this is about teaching
simon - techniques
In this class we play with the notion of what a technique class can be. We open the lens of “technique” to include not just those practices that prepare us for performance, but also to those that help us deepen our sense of self and as dancers within a living, breathing community. We seek to blur the line between human being and dancer dancing, bringing our full selves to bear in both practice and performance.
Explorations with voice, touch, athleticism, focus and subtlety all come into play in a process that tinkers with the traditional progression of a technique class as we understand it. Opportunities for reading, writing and sharing may also emerge as vehicles to further complicate and compound our moving selves.
While relying on structures of technique classes that we know and love, we seek to deepen our understanding of what the term “technique” can encompass. We move through the lens of all together now.
Here we explore not just how to better prepare for performance, but how to more fully engage with dance as an extension of everyday, human existence.
claudia - techniques
Playing with the awareness and acknowledgment of our worlds within and the worlds surrounding, we will challenge ourselves to glide between the two. With spaciousness from the bottoms of our feet to the tops of our heads, we will release, fall, and suspend within these worlds, knowing our bodies are there to catch us. We will use sensation, imagery, instinct, and a bit of humor within set patterns and free forms. We will play, take up space, and take care of ourselves within our ever-changing landscapes. This class will be contact-free, but we will be all together, now. We will move in and out of the floor, and will always place safety first. Come with what you have; leave with a bit more.
partners
This class is an active practice in partnership, from the moment we enter space together. In a time when partnering as we understand it has had to retreat, we ask what is possible rather than dwell on what is absent. As we accept physical distance, we create space for emotional, spatial, and relational exploration. This class is a consistent conversation of relating to the tendencies and choices of another moving body. In this, we challenge our own perceptions of ourselves and use the metaphorical weight of another to inform every one of our own choices. We practice physical empathy, re-patterning of rhythm, and the juxtaposition of physical agendas as we blend set material and improvisational scores. We are never dancing alone. We are challenged, all ways. We are witnessed, all ways, all together now.
We offer this class while navigating a global pandemic. We will not ask participants to be in physical contact. We will offer a constantly moving, fully athletic landscape of movement. This class is for all levels and experiences. The only requirement is a willingness to sweat, to see each other, and to let the choices of another affect one's own.
there is more.
the above practices are reflective of our current creative moment.
we regularly retool, rework and profoundly shift our teaching practices
and questions based on the creative process of the moment and
the general state of the world we find/place ourselves in.
we like things to stay the same and
we like things to change.