Remembering Glenna Batson: A Life in Motion, a Legacy in Embodiment

When I learned that Glenna Batson had passed away this past August, I felt the profound weight of absence. Yet alongside the sadness came a stirring impulse — to gather her stories, her spirit, and her love of movement, and let them speak. Glenna was never simply my teacher, nor only my student, nor merely a colleague. She was all three at once — and always a source of inspiration, both in her pedagogy and in the way she lived her life as a creative being and an endlessly curious spirit.

The Many Pathways of a Life in Motion

Glenna’s work lived at the crossroads of dance, somatics, neuroscience, and rehabilitation — a truly interdisciplinary tapestry she wove over more than seven decades. She trained as both a physical therapist and a dancer, and became internationally recognized for her contributions to somatic education — the integration of bodily awareness and movement intelligence into the art and science of dance.

Her history with Duke University was as layered as her life. As Duke partnered with the American Dance Festival in the 1980s, Glenna was one of the central figures who brought somatic movement education into conversation with modern dance training. Later, when the ADF/Hollins MFA in Dance (the precursor to the current Duke MFA in Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis) was taking shape, she became the teacher of record for the Somatics course in the graduate curriculum — a pioneering act at a time when the internal experience of the body was rarely considered a legitimate form of knowledge in academia. She later continued that service in Duke’s Program in Dance EIP curriculum.

When Glenna eventually moved to a retirement community in Maryland, the opportunity to teach the Somatics class at Duke opened up. I applied for the role and was selected, and I remember how delighted Glenna was for me. She shared her faith that I would carry forward the work she had built, expanding it into new forms. Her trust, generosity, and encouragement shaped the teacher I have become, and I have always regarded my work as a continuation of her legacy. Shaped by my admiration for her and supported by my knowing that she would only want me to teach as I do, and not as her. 

A Mind of Inquiry, a Heart of Joy

Glenna was a tireless thinker and a tireless doer — but never without warmth. She approached the great mystery of bodily life with delighted curiosity and childlike wonder. Her laugh could pierce through a room — a laugh that signaled not just humor, but recognition and discovery. You always knew when she was in awe: her eyes would sparkle, her posture would soften, and her presence would expand to fill the space around her.

Every class with Glenna was both structured and spontaneous. While she guided students through experiences, she was also learning from everyone in the room. Her genius lay in helping people identify habits and patterns — physical, emotional, perceptual — and then gently inviting them into choice. I can still recall moments when awareness dawned across a student’s face: a gasp of surprise, a burst of laughter, the sudden light of recognition.

To call Glenna merely a “movement teacher” would be to miss her full measure. For her, movement was never only about the motion of a body in space; it was also about the movement of spirit, of thought, of community, of justice. She understood that movement could be a social force — a gathering of energies toward empathy and equality. Her teaching and her activism were seamlessly intertwined.

Collaboration, Curiosity, and the Radical Power of Rest

In 2006, Glenna and I collaborated on an article about rest and the creative training schedules of dance practitioners. At the time, she was teaching in what would become the ADF/Hollins MFA at Duke, and we were both fascinated by how the culture of dance had internalized the values of productivity and constant striving. Together, we decided to explore rest as a radical act — a form of resistance and renewal — through a small research project using somatic practices based on the Feldenkrais Method.

The students’ responses revealed how deeply “pushing through” had been normalized, and how transformative it was to experience rest as an integral part of learning rather than a guilty pause. Our article on that research became a highly cited publication, I think, because it spoke to something essential that Glenna always understood: that artists are not machines, that creativity arises not from exhaustion but from balance. She believed that wellness, attention, and care were not luxuries but necessities for any creative life.

A Lifelong Advocate for Dignity

Glenna’s commitment to human rights was as fierce as it was compassionate. She worked tirelessly against discrimination and inequity, especially as these issues intersected with embodiment and lived experience. She was deeply concerned with how we treat those the world tends to overlook — the elderly, the ill, the incarcerated. She believed that dignity was a human birthright, and that those of us with comfort or freedom had a moral duty to use that privilege in service of others.

After her passing, I received an outpouring of messages from people whose lives she had touched. Nearly every story contained some small act of generosity or advocacy — a conversation, a helping hand, a letter of support — that had changed the course of someone’s life. Glenna never performed kindness for recognition; she simply lived it. She understood that community and compassion were not optional — they were the foundation of human flourishing.

The Scholar, the Collaborator, the Friend

Across her career, Glenna’s work spanned continents and disciplines. She taught and presented in more than a dozen countries. Her research explored everything from balance and fall prevention in older adults to dance improvisation and agency in people with Parkinson’s disease. Her writing — including Body and Mind in Motion: Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation and Dance, Somatics, and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives — stands as a lasting contribution to our understanding of embodied knowledge. Yet even in her scholarship, she was a collaborator first and foremost. For Glenna, writing was always a form of dialogue — a way of thinking with others rather than about them.

What always struck me was the depth of her intellect combined with her capacity for compassion. She could hold her own with neuroscientists or medical doctors — and she did, often — but she never lost sight of the human heart. She cared about people as much as she cared about ideas.

Somatic movement education seeks to restore balance between cognitive thinking and bodily knowing, and Glenna lived that integration fully. She possessed immense cognitive clarity but also knew the value of sensation, intuition, and play. She refused to compartmentalize body and mind; she believed that creativity and wholeness arise only when the self is integrated — with one another, with the organism, with the world.

Even into her final months, she remained prolific, playful, and deeply engaged — teaching, researching, and learning with an openness that never dimmed.

What She Leaves Us

Glenna leaves us a model for how to live richly in an uncertain world. Her legacy invites us to stay curious, to inquire deeply, to be willing — always — to be surprised. She showed me that laughter can be as instructive as discipline, that love can be a form of intelligence, and that movement, in every sense, is life.

When I picture her now, I see her at the edge of a river — one foot on the shore, one foot in the current — reaching out her hand to help others cross. She built bridges not with bricks or blueprints, but with empathy, humor, and trust. She was the kind of person who stood between the known and the unknown, welcoming us to step forward with courage.

The best way I know to honor her is simple: keep dancing. Keep laughing. Stay curious. And remember, always, that love is stronger than any darkness.

Thank you, Glenna — for your movement, your wisdom, your kindness, and your light. Your gifts remain vibrant in the many lives you touched so gracefully and with so much care. 

If you would like to hear more about Somatics and Glenna please visit the ISMETA website.  On October 25th, 2025, ISMETA hosted an online celebration of her life in which several students and colleagues of Glenna’s (including colleagues at Duke) prepared some remarks, and time was also made for people to spontaneously share remembrances.  The video will live on the ISMETA website in an area dedicated to holding the legacies of Somatic Movement Education pioneers and innovators. If you are interested in the Somatics class that Duke offers, annually in the spring semester, Somatic Movement Arts: Embodied Human Being, please be in touch with the program in dance