Janet Kaylo

LSSI Founder and Director

Janet Kaylo comes from an extensive background as a professional dancer, choreographer, director, and educator. She has worked as a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) for over 30 years, and also holds professional registrations as a Somatic Movement Therapist (ISMETA), senior Dance Movement Psychotherapist (ADMP, UK), and Registered Movement Pattern Analyst (Warren Lamb Trust).

In her early career in New York City, Janet performed as a featured dancer with dance companies including Bhaskar Dances of India, Sophie Maslow Dance Company, Daniel Maloney and Dancers, and Rhythms & Visions of India. She was Co-founder and Dance Editor for In-Step with the Performing Arts of New York – the first tabloid in New York City to exclusively utilize dancers as dance critics and to cover Manhattan’s ‘Downtown Dance’. Janet later left NYC to found and direct her own company, New Orleans Repertory Dance Theatre, presenting her own and nationally-recognized choreographers’ original works, in collaboration with New Orleans musician/composers and visual artists and the New Orleans Symphony Chorale.

Janet completed her CMA at LIMS®, NY in 1989/90, and worked as core faculty for LIMS’ CMA programs at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Quebec at Montreal. Janet and Peter Madden brought the first CMA program to Canada in 1993.

In 1995, Janet moved to London, UK to become a full time Lecturer at Trinity-Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (formerly The Laban Centre), teaching full time on the professional dance training BA for 10 years, and on the dance movement therapy Dip/MA until the program ended there. In 2002-2003 she collaboratively designed the MA degree in Dance Movement Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths University of London, and spear-headed the program as its first Course Leader.

While based in the UK, Janet designed and directed a new CMA program for the dance department at York University, Toronto (Certified in affiliation with LIMS), and founded Laban/Bartenieff and Somatic Studies International™ (LSSI) to present subsequent CMA programs at Ryerson University Theatre Department in Toronto, and at Burnaby Arts Centre, Vancouver, BC. In 2016-2017 she presented LSSI’s Certificate Program in Zagreb, Croatia, as a fully integrated model of Somatic Practice and Laban Movement Analysis (CMA-SP); followed by a return to York University to present the CMA-SP program there.

Janet developed and established the first somatically–based LMA courses in the UK, and developed the Experiential Anatomy into Technique syllabus (with Gill Clarke) used as Fundamental Skills components in Trinity-Laban’s Dance Theatre training. She also created the first integrative LMA/BF course model used as a core component on the Dance Movement Therapy program at the Laban Centre, and created Somatic Practice and LMA as core curricula on the MA in Dance Movement Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths University of London, UK.

In addition to her pioneering work in London, Janet brought somatically-based workshops to various faculty and students throughout the UK and Europe, including in Wales, France, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland and the Czech Republic – where she has provided Somatic Approaches to LMA/BF components for TANTER’s dance therapy training programs since 1997. She was also invited by the Shankar Centre for Performing Arts to provide somatically-based technique training for their company dancers; and by the British Council in Calcutta, to provide introductory dance therapy training for NGO workers in Bengal, India.

Janet received her Masters of Arts (with distinction) in Jungian and Post Jungian Studies from the University of Essex, Centre for Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, UK. Peer-reviewed publications include “The Phenomenological Body and Analytical Psychology” in Harvest: Journal of Jungian Studies; “Imagination and the Mundus Imaginalis” in Spring: Journal of Archetype and Culture, Philosophy and Psychology Issue; and “Anima and Animus Embodied” in Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy, Taylor and Francis.

Janet lives in Savannah, GA, where she has a private Somatic Movement Therapy and Dance Movement Psychotherapy Practice, teaches Somatic Movement Improvisation classes, and creates site-specific movement improvisations as Savannah Moving Arts Projects. She continues to teach and present Certification Programs Internationally, while also contributing to an alternate route ADTA training in Dance Movement Therapy in Vancouver, and to EADMT dance therapy trainings in in Prague.

Publications by Janet Kaylo

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