Dancing Along the Needle's Thread

You are invited to "Dancing Along the Needle’s Thread" with Ellen as she sews the fabric of her life together with a rich array of colourful strands. Inspired by her desire for learning and self-understanding, she weaves a personal tapestry with her mother's harrowing story during wartime Germany and her own challenges and triumphs experienced as a middle-age mother diving into university education in Canada.

Leaping forward with insights from her doctoral thesis, Ellen creates another "Gesamtkunstwerk"— a work encompassing a diversity of art forms— to explore the nature of Self. Drawing on dance, drama, mythology, art, poetry, literature, and journals, she rediscovers the joy of expressing her truth later in life. Supported once again by the five-movement framework of Hector's Berlioz's "Fantastic Symphony," she embarks on this new journey accompanied by the imagined personifications of Berlioz, Lewis Carroll, and characters from "Alice in Wonderland."

Together, we discover an end is a beginning, and meaning is found in their interwoven threads, as Ellen dips into her storied life not only in pursuit of self-knowledge but also on a mission to realize her potential by helping you find yours.