How to tell a thousand lives in a handful of paragraphs?
It could be said that
Frida Kaplan
worked for 30 years as an actress
, times in which she signed as Frida Winter and formed a duo with Alberto Closas, she was part of Calabromas and went on a trip with a one-woman show in Yiddish.
She could also say that - again with her maiden name -
she created a reference method for pregnancy and eutonic birth
, and that a couple of years ago
she was hospitalized for five months
for COVID - four of those, in a coma - and recovered.
Or to say that she lived even more dramatic life situations that marked her, as well as happy ones, and that today, at 85 years old, she
continues to teach classes
in the discipline that became her passion and the meaning of her life.
But his sensitivity is so overwhelming that the collection of anecdotal data does not do justice to his experience.
When Frida talks about “contact,” the word takes on a special texture: the emphasized “t”s and the musicality of her voice create a warm atmosphere.
Frida embraces
her
with her mere presence .
The parquet floor, the mirrors and the bars are traces of the studio that operated in his own home for decades.
After some consultation, his address
was available
and just by knowing the schedule, one could
arrive without warning
and ring the bell at his apartment in the Abasto neighborhood to participate in a class.
Today the same methodology continues, but via Zoom.
At 85 years old, he continues to teach classes in the discipline that became his passion and the meaning of his life.
Daughter of Abraham Kaplan, Russian, and Teresa Ghinghis, Polish, she is the oldest of the first generation of Argentines.
Her paternal grandmother, Esther, was widowed in World War I: she raised her three children by washing neighbors' clothes in the river and making noodles.
“The oldest came to Argentina to work as a tailor.
When my father
arrived in Buenos Aires in 1925
, he met his brother's new family, and fell in love with his sister-in-law's sister, my mother," Frida tells
Clarín
.
Theater to live
As a girl she lived in Villa Crespo.
Near her was Beba, a neighbor who started classical ballet lessons;
But when Frida asked her mother to do the same, she denied it, arguing that
“She starts studying dance and ends up doing theater
. ”
Some time later, she would discover that her vocation knows no prohibitions.
Frida Kaplan with her father, Abraham.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram.
She studied at Liceo 4 on Avenida Córdoba but, a year before graduating,
she left school to learn
machine embroidery and cutting and sewing... Because she was about to get married.
“I had the family programming that I had to be pretty, good and get married at 18 years old.
And so it was: when I was 16 I met the father of my children - who was eleven years older -, at 17 we got engaged and at 18 I got married," she recalls.
At the age of 19 she gave birth to her first child, Adrián Eduardo, and two months later she had to face the most visceral,
unspeakable
pain , the death of her baby.
Sudden death, they said.
It was that same dancing neighbor who helped them get out of the
deepest
darkness , precisely with the help of theater.
She got on the boards to be “reborn” and began a journey that lasted more than thirty years.
He had three more children, Silvana, Laura and Fabián, who
grew up in dressing rooms
.
For example, when she traveled with them for five months to Israel she was hired to act in a play spoken in Yiddish.
Frida Kaplan, during the years in which she worked as an actress.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram.
Frida's mother accompanied her on many of her theatrical forays and artistic projects, at a time when the name Frida Winter was read on the marquees.
Frida Kaplan in a scene from the film Two in the World, starring Elisa Cristian Galve and Carlos Estrada.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram.
After a proposal from Pepe Parada, he made
a duet with the actor Alberto Closas
in La zorra and Pato a la orange -two of his emblematic works-, which even led them to perform in Miami.
He met Juan Carlos Calabró at the legendary
Fechoría
restaurant on Avenida Córdoba - which brought together the
Buenos Aires artistic bohemia
of the time, with Olmedo and Sofovich at the helm - and was part of Calabromas.
La zorra program, when it starred Alberto Closas and Frida Kaplan (known at the time as Winter) in 1985.
He also worked with Norman Erlich, who suggested he do a play
with a Jewish theme
, and he went on the road with his Jewish café concert in Spanish.
Frida Kaplan with Norman Erlich.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram.
He trained with Augusto Fernandes and Franklin Caicedo.
And when a teacher told her that she was pretty, but that to be an actress she had to study, she didn't forget it.
Eutony to heal
When the eutonia school opened in Argentina, at the end of the eighties, Frida entered to
improve her status as an actress
.
“We were 50 students, all corporalists.
Nobody thought that I could become a eutonist, because I came from acting.
But life is an enigma.”
Eutony is a “discipline that facilitates self-knowledge: it uses the body and takes the experience in it as the basis for learning.
“It helps to become aware of one's own body and achieves psychophysical balance.”
Frida Kaplan with her family.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram
In the second year of studying, the Dutch eutonist and nun Rosa Spekman came to Buenos Aires to give classes: “She investigated that the awareness of each part of the body can be expanded by emitting a vowel.
And she said that,
to expand the pelvic area, the O had to be cast
.
After this, he traveled to France to accompany his daughter Silvana, who was pregnant with her first grandchild.
She “fissured her water and contractions began, but there was no dilation.
While they were preparing a cesarean section, I told Silvana 'let's apply what I learned: every time a contraction comes, we are both going to say the O'.
We started doing that.
Two hours later, the midwife came, checked her, looked at us and told us
'keep singing, she's starting to dilate
.'”
Hours later, without a cesarean section or episiotomy, Jonathan was born.
Since that day, April 28, she celebrates not only the birthday of her first grandchild, but also Euutonic Baby and Child Day.
“At that time there was no email or WhatsApp.
I wrote a letter telling what happened to a person, that person read it to her students and one student said
'I know a midwife'
.
When after three months she returned to Buenos Aires, this midwife -Marta Martínez- called me and told me 'I want you to teach classes'.
I told her that she was just training me in this and she invited me to continue researching while she taught the classes,” says Frida.
Its typical walls with photos of “eutonic babies”.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram.
“The enigma of life,” says the “bobe” of five blood grandchildren and many more of life, those babies born under the great premise of the O.
The great illusion
He graduated as a eutonist in 1990, while continuing his work on stage.
In 1992, the play La gran illusion premiered at the Teatro Cervantes, a show spoken in three languages, Spanish, Italian and Yiddish: “It told the story of these three ethnic groups and the reasons each one had for leaving their country;
Everyone was on the boat and with many actors and actresses we narrated our arrival in Argentina, a land of hope,” she remembers.
“The great illusion, nice title for the
end of a stage
,” he thought, and got off the stage.
Shortly after, he separated, so he felt that he could not continue living with a surname that was not his.
She so she since then she is
she (she became again) Frida Kaplan
.
“If you Google my previous name, it doesn't even appear,” she says.
The contact, the link
Through the issuance of the O and with “contact” as a central objective, Frida decided to dedicate her life to teaching mothers and fathers to be in genuine contact with their children, in a truly present bond.
Among other recognitions, for this work, in 2017 she was
declared an outstanding personality
in the health area in the Buenos Aires Legislature.
Frida decided to dedicate her life to teaching moms and dads to be in genuine contact with their children, in a truly present bond.
Photo: Video capture.
“My meaning in life changed, luckily.
For me,
the activity I do has
such a great vital drive, because behind it is the desire to convey how important contact is;
It goes beyond whether the birth is a low birth or cesarean birth;
but about how important contact is during intrauterine life,” Kaplan tells
Clarín
.
“It arises from an act of reparation to the drama, it arises from an absolute truth.
There is no interest;
That is why
anyone can download and read my book for free
-
Frida Kaplan Method, Eutonic Pregnancy and Birth
, available on their website - because I believe that the benefits of the method do not have to be limited to people who can pay for a class."
Along the same lines, and parallel to her classes, for years Frida has been teaching the method she developed to midwives in public hospitals, for example, at the Posadas Hospital.
Bid smiling
“When I got pregnant, I was very scared.
I remember saying to him 'bobe, how did you manage to have your children born?'
She looked at me, opened her eyes, made a gesture as if to say 'what are you asking me?'
And she told me 'I opened my legs and
let them go
, just like that'.
That is why I keep it so present,” says Frida.
The thing is that in her classes with pregnant women and their partners she often remembers her grandmother's sayings,
urging the soon-to-be parturients to “let go.”
“There is a relationship between the oral cavity and the pelvic cavity.
And if they give you the command 'take a breath, don't breathe, use force - before they said use force to do... - But
if the smile and the awareness of letting go are present, it is just done
,' she says.
baby touch
Eutonic baby touch is a
sequence of touches
(i.e., a series of specific steps) performed by the adult in conscious contact with oneself and the baby.
It is a
love encounter
, which seeks to increase contact and make the baby feel content.
Video
Eutonist Frida Kaplan teaches this sequence of touches to increase contact.
“For many years I was a teacher training eutonists and taught touch.
It is a conscious way of touching applied to babies.
Beyond the 'sequence', the most important thing is the
quality
of the touch.
It is not touching with oil, nor touching like a massage.
No. It is
touching
by feeling
.
So, I want parents to learn this quality of touch, which is not a mechanical touch, it is
"touching
by feeling
, a touch with intention, which is what babies need," explains Frida.
The meaning of life
In 2021, Kaplan was hospitalized for COVID, unconscious for more than four months, in addition to a fifth month of rehabilitation.
Like her brother - who was also hospitalized for five months for COVID a year before her -
she had to relearn how to talk, how to walk, how to move
.
The doctors were surprised by her rapid recovery, in which, in addition to kinesiology, she put into practice the principles of eutony.
Frida Kaplan after being hospitalized for five months due to COVID.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram.
Ten days after returning home, she told her children that she would resume virtual classes.
Disbelieving, they asked her if she would prefer to wait.
"When she was going to give the first class, my daughter came to see me, she sat on the floor, and when I finished, she told me 'yes, mom, you can continue teaching.'
This is what gives meaning to my life
, because I consider it vitally important to be in contact during the pregnancy process.”
After rehabilitation, the long-awaited return home.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram.
“Life taught me that
the ideal does not exist
, and that the possible is very important.
At 85 and after so many difficult things that I went through, having the possibility of not looking at the wrinkles, spots or pain, but rather enjoying everything that life gives me... I am grateful."
Frida does not sit still: in addition to the eutony classes, on Saturdays she meets at her house with a group of people to converse in
Yiddish
to practice the language, and on Mondays she
clowns
in the Chacarita neighborhood.
Frida Kaplan does not stay still and today she participates in a clown group.
Photo: courtesy Frida Kaplan/ Instagram.
Now he prepares for the
family ritual of Thursday noon
, when he receives his family for lunch.
“Sometimes, when one has a strong personal life, it is not possible to maintain deep contact with family members.
Being able to combine the two things is a fortune.”