Amanda Martin

Know Your Strength: Access the Tone Beneath Your Technique

This unique conditioning class for dancers begins with gentle somatic movements and progresses using functional, intelligent Pilates to inform and align the body. The flowing exercises of GYROKINESIS® will then prepare the body for longer movement phrases as we conclude by applying our newfound techniques to choreography.

Andrea Vazquez

Water Wheel

The thematic content of this class is centered around twelve movement explorations based on the twelve miniature sections of the poem Water Wheel by Linda Pastan. The guiding image is the element of water and the frame of reference to guide the exploration and approach to movement is the Laban/Bartenieff system. One purpose of the class is to inspire interest in structure and meaning within other creative disciplines and their applicability to the processes of training, choreography and improvisation.

Anne Burnidge

Cultivating awareness, facilitating relationships through Bartenieff Fundamentals

This class invites participants to bring awareness to their own movement patterns and encourages joint articulation and efficient movement through a series of exercises that gradually builds from simple floor movements to full-bodied standing sequences. The work is based in the principles and practices of the Bartenieff Fundamentals and will include partner and group experiences intended to build community and connection through shared practice.

Brenda Leticia Mayr Villalobos

Afro-contemporary

The exploration carried out through class gathers principles from different techniques and styles: Guinea Conarky's African dance, release technique and improvisation principles. This develops surrounded by a musical atmosphere of African percussion.

Cristina Goletti

Somatic and Chakra Floor Work

Through a series of slow and long sequences we will warm up the body in a holistic way, taking in consideration different body's systems like organs, bones, muscles, nerves etc... We will also look at the chakra system and how we can find more inner balance through specifically designed exercises. This ultimate goal of this class is to get ready for a full day of dancing in a safe, connected and fun way.

Gina Battistich

Awareness through Movement

The class is a 75min class based on Awareness Through Movement from the Feldenkrais method. It explores functional movement and an efficient use of the skeletal system by inviting an inner dialogue and fine-motoric sensibilisation. The tools to improve one's way to organize him or herself for action can be used outside of the class at any given moment. It creates a light and playful learning atmosphere to develop one's own individual ability and potential. In this sense it is working on presence by arriving at home in the body before starting more external work throughout the day. It is open to the participants needs and wishes to be adapted.

Javier Alejandro Pérez Caicedo

The adaptacion of the person/artist to the urban space

This class will offer theoretical and practical tools for the development and the identification of the character, taking the passerby as the subject of study and the point of departure for the artist to connect to the urban and architectural's contexts.

Jeff Wallace

Contact Improvisation

Contact improvisation is a movement practice that has been described variously as experiential physics, a movement conversation, and a combination of modern dance, akido, and yoga. All three of these examples suggest a practice that involves exploration and investigation on both physical and non-physical levels. In this class, we will begin explore the basics of weight, momentum, gravity, and flow. We will discover the surprising movement pathways and possibilities such influences bring to us, and find ways of bringing this new movement with us as we find ways into contact with another. In this place of contact we can discover surprises and potentials, and learn how to maintain the power of our own dance while enjoying the alchemy of interaction with another. This class is open to dancers with all levels of experience.

Jessie Laurita-Spanglet

Slow Pilates

I am currently working with the idea of physical practice as a baseline that specific techniques can then be layered on to and mingled with. In my mind, this is not a hierarchy, but an evolving conversation of information within an active, alive body. Drawing from many years of teaching Pilates, studying Alexander technique, and most recently Klein-based classes, I would like to propose a morning Pilates class for the 2014 Performatica gathering. This class would focus on slow tuning, finding clarity in the mover’s torso and hip joints, strengthening deep abdominal muscles, making connections between Pilates-based movements and daily non-dance movements, and then ramping up to standing and preparing for larger full-bodied dancing.

Joanna Rotkin

Colliding Bodies and The Athletics of Instinct

Using the support of the breath as the foundation for movement, students will access their strength, agility, balance, and flexibility through invigorating, full bodied dancing. Drawing on contemporary and postmodern dance techniques students will have the opportunity to experience a sense of flight and momentum in their dancing. Students will practice moving in and out of the floor and then up into the air with power and grace.

Julie Rothschild

Alexander Technique in Practice

Waking up the senses with a curious and lively approach to practicing your practice.

Karen Harvey

Contemporary Training

Class begins with a slow warmup to connect with the floor, move from the spine and build internal energy. Phrase work develops by using energetic pathways, full range-of-motion movement, natural physical intelligence, fluid sequencing and through creating a synthesis of articulate attention within the whole body. While moving across the floor, we will explore improvisation in order to open up possibilities for spontaneous movement. In the end of class, a combination escalates into dynamic, full-bodied, risk-taking and intelligent dancing.

Katharine Birdsall

Alexander Technique

Exploring how thought and movement are inextricably linked. Finding thought beyond spoken language. Meditiating. moving, tuning into your body, warming up.

Lilly Castro Marengo

Creative Dance

The participants will try different movements and experiences, which will develop from movement-based explorations.

Lindsey Drury

Repetition

I will bring only one phrase to this class. It is everything for the class: the warm-up, the across-the-floor, the center phrase, the cool-down. The idea behind this class is the idea of dance class: That we repeat ourselves to learn. In this class, we simply take the idea of what it is to repeat ourselves in dance class, and radicalize it. I will use one of the phrases from the following material on youtube to teach this class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYEPgzEcDX8 Everything qualitative and energetic that can be altered about the material without changing the material itself will be used to use the entire class as an exploration of the multiple inside the singular, and the singular inside the multiple of dance phrases.

Lisette Foncerrada Rivadeneyra

Muscial Theater

This is a great class to start off your day, because it puts your body and mind in sync with music from the very first start, generating a sensation of connectedness. We start with a dynamic warm-up, we then move through space, working on turns and jumps to increase our stamina. After the warm-up we will work on routines based on the most famous Broadway's jazz choreographies. We will also work on character's development, as typical of the musical theatre style. The class is open to dancers, actors, singers and anyone who has a the desire and the stage presence to work with this genre.

Mandy Greenlee

Awakening our Multi-Dimensionality: Mapping and Expressing through Subtle Energetics

This class engages with the subtle body through somatics and energetic awareness. Drawing from my background in Energy Medicine, this class of Eastern energetic mapping of the body and Western anatomical Body Mind Centering will combine internal and external attunement to the subtle body. Working with activation of energetic laylines in the body along with the fluids and energy centers in the body we will move through the Chakra system. We will initiate varied states of awareness and consciousness at each level combining and inviting whole body awareness and wakefulness

Paige Fredlund

Neomodernist Technique

In this class we will explore the technical elements that define the early dance modernism of Nijinsky and his anti-ballet works. Nijinsky's modernism isn't necessarily like that of his predecessors, and doesn't really begin to resemble early modern dance until (maybe) Cunningham erased emotionality and (at the same time) began incorporating illogically tricky footwork into his dances. Nijinsky's technical preferences for complex rhythm structures of ordinary movements, turned-in feet, and heavy jumps, rendered the soft, pliable, responsive body into a hard, heavy, predetermined mechanization. And so, this is what we will play with in class. We will seek our roots in modernism via self-objectification, not as floating, cosmic sylphides, but as relentlessly repetitive savages. It may be Nijinsky, but we're going to teach it like African dance. And, we're going to warm up for it with the postmodern "task-like" material from Yvonne Rainer's Trio A. The class will progress through a slow accumulation of movements in repetition, building longer and longer phrases of material over the course of the class that will reach a pinnacle of complexity near the end. It maybe modernism, but it is also a workout... Historically speaking.

Paula Rechtman Bulajich

Walk to awake corporeal sensations

I want to propose a 1-hour walk inside the garden of the UDLAP campus, during which we can put our attention to what we perceive with our eyes, our nose, our ears and our proprioception. We will walk as a group and I will guide the participants to feel with different body's parts and to tune in our senses and movements, through BMC ideas. I took the idea of a walk as a way to wake up as I often used to walk for about 1 hour before getting to my morning class. I believe it's a great practice to warm-up, become more aware and to meditate.

Rachel Oliver

Contemporary Ballet

Contemporary Ballet In the contemporary ballet class that I teach, the focus is to find the balance of classical ballet specificity with the individual expression and artistry of neo-classical and contemporary styles. Community building and collaborative learning are explored, while maintaining the traditions and integrity of classical ballet. Though the traditional class structure is integrated in the trajectory of my class, somatic explorations about the body are often included, as well as non-traditional phrasing. I encourage technically demanding and efficient movement, with fluidity, suspension, specificity, and grace. By incorporating anatomical knowledge, Alexander principles, Body-Mind Centering and other somatic practices into ballet class, each student is given additional tools in order to refine the execution of the steps appropriate to their body. This class deepens the dancer’s understanding of body placement, the use of the skeleton in efficient alignment, and the influence of gravity through the body in a turned out position. This class maintains the challenge and difficulty of a classical ballet class. Yet within this structure, a sense of community is encouraged, with partner feedback, partnering, and facings away from the mirror. At the end of class, the dancers are presented with a choreographed phrase of traditional ballet fused with neo-classical speed and a greater range of movement often present in contemporary phrase work. Dancers are given the opportunities to explore their own musicality and artistic accentuation, with movement phrases that incorporate an articulate upper body, and an exploration between internal and external rotation. In offering a choreographic phrase at the end of class, the student is able to gain the ability to express their individual artistry within the style of ballet, in order to gain confidence, ease, and intense joy through dancing.

Ray Eliot Schwartz

Starting

Through the dynamic use of comprehensive warm-ups, basic physical training, and repetitive sequences of movement and action, we will gain experience and skills in coordination, alignment, performance and flexibility. We will explore the intersection between technical principles and creative expression. Students will be encouraged to think creatively and to be prepared to undergo deep physical experiences. In class, we will integrate a series of gentle exercises and improvisational structures focused on anatomical and physical harmony. Using techniques of exploration, we work in pairs and use bodywork help us to feel sensitive structures that invite the body into a deeper and richer dance expression.

Rebeca Hernandez

Floor Work

This class will consist of a warm up focusing on core. The class will advance to an arm sequence on center floor. Then students will go through slow, across the floor warm up exercises to strengthen upper body through crawling and dragging movement. The class will conclude with an across the floor sequence using the floor to slide, crawl, push, pull, and tumble through space.

Rebecca Levy

Yoga - The Practice of Habit Discovery

A rhythmic vinyasa-flow based Yoga class directing participants to look at, without judgement, their physical and emotional habits on and off the mat. The purpose being not to alter behavior, rather, to look with honesty at what we do to create perceived comfort in our existence. Ultimately inspiring ownership in the experience of life - the present moment.

Samuel Hanson

Improvisation/Technique

My class will include a mixture of improvisation and technical elements that will build toward a phrase that will be explored throughout the four weeks. Instead of focusing on any one specific technical idea or style, I am working on creating movement that effuses deceptive simplicity, though it may in fact feel the movement equivalent of a tongue twister. The class will seek to be appropriate for professionals and advanced beginners of alike.

Sayuri Vergara Hernández

Pilates

This class is based on Joseph Pilates' principles, which emphatize alignment, balance, connections, strength and flexibility.

Stephanie Lee

Ballet with Somatic Principles

Somatic learning and practices usually remove dancers from the typical constraints and psychological demands of a dance class. However, we often do not have a safe space to practice these concepts or a structured, efficient approach to reintegrate rest, sensory refinement, and movement clarity in a traditional dance setting. What is the in between? How can we further apply and use what we’ve learnt from the principles of Ideokinesis, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method, and Body Mind Centering into our dance training and daily practice? Ballet with Somatic Principles focuses on reintegrating these practices of refining muscular tension and quieting the mind-body ‘chatter’ to focus instead on the body's sensory stimuli within a classical dance technique. Students will learn to move from an embodied source, a restful place, and recognize rigid holding patterns while still addressing the anatomical mechanics of ballet and how to move efficiently within that vocabulary. My background in Alexander Technique, Ideokinesis, Feldenkrais, and classical ballet (Cecchetti, Corvino, and Vaganova) will largely inform the structure of the class. I will be mainly focusing on the principles of visualization, inhibition, and direction, along with an emphasis on anatomical individuality and clarity.

The class is structured to emphasize sensory awareness within the context of a traditional ballet class. Hence, we will begin on the floor to focus on our breath and physical needs and proceed with a neuromuscular preparation sequence (influenced directly by Irene Dowd). We will slowly move up to the center to perform a traditional ballet barre, adagio, petit allegro, and grand allegro with a focus on ease, anatomical soundness, and injury prevention. In between exercises, we will augment with constructive rest and regular pauses to visualize motor imagery to alter injurious movement patterns. At the end of the class, we will finish with constructive rest and recount our experiences. It is not a fast class, but it is an extremely focused one. Depending on our needs and goals, exercises may given at the barre. Generally, the class will start with a center barre in order to allow us to quickly detect muscular imbalance, given the general emphasis on efficient body organization and spatial awareness. By including periods of short constructive rest in between exercises, time is given to pause and reflect, explore sensory feedback, inhibit maladaptive postures/movement habits, and redirect the mind and body.

The ‘end results’ of the class depend entirely on the students’ individual needs and goals, and where they are currently with their dance practice. However, the pleasure of moving and experiencing one’s own artistry will be greatly emphasized! I am starting out with ballet because it provides a highly codified movement vocabulary that is a base for many dance communities. My personal experience has shown that it easier to see, feel, and break down the application of somatic principles within the context of a highly codified movement structure, (especially for beginners to somatics as it can be overwhelming). Classical ballet also tends to postulate all the rules of somatics and can quickly demonstrate muscular imbalances and inefficiencies within an individual dancer. Many dancers have also received poor ballet training and movement cues; this class can help address unduly muscular tension and help address reactive patterns that also appear in their other movement practices. We are the result of the ideologies in which we move -- this class offers a safe and structured space to engage the body, reintegrate rest, sensory refinement, and movement clarity, and expands what a traditional ballet class can offer.

Tania Galindo Ramírez

Butoh Latinoamericano

This class is based on the different ideas and techniques we developed during the 6-years of research with Laboratorio El Caldero. Butoh puts the body at the center of its artistic vision. The body is not just an instrument to express feelings or ideas, but the actual expression itself. The same body is the one who gives conditions, offers possibilities and puts restrictions. The body is part of a show, where everything has a place and a value in a harmonious balance, similar to that of animals and plants. Butoh is a living art, which is defined and developed differently according to each individual being. The Biodrama weaves in different sensitive relationships with Bios (life), that which inhabits the planet, taking the main elements- fire, water, soil, air- as the teaching guides. This process is exactly like the process of life development on the planet. We are taking theatre and plot as a way of learning, while the sensorial investigation allows us to un-do our mental structures, to get to a deeper level of images, memories, and a general state of hyper-awareness. Butoh promotes corporeal sensibility, quality of movement, flexibility, coordination, rhythm, and a connection to emotions, feelings, sensations, silence, place and time. First we warm up the muscles and articulations through a dynamic series of movement. We put emphasis to the columna, its vertebrae, the center of the body and the breathing, to allow for an organic movement to arise. The Biodrama offers the connection between the corporeal investigation and the feelings, creating a holistic approach to technique, while dramaturgy brings out the theme of the work. The sensorial experimentation allows us to go deeper, inside our soul, to open a door to our intimacy.

Women Over The Wall

Morning Tune-Up

Focused on increased anatomical awareness, a combination of yoga, pilates, and moving meditation.

Authentic Movement

A dyad practice in eyes-closed meditation that engages a non-judgmental witness as a mean’s to improve one’s creative attention, as well as one’s own inner witnessing.

Open-Level Contemporary Dance Technique

A class suitable for a multi-level group, and focusing on the immediacy of performance and the idiosyncratic interpretation of dance phrases.

Zap Mcconnell

Moving Awareness Garden Walk

Taking a stroll through the grounds each mover will have a chance to initiate group exploration as we wake up our full selves with and responding to the natural world.