ALEXANDER ALLIANCE EUROPE
Robyn Avalon
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Robyn has been studying Alexander’s work for 50 years, being first introduced to it as a young performing artist. She is the Founding Director of The Contemporary Alexander School, the only USA branch of the Alexander Alliance International; as well as a Co-Director of the Alexander Alliance Europe, and on the Core Faculty of Alexander Alliance Japan. Robyn is also the Creator of Living in a Body™: The Quintessential Owner’s Guide to Natural Movement, a Professional Body Mapping Certification Course for educators from all disciplines.
If you’ve ever been in the room with Robyn, you will have experienced her highly interactive and lively situational and activity-based contemporary style of Alexander teaching, working with students while they do whatever they do, often in the actual situations and settings in which they work. She can be found teaching at an orchestra rehearsal, on a ski mountain, in an office, in an equestrian arena, on an ice rink, at a potter’s studio, in a Pilates class, on a golf course, and even outdoors with rock climbers and sky divers.
As a professional performer/theater director/choreographer herself, Robyn often works with performing artists. Her clients include over 70 national and international professional performing arts organizations, including opera companies, orchestras, chamber groups, dance companies, theater companies, and circuses. She has been a guest artist in conservatories and universities worldwide over the past 5 decades, and has taught students from many of the conservatories and major music departments in the US. She is also the Director of the Musician’s Wellness Program at the Meadowmount School of Music. CAS is proud to host the internationally renowned Isidore String Quartet as its Resident Ensemble.
In addition to performing artists, Robyn enjoys offering the Work to diverse professionals, serving many athletes, hands-on practitioners, fiber and fine artists, medical/therapeutic professionals, and movement/fitness professionals.
At this point in her teaching career, Robyn’s main interest is in creating ways for the Work to grow in the world, often asking the question: ‘How can we make the Work more accessible to more people worldwide?’ She addresses this through her own trainings and workshops, as well as by offering AT post-graduate trainings for classically-trained Alexander Teachers in technical skills required for contemporary-styled teaching paradigms, like working in activities and life situations; incorporating Body Mapping through her unique course, Living in a Body™(LIAB™); skills for effective Group Teaching; and addressing issues of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion within our profession.
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Ann-Kathrin Fliege
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After many years of working as a speech therapist, Ann-Kathrin dared to change to a new profession and has been a self-employed teacher of the Alexander Technique since 2013. After a long period of chronic illness and "being trapped" within her living conditions and supposed limits, she has learned through the Alexander Technique to recognize and let go of her habits and thought patterns. In this way, she has regained her natural lightness and freedom, has become flexible and agile again and decides in the here and now what the next harmonious step in her life is. In her work with the Alexander Technique she is particularly interested in recognizing undreamt-of possibilities - on a physical, mental and spiritual level.
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In addition to being a teaching member of our faculty, Ann-Kathrin is using her skills and coordinating the Alexander Alliance North-Branch in Germany.
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​Most recently, she began co-leading Alexander Alliance Europe as part of a highly talented and high-performing team.
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Magdalena Gassner
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Magdalena loves building bridges between different worlds and connecting people. Being trained as a civil engineer, she brings all of her technical and organizational skills to our community and school.
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Following her natural talent and passion for movement, she has trained in many different disciplines, amongst them horseback riding, Tai Chi, Qigong and Systema. From the beginning, she was fascinated, how the Alexander work reveals the beauty and grace of human beings. After finishing her training at the Alexander Alliance Germany in 2016, she has been working as an Alexander teacher giving individual and group lessons. There she emphasizes on awakening untapped potential and on bringing more lightness into every day’s life and being.
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Most recently, she began co-leading Alexander Alliance Europe as part of a highly talented and high-performing team.
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Mareike Klemm
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Mareike has been a student of the Alexander Technique since 2002, shortly before earning her university-entrance degree. Deeply impressed by the inner freedom she experienced through the smallest physical changes in the Alexander lessons, she already had the wish to "be able to do this on her own". However, it would take another 13 years before she started her own teaching after completing her training with the Alexander Alliance. During this time, she completed her medical degree and earned her doctorate with the first German-language medical dissertation on Alexander Technique, trained in craniosacral biodynamics, and founded a family. Today, Mareike works as a general practitioner. The Alexander Technique accompanies her in every doctor-patient contact.
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As an Alexander teacher, Mareike has spent the last ten years helping dancers, patients, health practicioners, therapists and business people to rediscover naturalness and freedom. Most recently, she began co-leading Alexander Alliance Europe as part of a highly talented and high-performing team. Her teaching is based on her therapeutic experience as a doctor and her knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. In addition, she brings a wide range of skills to her teaching, inspired by her diverse interests and passions such as dance, martial arts and Zen meditation. Her teaching is characterized by her lively spirit of inquiry and fascination for the human potential for development.
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Astrid Lobreyer
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Since 2008 Astrid has been teaching the Alexander Technique at the BELLA DONNA HAUS in Bad Oldesloe in groups and individually, offering AT Workshops for school teachers, as well as the elderly, and to people suffering from Parkinson or Dementia.
Astrid is a qualified teacher for physical education. She's a having spent her life bike riding, horseback riding, rowing, sailing, swimming, whitewater kayaking, playing volleyball, tennis, table tennis, badminton, and dancing. Her great pleasure is help others, through the Alexander Technique to move beautifully, comfortably and pleasurably.
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Most recently, she began co-leading Alexander Alliance Europe as part of a highly talented and high-performing team.
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Astrid in front working with Clementine
Janine Stenkbruck
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When Janine first learned about the Alexander Technique, she was working in an office at a large company. At the time, she was looking for something she couldn't put a name to and found the Alexander Technique.
Through private lessons and workshops she got to know herself better and discovered new sides of herself. These discoveries led her to more freedom of thought, movement and whole being in her interests, couple dancing, Tai Chi, painting and of course in everyday life.
The next logical step was to take the Alexander Technique training (2014-2018) and this awakened in her the desire to accompany people on their Alexander path. When teaching, Janine follows the possibilities and potentials that come into existence through contact and connection between people.
Since 2022 she is the Office & Coordination Manager and co-leader of the Alexander Alliance Europe as part of a highly talented and high-performing team.
Margarete Tüshaus
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Margarete Tüshaus is a senior teacher at the Alexander Alliance International. She teaches in Europe and the United States and has been involved with the Alexander Technique for over 25 years. Margarete has been teaching Alexander's work for 25 years through private lessons, workshops, seminars frequently within the context of dance, music, and horseback riding.
With a diverse background ranging from biology to ballet, she feels as much at home on her farm working with horses as she does in the world of art, meditation and dance. Margarete studied biology (graduation 1994 University of Hohenheim/Germany), and has extensive training in movement arts; ballet, modern dance, and Argentine tango. Zen meditation and spiritual practice are also part of her life. She is interested in the body-mind connection and the profound study of human nature in all its forms of expression.
Margarete manages a large farm with about 40 horses, runs a seminar centre on the farm, and welcomes students to her farm where she helps them to access their inner wisdom, their power and connectedness. Many of her students have trained with her for years and some have gone on to become excellent Alexander Technique teachers.
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​Most recently, she began co-leading Alexander Alliance Europe as part of a highly talented and high-performing team.
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Bruce Fertman
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Bruce trained with five, first generation Alexander teachers: Catherine Merrick Wielopolska, Marjorie L. Barstow, Richard M. Gummere Jr., Elisabeth Walker, and Erika Whittaker. He brings a lifetime of training as a movement artist and educator to his work as an Alexander teacher having trained in Gymnastics, Modern Dance, Ballet, Contact Improvisation, Tai Chi Chu’an, Aikido, Japanese Tea Ceremony, Argentine Tango, and Kyudo.
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He has worked with members of the Berlin Philharmonic, Radio France, The National Symphony in Washington DC, the Honolulu Symphony, for the Curtis Institute of Music, and most recently for Jeong Ga Ak Hoe, a traditional Korean Music Ensemble in Seoul, Korea. Bruce taught for the Five College Dance Program in Amherst, Massachusetts for 13 years, and for the Tango community in Buenos Aires. For 6 years, he taught movement for actors at Temple and Rutgers University.
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For ten years Bruce taught annually for the College of Physiotherapy in Gottingen, Germany.
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In 1982, Bruce co-founded the Alexander Alliance with Martha Hansen Fertman, an intergenerational, multicultural community/school, the first Alexander teacher training program inspired primarily by the work of Marjorie Barstow. Currently, Bruce is senior teacher for the Alexander Alliance Europe and also teaches annually for Alexander Alliance training programs in Japan, Switzerland, Austria, and America.
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Bruce’s heart centered approach as a teacher rests upon extensive study in psychology and theology, specifically, the work of Eric Berne (Transactional Analysis), Carl Rogers (Person Centered Therapy), Frederick Perls (Gestalt Therapy), Albert Ellis (Rational-Emotive Therapy), Carl Jung (Analytical Psychology), and Byron Katie (Inquiry). Having also studied with Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist scholars, Bruce’s work centers around body and being, movement and meaning, and the relationship between physical and spiritual grace.
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Bruce has been using his hands to help people for 55 years. He is author of Teaching by Hand/Learning by Heart - Delving into the Work of F.M. Alexander.
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Célia Jurdant
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Célia Jurdant directs an Alexander Technique teacher training program in Strasbourg, France. In addition, she has been on the faculty of the Alexander Alliance Germany for 10 years. A vocal artist and voice teacher, Célia specializes at the school on voice as it relates to Alexander's work. Célia studied harp and classical singing, her singing influenced by the work of Kristin Linklater. A mother of four, she also has training in Yoga, Argentine Tango, and Cranial Sacral Therapy.
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Midori Shinkai
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Midori directs the Alexander Alliance Japan and has been studying Alexander Technique for 40 years. She has trained and translated for several dozen internationally renowned Alexander teachers and consequently possesses an exceptionally broad overview of Alexander’s work. As an anthropology major in college, Midori studied the relationship between culture and coordination. Currently she is intrigued by the correlations between language, thought and movement. For many years Midori has studied and practiced Saitai, a traditional Japanese approach to well-being.
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