This advanced level contemporary technique class is structured as a series of movement accumulations, progressing from the floor to standing, and culminating in nuanced, full-bodied phrase work. Accumulations draw from various somatic practices, Judson Church-lineage release technique principles, and western contemporary concert dance. We will focus primarily on activating and refining dancers’ awareness of touch, breath, weight, and tone as a means of quieting nervous systems and awakening perception of self, others, and space. We will move continuously. We will repeat accumulation sections and final sequences many times. We will embrace repetition as a mode of reacquaintance, exploring how “knowledge” of movement includes both the accumulation of information and the simultaneous release of that information. In other words, how can we come to know both more and less about movement the more deeply saturated in it we become? Can we be intentional and deliberate in our moving without limiting, predefining, or assuming a movement’s nature and the possibilities contained within it? This class positions the practice of dance as a practice of robust, telescoping awareness, attentional endurance, and purposeful choice-making within ever-evolving circumstances.

This open-level composition workshop guides students through elements of my practice of simultaneous dancemaking and writing. How do we cull language from deeply embodied experience? How does dancing support the development of precise, poetic language and vice versa? How does work in one discipline deepend and inform another? By the end of the workshop, students will have a refined section of choreographic and written material.

The open-level movement class mobilizes skeletal imagery in slow, deeply attentive sequences, clarifying initiation, sequencing, and spatial relationship. The emphasis of the class is on releasing excess, unsupportive muscular tension in order to find greater ease and connection in movement. Movers work at their own pace, deepening their awareness of their own anatomy and habits.