For 30 years, only actors, dancers, mimes, and clowns have had the privilege to profit from cutting edge techniques for success, creativity and productivity through movement.

Now YOU also can benefit from this unique and untraditional training for self-transformation and integrated thinking through creative movement.

Now, for the first time, you can reap the benefits of learning from this truly unique and life-enhancing man. This summer, Avital will be celebrating the 31st Anniversary of Le Centre du Silence. After many years of unparalleled teaching, dedication and integration, Avital will reveal the ten most basic and powerful principles of BodySpeak™ for unleashing the creative power within you.You will discover your dormant power to apply your talents for your benefit and others. You will conquer seemingly complex principles and explore the opportunities presented when you learn by doing through playfulness.

Most importantly, you will learn to "write your own life script." You will produce every scene and lead in the role of life you love most. This process will open previously closed doors for you. You will integrate your unlimited potential and awaken the creative child within you. Enrollment is limited.

By Isabelle Chevalier

In the search for the ultimate consciousness experience, it is unusual to see someone who uses the ancient art of mime to silently bring people in touch with their true personal essence. Now, an unusual and extraordinary person shares with you how to reach the strength within you and use it to your full advantage.

International mime performer Samuel Avital draws on his life-long philosophy of integrative thinking as well as his experience as a performer and teacher to touch the lives of others and help them develop what he calls the "genius" that is within the human being.

"Total honesty to yourself is the most important thing. It's not important what others think," he says. While many people say they believe this, Avital knows that it isn't true. The amount of time and energy people spend trying to find happiness in life without recognizing the potential for happiness from within illustrates how people deceive themselves.

But through a series of both mental and physical exercises, Avital teaches how to attain integration of mind and body. Through intense, eye-opening workshops, Avital helps students foster the essential key to happiness, success and personal fulfillment.

For a long time, only actors took advantage of his workshops. Now, Avital has found his teachings are relevant to everyone. "From 7 to 70, from all over the world, actors, dancers, business people, computer programmers&emdash;have learned because they have a silent urge to discover their potential. I share with them what I know to awake their hidden creativity within. Once that is discovered through effort and honesty and is practiced consistently they witness a beneficial change that makes them incredibly happy," he said.

"Le Centre du Silence is an independent school devoted to teaching the dynamics of personal power and creative skills"
- Samuel Avital

With no formal training, he left grade school in his native Morocco and traveled to Israel as a teenager. The journey taught him much through hardship. After ten years in Israel, he arrived in Paris in the late fifties where he studied theatre, mime, movement, dance and circus arts with Marcel Marceau, Jean-Louis Barrault and Etienne Decroux, among others. He became skilled with artistic tools that would serve him later in life.

He knew nothing about the Western world, being more familiar with hunger, homelessness, neglect and fear. Eventually he "graduated" from the "University of the Streets" in Paris and moved on.

Unaware of his poverty, he concentrated on learning and discovering, developing a distaste for the dull infertility of passive analysis.

He learned to focus and center himself like a laser beam.

One morning in 1963 in Paris he saw the assassination of President Kennedy on Television. He had never been in America, but was profoundly overwhelmed at what he glimpsed. At that moment, Avital discovered America, and began the U.S. chapter of his odyssey. He added Canada and the U.S. to his European teaching and performing, finally settling in Boulder, Colorado.

In 1971 he founded Le Centre du Silence, teaching classes in mime, movement, acting, masks and physical theatre. From 1972 to 1982 he directed the Boulder Mime Theatre, an innovative street performance group. Founded In 1975, The International Summer Mime Workshop, along with his other accomplishments, established his excellent reputation, attracting students worldwide.

Boulder, a small community nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, is a lovely place where many artists have found creative inspiration. "Boulder reminds me of my village in Morocco with the mountains and city together," Avital says.

Le Centre du Silence is an independent school devoted to teaching the dynamics of personal power creative skills. The school is completely self-supporting and receives no funding or grants from any foundations. LCDS offers seminars and workshops that integrate thought with action through theatre, movement and masks as artistic tools for self-discovery and creativity.

Now, for the first time, you can reap the benefits of learning from this truly unique and life-enhancing man. Come celebrate our 32nd anniversary at this exclusive one week only workshop. After many years of unparalleled teaching, dedication and integration, Avital will reveal the ten most basic and powerful principles of BodySpeak™ to unleash the creative powers within you.

Enrollment is limited. Dates for this year's summer workshop are: July 7-11, 2003.

Discover hidden treasures for applying your talents for benefiting your self and others. You will conquer seemingly complex principles and explore the opportunities presented when you learn by doing through playfulness.

Most importantly, you will learn to "write your own life script." You will produce every scene and lead in the role of life you love most. This process will open previously closed doors for you. You will integrate your unlimited potential and awaken the creative child within you.

Concentrating first on the body as an instrument of great value, BodySpeak™. The Avital Method teaches the Flexibility Cycle and the Regenerative Cycle to help the whole body, from head to toe to feel flexible. "The Flexibility Cycle establishes a quality of wakefulness demanded by life. It basically is a way to enliven and awaken all the inner and outer parts of the body," said Mark Olsen, former student and now a professor of theatre at Houston University.

Then, through a dialogue using precise choice of words, Avital brings people to see the importance of word economy.

BodySpeak™ challenges the students to explore without fear the images they have and the total readiness of the body to express them. This enhances the integrated conscious process that reflects how they feel, think, work and play. Thus, the right (images) and left (words) brain hemispheres are brought back to their true nature of harmony&emdash; integration.

Finally, in the integration stage, Avital demonstrates the strength and the natural combining of mind and body.

Former students agree that learning with Avital is an invaluable experience. "He was probably the single most influential teacher in my life," said Leslie Colket, a student for seven years and now managing editor for a publishing company. "He is an excellent way to come into your own best fulfillment, to challenge obstacles yourself and to powerfully project yourself to others."

"He's intense, funny, severe, provocative, loving, compassionate and obnoxious. He's a bit of everything. He's a teacher who gives his full range of everything to his students and teaches by example and experience," playwright and actor Louis Greenstein said. Greenstein, who performed with the Boulder Mime Theatre for two years in the late 70s and now works in Philadelphia said Avital helped him go from a "clumsy kid to an artist."

"Avital works and teaches his students with the same totally involved detachment with which Horowitz addresses the piano," Patsy Swank of Dallas Magazine said. Avital believes his greatest strength is honesty with himself. "Honesty in people helps them produce values. The body is naturally 100 percent honest. When we practice honesty, we are healthy, happy and productive," he said.

Every interaction with Avital is a manifestation of his integrated philosophy. He is very disciplined and focused and openly loves to impart and create values for others.

He has never relied on any outside foundations, grants or monetary support, a reality that makes him happy and productive.

"I have never trusted any external authority. I am the author of my own life. No one should write my script. I accept no grants because I choose to be responsible for myself." He said. Now he wants you to take these ideas and make them your own, so you can be your fully honest and integrated self.

Imagine a school where the philosophy and the lessons promote the integrity and freedom of the individual as the greatest value in the Universe.

Le Centre du Silence teaches that artistic perfection is possible in an atmosphere free from dogma, using integrated conscious honesty as a basic tool of learning.

"Mr. Avital is a remarkable man of astonishing depth and an artist of great magnitude and achievement... His artistic fervor is contagious and his mastery is impeccable and practical... An inspired teacher, with a magnetic, enthusiastic personality, excellent dedication and commitment," Moni Yakim of the Juilliard Drama Division said.

Samuel personally invites you to explore the incredible theatre of your mind through BodySpeak™ The Avital Method&emdash;A Journey where you will discover your unlimited possibilities beyond the creative edge.

For more information about Avital's books Mime Workbook, Mime and Beyond: The Silent Outcry, his recent video, private consultations and other workshops email or write to LCDS.