Staff – Page 2 – Taketina Australia

Meredith Greenwood

Meredith Greenwood

Location: Melbourne
Website: http://www.meredithgreenwood.com.au/
Mobile: 0438 051 390

Meredith is a facilitator with a background in music and counselling. She is experienced at working with individuals and groups in a range of contexts including schools, prisons and organisations from the mental health, disability and youth work sectors. She is based in Victoria.

Is Guillemin

Is Guillemin

Location: Blue Mountains
Website: www.myste.com.au
Mobile: 0401 686 039

Is’s focus is and always has been on our reconnection with (our own) Nature. Is sees Nature as a symphony of rhythms and cycles and Taketina as one of the natural and potent practices that can assist us to reintegrate our selves within the bigger cycle of Life, with more acceptance of all its apparent contradictions, in the only moment that there is.

Tony Hole

Tony Hole

Location: Adelaide
Website:
Mobile: 0402 859 839

Adelaide educator and musician Tony Hole is a certified basic level Taketina teacher. Musically, piano has been Tony’s melodic home since childhood, which has led to many different performance contexts. A fascination for rhythm took him to Ghana to learn West African percussion and dance, and to India to study classical Indian percussion, on both tabla and mridangam. Tony has performed in a variety of global-fusion bands over many years. He is also a teacher and performer of InterPlay’s improvisational practices in storytelling, dance and music. With a background and interest in mindfulness and meditation, Tony is passionate about Taketina as a moving meditation practice.

Justin Holland

Justin began playing piano at the age of four and saxophone by 7. He is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts and has spent over 25 years as a professional musician and educator. He is a founding member of bands such as Ping and Down Town Brown and has performed and toured with many artists including Meow Meow, Don Burrows, The Dilapidated Diva, Brazjazz and Julie O’Hara. Alongside his music career Justin also trained as a dancer and has much experience working in theatre and dance with companies such as Snuff Puppets, Legs on a Wall, Back to Back theatre, Bird On A Wire and La Soirée and Polyglot theatre.

Justin is a qualified Yoga teacher and has practiced Yoga and Contact Improvisation dance for over 20 years. Currently Justin works full time as the Musical Director/ Choreographer for Somebody’s Daughter Theatre, creating raw and powerful theatre in women’s prisons and with at risk youth.
In 2018 Justin completed a three year teacher training in TaKeTiNa with founder Reinhard Flatischler after receiving a professional development grant from the Australia Council.

Michael Kokinos

Michael Kokinos

Location: Melbourne
Website: www.blueskytherapies.com.au
Mobile: 0418 532 166

Michael is passionate about music and healing. He combines experience as a studio musician with deep knowledge of the role of rhythmic intelligence in somatic health. Michael’s regular TaKeTiNa “Rhythm for Vitality” workshops at the Abbostsford Convent in Melbourne have been popular in 2014/5. .

His background as a physiotherapist includes over 20 years developing methods for awareness, perception and movement of the body : The TaKeTiNa process is unique as an opportunity for deep embodiment and a space to explore the connection between consciousness and soma.

Michael also has a strong connection to Arnhem Land people with 12 years working with NT Indigenous community organisations. He works closely with Steiner schools specialising in rhythm and movement for education and wellbeing. He is the founder of NT clinic Blue Sky Therapies, holds a masters degree in health management and works all over Australia and internationally.

Lila Meleisea

Lila Meleisea

Location: St Helens, Tasmania
Website:
Mobile: 0477 436 700
Postal address: PO BOX 119, Scamander, TAS. 7215

Lila lives on the stunning north-east coast of Tasmania with her family and works within her local community as a teacher, DRUMBEAT facilitator and director of the ‘Life in Rhythm’ Project. Over the last 20 years she has travelled extensively working as musician and artist, and holds a Bachelor on both Music and Education. One of Lila’s favourite pastimes is to cook and host big dinner parties for friends and family. She practices gratitude on a daily basis, and keeps sane through staying fit and connected with nature. Living and learning through TaKeTiNa has profoundly influenced Lila’s way of being, inspiring her to ride each wave of Life with as little resistance as possible, grace, courage, and a whole lot of compassion.

Paula Novotna

Paula Novotna

Location: Blue Mountains
Website: www.paulainstoryland.com
Email: info@paulainstoryland.com

Honeycomb, birds’ flight, flower’s unfolding; Rhythm is nature. Paula shares her passion for inner and outer evolution through a deepening wonder of nature, and natural intelligence in all its forms. She is and has been on a path of inner evolution for over 20 years, a lives in the Blue Mountains where she is dedicated to nurturing the Sacred Earth sanctuary that is home with mindfulness, sacred connections, and permaculture gardening. TaKeTiNa allows her to connect to ever-enriching creativity, vulnerability and presence. Paula is a social justice lawyer, a playback actor, storyteller and a keen gardener. If you are interested in TaKeTiNa workshops in the greater Sydney and Blue Mountains area, come and visit: www.paulainstoryland.com or email info@paulainstoryland.com.

Suze Pratten

Suze Pratten

Location: Sydney
Website:
Mobile: 0434 873 822

Suze is a highly skilled choir director, music educator and singer. She is passionate about the unique process of TaKeTiNa as a way of bringing people into experiencing music and rhythm with the whole body.
Suze leads TaKeTiNa workshops in the Sydney area and beyond. She teaches choir’s and singing in the Sydney Hills and Hawkesbury districts as well as running several highly successful annual singing events including: Singing at the Monastery in Stroud NSW; Singing Up The Valley at Wollemi Common near Sydney and SeaSong in Brunswick Heads.

A highly skilled and enthusiastic leader, Suze has a real ability to bring out the best in each participant. Her passion for singing and rhythm is infectious, allowing people to step more fully into their own musical potential.

Ria Soemardjo

Location: Victoria
Website: www.riavoice.com
Mobile: 0401 932 517

Ria is passionate about sharing TaKeTiNa as a unique collective learning process, enabling individuals to reconnect with their innate rhythmic intelligence.

Inspired by many years of immersion in the rich cultural traditions of Javanese and Balinese traditional music and dance, her fascination for experiencing different paradigms of music education has lead her to train with master teachers in Indonesia and around the world including Glen Velez (frame drum) and the Gundecha Brothers (Dhrupad – classical Indian vocal training). Ria is also a qualified Alexander Technique teacher and she brings a sophisticated understanding of the interconnection of intention, imagination, breath and movement to her vocal training. She taught for over 10 years on the training course for the School for F.M. Alexander studies, and continues to develop this work through her private teaching practice.

Ria is highly regarded vocalist/instrumentalist – presenting and recording original music in Australia and Asia with ensembles including Fine Blue Thread contemporary world music trio. She has performed and composed for many dance/theatre works over the last 15 years, her composition for contemporary dance collaboration ‘Enfold’ was nominated for a Green Room award in 2017.

Jemma Tabet

Location: Sydney
Mobile: 0401 404 463

Having been involved in music and dance since very young, Jemma has developed a lifelong love and commitment for exploring and sharing the power of music, movement and creative expression. Having travelled extensively, she has a keen love of world music and dance and is a passionate advocate of the creative arts to support and enrich learning and understanding and as a means for connection, expression and inclusivity within our communities.

With a Bachelor of Music and Graduate Diploma of Primary Education, Jemma has worked as a generalist classroom teacher, specialist music teacher and private music tutor for more than a decade, also working extensively with primary school choirs and instrumental ensembles. Currently teaching at a primary school part-time, she is also the Professional Development Manager for Musica Viva, running workshops nationally for teachers in classroom music.

TaKeTiNa marries all of Jemma’s interests together, providing the perfect platform for her to explore and share her passion for how we can access our true, authentic states of being and joy through finding flow, expansiveness, connection, presence, relaxation and self-understanding through the primal nature of rhythm.