Training Background
Jeremy Chance has been involved with the Alexander Technique since 1972 and started teaching in 1979. He trained in London with Paul Collins, Betty Langford and Vivien Mackie – all of whom were trained by Walter Carington. In 1986 Jeremy commenced his second training with Marjorie Barstow, and for the next five years accompanied her teaching in Australia and Europe, whilst also attending several of her month-long summer workshops and her shorter winter workshops in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.
Positions of Office
From 1985 to 2000, Jeremy was the founder, editor and publisher of DIRECTION, an international Journal on the Alexander Technique (www.directionjournal.com) that continues on today. In 1998 Thorson’s published his book "Principles of the Alexander Technique" (ISBN 0-7225-3705-0) which is now available directly from him in English, with a translation to be published in Japan in 2004.
In Australia, he founded the first Alexander Technique teacher training course in Sydney, while also be instrumental in the creation of the Australian Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (AUSTAT). In Australia he taught at NIDA, the Actors Centre and the Actors College as well as having a significant involvement with several Alexander teacher training schools. He has also taught at the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney and the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.
Post-Graduate Work
From 1986 to 1994, Jeremy traveled and taught extensively in Europe and America with teacher training schools, on public workshops and residentials and by doing post-graduate work with many Alexander teachers. Since 1999 Jeremy has lived in Japan where he founded Alexander Technique Associates with Yuzuru Katagiri. (www.alexandertechnique.co.jp)
His Approach
Jeremy believes that a flexible teacher is one that doesn’t hold to any one approach. His school in Japan is founded on the idea that students should experience many different ways of teaching the work, discover the principles within that and eventually evolve their own style of teaching.
To achieve that, he has set up a new kind of Alexander school, with four committed Training Directors, an extensive curiculum of learning modules, a diversified range of students and three locations of training – Tokyo, Kyoto and Nagoya. Qualification is based on qualative assessment, not quantative criteria, and is divided into three Stages of training, each of which could last several years. The ATA school also runs an extensive program of public workshops, where trainees join the public in learning through the group activity model developed by Marjorie Barstow. ATA also has 12 Teaching Members who work together to increase the profile and opportunities to spread the work in Japan.
Home
Jeremy continues to live in Kyoto with his wife Jaldhara, also an Alexander techer, and their two daughters Angelica and Grace.
