is a mobility specialist, a movement consultant to schools and organizations, a personal movement coach, a mentor to teachers, and a movement artist.
She is a licensed Healthy Steps® instructor and a certified Spacial Dynamics® practitioner. In addition to San Francisco Movement, Valerie is affiliated with Fourfold Healing Clinic, Spacial Dynamics Institute, Neighborhood PlayGarden, City of Brisbane, and is a performing member of the nation's foremost vintage ballroom ensemble, The Academy of Danse Libre. Read more at our links page and danselibre.org/.
With a lifetime of artistic and educational work in dance and movement, Valerie's newest frontier is movement for ease in everyday life. An invitation to lead movement in a Stanford University course on mobility for seniors led to development of her Agile Aging program to prevent falls. A successful pilot class for seniors ("most popular class ever!") in the City of Brisbane is the inspiration for development of mobility programs for seniors of all abilities.
Valerie is a mentor for teachers and schools. As a certified Spacial Dynamics® practitioner trained by Jaimen McMillan, Valerie Baadh was the Movement Education instructor at San Francisco Waldorf School from 1990 through 2006. She helped develop and taught a comprehensive developmental movement program for grades one through twelve and led workshops for parents, teachers and the community.
In 2007, Valerie joined the faculty of the Neighborhood PlayGarden, and the San Francisco Lifeways Teacher Training Program. She has been a guest presenter of movement workshops for Spacial Dynamics Institute, Rudolf Steiner College and San Francisco Waldorf School.
She and her husband, creative designer Michael Garrett, created a cat's cradle string game toy, Mrs. Baadh's PlayStrings, which is in play with children around the world. Several of her movement stories were published as The Adventures of Uffe the Gnome as well as a small collection of movement games for adults to play with young children, Games We Play And Sing, from the collection of Joan Carr Shimer.
Both publications are available on our website and at bookstores around the country.
Valerie was a choreographer, dancer and movement trainer for the four international children's OlymPeace/AllinPeace Festivals which took place 2001 through 2006 in Olympia and Delphi, Greece, Quito, Ecuador, and Beijing, China. In 2009, Hands In Peace brings a festival to Sacramento, California, in June, 2009, with Valerie directing the dance program.
Valerie has been performing, choreographing, directing and teaching movement and dance in San Francisco since 1973. A former ballet dancer (Hollywood Ballet) and choreographer (Pacific Ballet), she trained in the modern dance techniques of Horton with Bella Lewitzky, Graham with Donald McKayle and Limon with Aaron Osborne and Lisa Burnet. After receiving her BFA in Dance from California Institute of the Arts, she moved to San Francisco where she was a featured soloist at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and other locales. She has been a guest teacher at dance studios, conferences and workshops and a choreographer of concerts and musicals, including Guys and Dolls, Fiddler On The Roof, Oliver!, and Grease!.
Photo of Valerie Baadh with children at the Hands in Peace Festival 2006 in China by Benno Klandt.
