As we live and work through the decades of life, we accumulate not only information, but hopefully some useful experience, a few insights, some bits of wisdom. I’m not so sure I can boast any of these things, but I do now find myself being driven to put forth work that I have done and am doing and to enter many new areas of interest that are emerging for me. I have been an academic for 35 years. Years ago after publishing a dozen books and several dozen articles I grew weary of the traditional publication process and have simply stockpiled book and article manuscripts, lectures, and other materials preferring to do the work and live an engaging life rather than struggle through the publication process. I think, I feel, that these are my best works. For over fifteen years I have been a dancer and dance teacher. These activities have complemented my academic work and I believe they totally changed who I am. They transformed a mind/brain oriented person practicing a sedentary mind-centered life to a person who appreciates as fully as possible that human beings cannot separate mind and body. I owned and operated a dance studio for years. I have and am now engaging in many new enterprises and forms of writing, working, and living.
This website is conceived as the center, the intersection, of my life’s experience, my current endeavors, and the drawing board on which to chart my future life trajectory. On this website I am making available many of my past published works for the sake of convenience. More importantly, I am making available a large amount of previously unpublished work on dance, on play, on the academy, on life, on religion and its study, on writing, on the human senses, on brain/body accuity. I am also making available lectures and podcasts of lectures that I recently presented. I will continue to do so for future lecture series on a variety of topics.
This website will also serve as the intersection of a variety of other enterprises I am involved in:
SalsAmigos: a nonprofit to teach dancing to teens that includes video lecture demonstrations of the importance of the dance and instructional videos
Salsa Challenge: a salsa dance teaching work that involves classes writings and instructional videos
Encore Life: a center for presenting and discussing what I think essential information and ideas about living a full and rich adult life. This will includes a variety of writings, podcasts, and the exploration of a dance form, Encore Dancing, that exemplifies much of what I will be talking about.
I also am eager to enter into conversation with a world of new friends and colleagues who have similar interests.
For further information about me see my page at CU and my curriculum vitae
Teaching, research, and writing have always been my passions. For decades much of my energy has been directed to dancing, teaching dancing, and traveling to study dancing. This obsession expanded to a broad study of the biology and philosophy of moving which I consider central to what distinguishes human beings.
Concluding my formal academic job the end of 2018 spanning thirty-five years at the University of Colorado freed me to pursue more creative and innovative works. In my post-institutional liberty, I am exploring new passions and making new kinds of things. For me a website serves two purposes. It offers an archive of selections from a lifetime of academic and creative work for the convenience of those who might be interested. A kind of legacy reservoir. Much of this website is comprised of these dutifully collected materials. More importantly, this website is a space for experimentation or at least for the display of the fruits of my new explorations. Complementing self-published works, this site serves me well especially since my interests are trending toward the visual and mixed media forms.
I took the header photo in October 2019 of the lagoon at the foot of Vatnajökul (Vatna Glacier) in Iceland.
Sam Gill – 3721 Harvard Place – Broomfield, Colorado 80023
