As the pandemic has eased significantly, caregivers around the world have been able to step out of panic mode, but they are still facing stressors head on. A Minneapolis author, Stuart Pimsler hopes his book, ‘The Choreography of Care: Enganging Caregivers in Creative Expression’ and the workshops surrounding it, will help ease some of that stress.

A workshop was recently held at the Cottage Grove Library on Oct. 3, and another is planned for Monday, Oct. 24, 2022, between 1 p.m. and 2:15 p.m., The Wildwood Library, located at 763 Stillwater Road, Mahtomedi, MN 55115.

Press Release New Tool Showcases Role the Arts Can Play in Healing for Strained Healthcare Workers The Choreography of Care: Engaging Caregivers in Creative Expression is Now Available (Minneapolis) – Until the COVID-19 pandemic struck, a lot of people took our healthcare workers for granted. Not anymore! We now have a much better realization about the stress and pressure they are under everyday.

According to a study conducted by Mental Health America, at the height of the pandemic—between June and September 2020—93 percent of healthcare workers were experiencing stress, 86 percent reported experiencing anxiety, 76 percent were just plain exhausted and 75 percent of healthcare workers said they were overwhelmed.

Today, as we are in year three of the pandemic things are much better than they were. We are no longer in crisis mode. Healthcare workers are still stressed though. So, now the time has come to focus not just on the care of patients, but on the care of caregivers as well.

Advice on a good way to get the job done can be found in the new book, The Choreography of Care: Engaging Caregivers in Creative Expression, released by Harp Publishing the People’s Press in late 2021. The author is veteran writer, director, choreographer and performing artist Stuart Pimsler of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The book draws upon Pimsler’s very personal loss of his mother as a teenager and how that has impacted his life’s work of bringing peace and care to others. It explores Pimsler’s and his partner Suzanne Costello’s experiences leading hundreds of workshops in healthcare facilities across the globe, and focuses on how they came to do this work.

“We had a very unexpected entre into this area of arts and health,” explains Pimsler at the beginning of the book. “In 1992, we were at the University of Florida in Gainesville presenting a stage work dedicated to my mother who had died when I was 15.

“After the show, Dr. John Graham-Pole, who at the time was head of the children’s bone marrow transplant program at Shands Hospital, came up to me and said he was very moved by the work and wanted to talk about the possibility of having us engage with a group of writers that were all healthcare workers,” says Pimsler.

Since then, he and Costello have performed the show for caregivers in nearly 40 U.S. states. They have taken it abroad to Israel, Russia, China, Mexico and Bermuda as well.

In the book, Pimsler discusses the strategies he uses for bringing creative expression to the professional caregivers’ workplace, as well as the impact art and movement have made on the healing community. These pages speak to the importance of keeping caregivers healthy by offering ideas for their selfcare and wellness. Included are specific movement, theater, writing, visual art, and vocal exercises, and directed improvisations for invigorating the practices of healers.

The book isn’t just useful for professional care providers. Pimsler says it can also serve as a blueprint for artists interested in getting involved in community-based work like he has. It can also offer insight to people who are caring for family members at home.

Artists of all disciplines will learn about touchstone issues and techniques for collaborating with the healthcare community. At the heart of this book is the firm belief, supported by 25 years of research and experience, that art offers the power of healing to the very community entrusted with the public’s health and well-being.

More information can be found on the website: Choreographyofcare. com.

About the Book

The Choreography of Care: Engaging Caregivers in Creative Expression was published by Harp Publishing: The People’s Press of Clydsdale, Nova Scotia. Copyright 2021, ISBN 978-1-99013708-2 About the Author

Stuart Pimsler is a choreographer, director, writer, performer, founder and Artistic Co-Director of Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater (SPDT). His work has been honored with Choreography Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and McKnight Foundation and as well as a Major Fellowship and six Individual Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council.

Pimsler has been commissioned by the Guthrie Theater, the Lila Wallace Arts Partners Fund, National Performance Network Creation Fund, the Jerome Foundation, the Wexner Center, University of Minnesota, the Walker Art Center, The Wharton Center at Michigan State University among others. In 2012, Mr. Pimsler was a guest artist at the Beijing Modern Dance Festival and in 2014 was one of three U.S. choreographers invited to Australia under the auspices of American Dance Abroad.

Mr. Pimsler holds anA.B. in English from Franklin & Marshall College and a J.D. from Catholic University School of Law. He was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1975 and the following year was accepted as an M.F.A. Fellow in Dance at Connecticut College. His mentors have included Martha Myers and Daniel Nagrin, whose solos Spanish Dance (1948) and Word Game (1968) he continues to perform. As cultural activist, Mr. Pimsler has served on the Board of Directors of Dance/USA (1990-97) and the Steering Committee of the National Performance Network (1992-95). He has served as panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, Bush Foundation and an array of arts councils and agencies throughout the U.S. In 2005, Pimsler founded The SAGE Awards for Dance, an annual celebration of outstanding dance achievements throughout Minnesota which he co-coordinated with Dana Kassel through 2016.

Praise for The Choreography of Care: Engaging Caregivers in Creative Expression “The Choreography of Care offers poignant revelations about the theater of healthcare and provides fresh approaches for artists as they engage with their communities.”

— James Lapine, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and director.

“Drawing on his own family experience, his life as a dancer and choreographer, scientific research, and the moving testimonies of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals with whom he has worked, Pimsler guides his reader through the revelatory and healing powers the arts bring to medicine, not only for the sick and dying, but just as crucially for those who treat them.”

— Siri Hustvedt, PhD. Lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Author of The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves.

“In this captivating and poignant memoir, Stuart Pimsler again demonstrates his prowess as a compelling interdisciplinary maker—weaving autobiography, insight and meaning on the page as he has on the stage for four decades.”

— Jill Sonke Director, Center for the Arts in Medicine, University of Florida College of the Arts and Asst. Director, Shands Arts in Medicine “The future of healthcare— and of healing—lies within these pages.”

— Liz Engelman, Director of Tofte Lake Center Stuart Pimsler has toured globally offering his arts in healing workshops for more than four decades. This program is funded with money from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund