Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
In 1959, at the age of 16, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen began teaching dance to children with cerebral palsy as part of a voluntary school project. It was also at this time that she began studying anatomy in high school as part of an experimental scientific research course. She has been teaching and developing her work ever since.
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen has an in-depth knowledge of movement through dance therapy, touch manipulation, martial arts, voice, yoga and various dance styles. She holds degrees in occupational therapy, neurodevelopment, Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis and Kestenberg movement profiling.
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen has taught dance at a number of universities and dance schools throughout the United States, including Hunter College and the Erick Hawkins School of Dance in New York, and the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She has also taught undergraduate kinesiology in dance therapy at Antioch College in Keene, New Hampshire, and has been a visiting professor at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and the Omega Institute in New York. She has worked on movement and manipulation at the Psychiatric Research Clinic of the University of Amsterdam in Holland, and helped open a school of physiotherapy and occupational therapy in Tokyo.
In 1973, in New York City, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen founded the School of Body-Mind Centering, dedicated to the exploration and teaching of movement based on anato- mical, physiological, psychological and developmental principles. In 1977, she moved with her family to Amherst, Massachusetts, where she continued the work of the school. The School of Body-Mind Centering offers several certification courses for practitioners and teachers, and several hundred people from North and South America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Asia have taken part.
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen has traveled extensively to teach in the United States, Canada and Europe.