ilse pfeifer

Ilse Felizitas Pfeifer is a body worker and voice coach.  Ilse has a long-standing interest in the performing arts and somatic healing. Music, dance, and theatre were part of her upbringing in the southern part of Germany. Ilse was also introduced to alternative healing as a complement to western medicine as a child. Her father survived cancer at a young age.  Her mother was environmentally conscious and an advocate of alternative medicine long before it became mainstream. Both encouraged her to broaden her creative talent in dance and singing. This led her to London where she received her dance training and graduate degrees from the Royal Academy of Dancing and the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing.
 
Ilse danced with Hellmut Gottschild, one of the last assistants to Mary Wigman, and Karen Bamonte, whose Zero Moving Dance Company (ZMDC) brought her to the US. She performed with ZMDC for five years, touring the US and Europe. She was invited and encouraged by the Susan Hess Choreographers Project to investigate her own creative performance ideas, exploring movement, voice and the spoken word. Inspired by the German Cabaret and Sprechgesang, her pieces where presented by the Next Move Festival at the Annenberg Center and PBS in Philadelphia, at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, and at PS 122 in New York City, as well as other venues.
 
In 2001 she moved from Philadelphia to New York City where she met Catherine Fitzmaurice and learn about Fitzmaurice Voicework®. Seeing and experiencing the healing and creative aspects of this profound work, Ilse studied with Catherine and was certified as an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® in 2002.
 
While expressing herself and communicating through performance as a dancer, teacher, and singer, she continued to pursue her interest in alternative healing modalities to address her performance anxiety and also performance-related injuries. She studied foot reflexology in Germany. In the US she studied Reiki with Reiki Master Ellen Sokolow of the Traditional Reiki Network, and she studied Kinesthetic Anatomy and Neuro-Muscular Retraining with Irene Dowd.
 
She is using all facets of her experience to develop a deeper connection to the self for her students and clients. Ilse works at the HB Studio, Atlantic Theatre Acting School, and with private clients in Manhattan, where she currently lives.
 
Ilse has worked as guest teacher at Eastern and Central Connecticut State Universities, Fordham University, NYU/Playwrights Horizon, University of South Dakota, University of New Mexico, Freie Universitaet in Berlin Germany, and the Berlin School of Performing Arts. Ilse maintained a bodywork practice in Philadelphia for eight years while pursuing her creative dance career, helping others with movement re-education and energetic healing. She was honored as a Pew Fellow in the Arts for Choreography & Dance-based Performance Art.


To enhance her understanding of acting, Ilse deepened her theatre training at the Actors Center Teacher Development Program in NYC. She currently resides in New York City where she teaches weekly Fitzmaurice Labs and works with private clients in the performing arts and other professions interested in her synthesis as voice/body coach.

Graduate Diploma Royal Academy of Dancing, London; Graduate Diploma Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, London.