About the work

Generations in the 5Rhythms
This statement is written in the context of offering the workshop Rhythm & Repetition—a practice that revisits and revitalizes a stream of work once integral to the 5Rhythms tradition.

As this offering reaches dancers and teachers who may not be familiar with the deeper history of 5Rhythms, it feels necessary to clarify the lineage from which this work emerged and to situate it ethically and transparently.

The intention here is to offer historical perspective that protects the integrity of the 5Rhythms legacy without becoming defensive. It is an attempt to describe how several... now independent modalities - including Open Floor and Perspectives (also partly Movement Medicine, Moves into Consciousness and others) grew directly out of Gabrielle Roth’s work.

These practices were not created in isolation, but through collaboration with Gabrielles visionary brilliance, within the structures of the 5Rhythms.
Rhythm & Repetition and Circles of Held Awareness are original offerings developed by Jan, rooted in the 5Rhythms lineage and informed by earlier collaborations within that tradition.

While some elements may seem familiar with practices once explored in Open Floor or Perspectives, this work is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified under any of those organizations or trademarked modalities.

No copyrighted content, training materials, or proprietary frameworks from these organizations are used in this offering. All workshop materials are independently created.

Historical references are included solely for educational and lineage clarification purposes.
Open Floor and Perspectives, was part of the Mirrors-level curriculum. I could claim that they only stepped outside the 5Rhythms after Gabrielle’s death, in response to shifts in leadership and organization and did not result from philosophical divergences in the work itself, but from changes in the container that once held them.

I suppose that rather than accusing anyone of disloyalty, we could affirm 5Rhythms as a generative tradition — a mother tree from which many branches have grown.

While several teachers benefited profoundly from Gabrielle’s field, few have continued to acknowledge or support the tradition that gave them their roots.
This is not a personal critique, but a structural one: 5Rhythms gave generously and in many cases received little or nothing in return.

Rhythm & Repetition is not a borrowing from these later modalities. It is partly a continuation of what was already once considered 5Rhythms work.
This text serves to clarify that continuity.

Not to exclude others, but to name the roots from which this offering grows, and to ensure that its origins are not lost or rewritten by omission.
Lineage, Continuity and Clarification.

Over time, several movement modalities—including Open Floor and Perspectives - have been presented as independently developed practices. For those unfamiliar with the history, I believe it is essential
that new generations in 5Rhythms understand that these were not wholly original inventions. They were co-creations that emerged through direct collaboration with Gabrielle Roth and were incubated within the creative field of 5Rhythms.

Open Floor originated within the 5Rhythms tradition. The work that later became known by that name was originally part of the Mirrors-level, collaboratively developed with Gabrielle.

It was considered a formal component of the advanced 5Rhythms training path before Andrea Juhan left the organization after Gabrielle’s death and rebranded it as a separate modality.

Perspectives was a continuation of the same stream. Alain Allard renamed the work after Open Floor in order to remain within the 5Rhythms framework.
I had the privilege of assisting him for several years in this process. Perspectives also served as a recognized prerequisite for 5Rhythms Teacher Training and was integrated into the Mirrors-level.
These modalities were not born of disagreement with the practice itself, but rather arose in response to changes in leadership.

Had Gabrielle lived, I believe many of these teachers would have remained within the tradition, continuing to evolve the work from within.

From this perspective, Rhythm & Repetition is neither Open Floor nor Perspectives. It is a return to and reinhabiting of a stream of work that was once central to 5Rhythms.

With the full blessing and support of 5Rhythms Global, my intent is not to borrow from other modalities, but to reclaim and evolve what was originally seeded within Gabrielle’s vision and lineage.

Circles of Held Awareness

This work unfolds within circles, creating a shared space for all, rather than addressing an audience. It emphasizes mutual presence over performance, and shared experience over individual display.
The person in the middle of the circle is in service to the collective process—not working on themselves individually.

The group co-creates a field that is continuously shaped by everyone’s presence, intention, and energy. Rather than seeking individual solutions, healing, or redemption, the focus is on cultivating harmony within the collective field—a living field that moves something in all participants simultaneously.
It becomes a space where each of us can feel, witness, and participate in its movement and transformative power.

This practice is ritual, not medicine. It is grounded in the paradox at the heart of how we as humans see our selves as separate and yet are one... that life is in constant motion, nothing fixed, yet within this change lives an essence that remains unchanged.
Indigenous traditions speak of us as “double beings.” One part lives in separation, threat, and competition. The other in unity, harmony, and shared belonging.
This paradox is mirrored in the medicine wheel, a circle in motion whose center remains still.

An invitation to hold and create space for our shared humanity.

To hold space for each-other that is safe to feel, express and move what arises. A moving meditation, investigation and witnessing with attention and awareness. To get out of the way and allow the shift of attention; from the Dancer to the Dance, from moving to being moved. Here, in this circle of movement, we gather around that center of stillness and unity.

So to quote the famous “We are all one” But how can there be we if there is only one?

Welll… in this view “We are we and yet one”
Love Jan

 

FOR FLYERS ETC

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Rhythm & Repetition

A Mirrors level workshop founded in the 5Rhythms movement practice

Circles of held Awareness
This practice emphasizes a spiritual, collective approach, rooted in indigenous traditions rather than a therapeutic, individualistic, or Western framework.

Some of the elements we explore may feel familiar if you’ve worked with Open Floor or with the workshops once called Perspectives.

Open Floor was originally developed and explored within the 5Rhythms framework, particularly as part of the Mirrors-level curriculum, before evolving into a separate modality under its own leadership.

I want to be clear that this is not Open Floor work, and I am not teaching under that certification. This practice was shaped by earlier experiences, but it now follows a different path—one that is spiritual, collective, and rooted in the original cosmology of 5Rhythms as I experienced it.

It operates within circles, emphasizing shared experience rather than individual display and performer/audience dynamic.

The person in the middle of the circle is in service to the collective process, rather than working on themselves individually. The group is within a field that is both created and affected by the energy of everyone in the circle.

Rather than seeking solutions, healing, or redemption in the individual, the focus is on achieving harmony within the collective field.

This field can be felt, moving something in all participants simultaneously. - a space where all can feel and take part of its movement and its transformative power.

This practice is ritual rather than medicine. The circle represents what comes close to the concept where life is seen as a paradox: everything is in constant movement, nothing is fixed or permanent, yet there is an essence and core that remains unchanged.

Indigenous traditions speak of us as “double beings.” One part lives in separation, threat, and competition. The other in unity, harmony, and shared belonging. This paradox is mirrored in the medicine wheel—a circle in motion whose center remains still.

Here, in this circle of movement, we gather around that center of stillness and unity. We are both, and yet one.

Come together to witness and hold space for our shared humanity.

 
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