ARAWANA HAYASHI
PAST
Held in the body, carried through time
A journey into the roots of embodied presence.
The past lives in the body as memory, lineage, and practice.
The roots of embodied presence were formed through dance, improvisation, meditation, and ancient forms. Movement emerged as a way of listening to space, to timing, and to what wants to arise.
This journey traces how attention, stillness, and not knowing shaped a practice where gesture comes before concept and awareness guides action. The past gathered here offers a ground to be felt, a living foundation that continues to inform how presence meets the present moment.
Arawana Artistic Journey
Early Childhood
Cleveland, Ohio
Early Childhood
Arawana has spent her life in the performing arts since her first dance lessons at Miss Gensler’s Dance Studio, at the age of five.
1960s–1970s
Lineages & Improvisation
With Western dance lineages in ballet and the Merce Cunningham Studio, Arawana emerged primarily as an improviser, influenced by postmodern dancers at Judson Church.
1968
New York City
Improvisation
Arawana’s life as an improviser began when she met Jamie Cunningham in New York, working within improvisation performance groups and embracing spontaneous creation.
1968
Boston, MA
Summerthing
After the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., racial tension and polarization deepened nationally and in traditionally segregated Boston. That summer, Arawana began working in Summerthing, a neighborhood arts festival sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs.
1970
New York City
Earth Day
On April 22, 1970, Arawana performed at Washington Square Park on the first Earth Day, joining other artists in environmental activism.
Early 1970s
Boston, MA
City Dance Theater
Summerthing evolved into City Dance Theater, bringing programs and workshops into Massachusetts schools under the auspices of Young Audiences and the guidance of Jack Langstaff.
Through these experiences, Arawana came to see how movement practices rooted in communities, schools, and social and environmental issues could foster embodied learning, collaboration, and healing.
1970s
Meditation, Dharma Art & Leadership
Amid the social and personal turbulence of the 1970s, Arawana began studying meditation with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. His teachings on meditation in action and Dharma Art — creativity as nonaggression and art in everyday life — shaped her understanding of art as a source of human wisdom and enlightened leadership. This insight became foundational to Social Presencing Theater.
1970
Boulder, Colorado
Naropa University
While co-directing the dance program at Naropa University, Arawana worked within a community that included Barbara Dilley, Lee Worley, Allen Ginsberg, and Jerry Granelli, firmly establishing the link between meditation and art-making.
Together with Lee Worley and Jerry Granelli, she supported teachers in integrating contemplative arts practices into classrooms through a Rockefeller Foundation–funded Arts in Education program.
1977 onward
Bugaku Performance Practice
Beginning in 1977, Arawana performed Bugaku extensively. Even after performing these dances hundreds of times, the work remained vivid, direct, and uncontrived — grounded in the body, on the Earth, and in the open space of not knowing what comes next.
2003
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Origins of Social Presencing Theater
After nearly forty years teaching movement and creating dances, Arawana met Otto Scharmer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She began collaborating with Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge, offering awareness and embodiment practices within leadership and systems change programs.
With the support of Otto Scharmer, Peter Senge, Katrin Kaeufer, and colleagues at the Presencing Institute, Social Presencing Theater took root as a methodology for organizational and social change.
Since 2004, Arawana has been leading the creation of this form of social art together with colleagues from the Presencing Institute.
2000s–2010s
Social Presencing Theater
Social Presencing Theater became an integral part of the methodologies developed by the Presencing Institute. Practitioners began adapting the work across contexts, including climate action, social justice, trauma, and conflict, with growing self-organized learning communities in Europe, North America, and South America.
Later Years
Writing the Book
As Social Presencing Theater expanded globally, Arawana was encouraged by colleagues and practitioners to write about its origins and underlying principles. With contributions and reflections gathered by early teachers and collaborators, the book documents the vision, lineage, and foundations of the work, recognizing that it emerged through many co-creators, and that her story is one among many.
Meditation
Arawana Hayashi first saw Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche while her improvisational dance company was touring through Boulder.
She did not remember what he said, but she had never seen anyone move through space as he did.
That moment inspired her to stop — and sit down on a cushion.
Meditation became the ground of her path: a return to the open, awake quality of mind that underlies both art and life.
Through her long relationship with the Shambhala teachings,
she came to experience meditation not as a technique,
but as a way of embodying basic goodness — the natural dignity, clarity, and kindness that arise when awareness is fully present.
From this ground of stillness, art and movement unfold naturally, revealing the inseparable rhythm between inner presence and outer expression.
Japanese Court Dance – Bugaku
Bugaku, the Japanese Court Dance, unfolds through gagaku — the “elegant music” of the Imperial Court.
Refined for centuries, this ancient form carries the quiet majesty of movement in harmony with sound, color, and space.
Each dance is a meeting of heaven, earth, and human — a choreography of balance, dignity, and stillness.
Guided by Suenobu Togi of the Japanese Imperial Household Music Department,
Arawana Hayashi entered this lineage and discovered in its discipline a living meditation.
Through bugaku, she found a way to embody awareness —
where each gesture arises from spaciousness, and stillness reveals the essence of movement.
Today, her performances and archival recordings offer a glimpse into this rare art form.