Malka Cohen-Nehemia: “She was the first certified teacher, because she had all the time from the Alexander training she had done with Nehemia. When he started certifying teachers, she became the first. She was alone in this. She was ambitious and devoted.”  

In 1984-85, Nehemia began offering a three year Mitzvah Technique training program. This model sustained for fifteen years. Among those who completed the training were Ann Tutt, Susan Green, Monica Burr, Toshie Okabe, Karen Resnick and Alan Kaeja. Mitzvah ideas have resonated through dance practice. Mitzvah work complemented Contact Improvisation, sharing the same sensitivity, receptivity, cause and effect, between two bodies. Many dance artists, the Kaeja’s for instance, are influenced in this way.

During Amelia’s time with Nehemia however, many saw dance and the practice of Mitzvah as mutually exclusive. Some saw abstinence from dance practice as crucial to successful re-patterning of the body into Mitzvah’s alternative relationship to gravity. In turn, the releases Mitzvah caused were viewed with distrust by some who saw them leading to excessive flow, and loss of muscular tension that the prevailing modern dance lexicon demanded.

Peter Randazzo: “Her dancing experience and training made her a voice for Mitzvah. She crossed that division between mitzvah stuff and professional modern dance at the time. Amelia was known as an exceptional trained dancer. Paul Taylor stands on a stage without moving for 5 minutes and the curtain comes down, and I will look at that. Because he has dance experience, I know he is trying to show me something on that basis. Steve Paxton, when he started contact improvisation, same thing. Credibility. Amelia had credibility.”

Ann Tutt: “Amelia was the forerunner. She'd logged tons of hours with Nehemia when he was training Alexander teachers. Her Canada Council funding to train with Nehemia followed. She’d done a lot of this work, and understandably wanted to get out there and do her own thing. So she left to do it.

In Nehemia’s development, he taught many Feldenkrais ideas and then moved past them. There was even a transition period when if he found you doing those exercises he'd lose his temper! Only a small element of Feldenkrais remains in Mitzvah technique. Nehemia was working with the vertical. This defines the Mitzvah technique. As you manifest this, the organization of the body shifts and becomes clear – an unravelling that is simple and very clear.

Amelia’s studies with Nehemiah were in a relatively early period when he was working with Alexander and Feldenkrais ideas, and Amelia took this into the classroom. She created floor barres using and evolving that work and adding her own research. She took Graham onto the stool, changing people’s experience of the contraction. Continually she worked with movement as a way of opening the body; that is what drove her approach forward.

Amelia didn't yet know how to get people where she needed them to go. She took movement into her own body, she was discovering things, finding new freedoms. This process opens your eyes to see the way people are working against themselves. She wanted people to have a different kind of physical experience, a realization. She wanted to prevent them from working against themselves which she now so acutely perceived. She had no qualms about taking people out of the dance environment. She had something to prove; when dancers chose her work over dance training, she felt empowered. She would change their minds, their experience. She had an unforgettable reputation as a dancer. Lots of people listened”.