels of experience. Originally from Buenos Aires, Lucía works regularly giving classes in professional dance programs, workshops and seminars throughout argentina and europe. her training started from a really young age and crossed through different disciplines and techniques, such as gymnastics, floor acrobatics, tango, flamenco, contemporary dance, improvisation, rehabilitation techniques, physical therapies, physical training and theoretical studies related to the human body. she participated in the residency bows & arrows 2018, in Italy, invited by Tom Weksler, with whom she thereafter performed a mentorship program. as a performer, she worked several years dedicated to scenic creation but in the last few years, she decided to dedicated exclusively to research and teaching. Some of her latest works are “Collision”, developed in the artistic residency Circo Futuro, together with the group “OM” in Fortaleza, Brazil, July 2019. “lo que queda” and “mar arriba”, both solo pieces, developed in co-production with Paz Ladrón de Guevara, were performed in different festivals and theatres in Buenos Aires.

Jesse Danger loves jumping into things so much he's been doing nothing but for the past decade. He leads the team at The Movement Creative to help people turn their city into a playground and find a group of friends that love to explore. He credits novel movement experiences as being the core of his education. He sees movement as a way to explore the world physically while connecting socially. Those novel movement moments have led to most of the conversations that have helped him grow.

Born in Wild East. Based in North West. Soul coordinates 22°25'00.0"N 12°00'00.0"W She got married somewhere in Switzerland with a man who can carry on his shoulders more than 100kg. She can cook a whole dinner for 17 persons and she can have 3 espressos in a row. A collector of: animal bones - especially golden dragons - complex fragrances, aromatic herbs, stones and rocks. She has knowledge in: how to grow a plant from a single leaf, hip hop music from 1992 to 2010, inner and outer order, anthropology of culture. Believes in the logic of the universe. Likes to walk slowly, terribly slowly since it reminds her that time doesn’t exist and that presence is to be somewhere. Performer, dancer, teacher, also known as the “polish hammer”. Rooted herself with FM practice, and in SEAD, graduating with a double diploma in choreography and performance. Since 2006, she has been following the Fighting Monkey path. This gave an axis to her teaching and life. As a pedagogue, she is motivated by an urge for movement as a consequence of being alive and by an endless and necessary will to share. Her teaching reaches people from various grounds - dancers, actors, circus and sports people - everyone willing to “try”. Natalia is currently busy with FM, TCM, stillness&motherhood, collaboration with Voetvolk- Lisbeth Gruwez. Natalia would not mind being a bird or an ocean –but she is the happiest when she can be herself. If she would be asked to close with a quote she would say: “All I ask is that you step with me into the boundlessness, where constancy, quietude and peace, infinite emptiness reign.”