19 Facts About Gabrielle Roth

Gabrielle Roth was an American dancer and musician in the world music and trance dance genres, with a special interest in shamanism.

Gabrielle Roth overcame depression and injury to create the 5Rhythms approach to movement in the late 1970s; there are now hundreds of 5Rhythms teachers worldwide who use her approach in their work.

Gabrielle Roth's vision was to spread dance across the world, using the power of movement to heal body and spirit.

Gabrielle Roth founded an experimental theatre company in New York, wrote three books, created over twenty albums of trance dance music with her band The Mirrors, and directed or has been the subject of several videos.

Gabrielle Roth trained in traditional dance methods, suffering from anorexia during her teenage years.

Gabrielle Roth paid for college education by teaching movement in rehabilitation centres.

Gabrielle Roth injured her knee in a skiing accident in Germany and later again in an African dance class.

Gabrielle Roth became seriously depressed and later retreated to Big Sur in California, joining a group at the Esalen Institute.

Gabrielle Roth became a masseuse there, and found that her body healed itself through dance, despite what the doctors had said.

Gabrielle Roth trained for three years with Oscar Ichazo, founder of the Arica School and set up her own experimental theatre company in New York City.

Gabrielle Roth taught experimental theatre in New York based on her ecstatic dance approach, 5Rhythms.

Gabrielle Roth was music director of the theatre company The Mirrors and has been a member of the Actors Studio.

Gabrielle Roth founded The Moving Center School in 1977 in New York.

Gabrielle Roth wrote three books: Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice, Maps to Ecstasy: Teachings of an Urban Shaman, and Connections: The 5 Threads of Intuitive Wisdom.

Gabrielle Roth notes that she was taught by Catholic nuns "with eyes trained to scan for sin" and that her first dance teacher was "an old woman with frizzy dyed red hair, a funny accent, and a long thin stick" who would beat her whenever she made a mistake, initiating in Roth a severe inferiority complex.

Gabrielle Roth found her lover insensitive to the news and had an abortion three days later.

Gabrielle Roth writes that she felt the importance of privacy to her kind of dance while teaching at Esalen in a room "lined with picture windows".

In 2007, Gabrielle Roth founded the non-profit 5Rhythms Reach Out which offered classes in 5Rhythms to various groups, including those suffering from Alzheimer's disease, other dementias, and cancer.

Gabrielle Roth was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2009 and died on October 22,2012, aged 71.