MELT-Technique
The classes are influenced by Nelson’s 30 years of study in the work of Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein, and by more recent studies in Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais® and Body-Mind Centering®. We begin with simple exercises that encourage mobility and suppleness in the superficial muscles, establish clear connections through the bones, and create a dynamic and weighted relationship with the floor. We take this information and apply it to phrases of movement that involve moving boldly and dynamically, and finding a strength and ease in our dancing.

MELT-Contact Improvisation Practices
Contact Improvisation, begun by dancer Steve Paxton in 1972, is a dance of improvising/ partnering based on physics of touch, weight, balance, momentum, stillness, flow, resistance, and perceptual play. In this workshop, we will learn specific lifts and rolls and practice developmental patterns, body puzzles and forms which shape the body and space with odd timings and unusual perspectives. We will create duet dances that are dynamic and alive in the moment. We will become more tuned to center, subtleties of touch, direction, and intention, and explore musicality and phrasing.

MELT-Systems/Scores: practice/process
In this workshop, we will investigate how we make scores out of the systems that we live in, observe and are attracted to. A score is an open structure that creates improvisational choices for a particular context. We will create systems for movement that can be layered into performance scores. This will be our practice. How does the practice influence our approach to performance? How do we observe and shape this process? How can our practice of making scores help us to observe the possibilities in movement and choreographic systems? We will work on presence, states of moving and scales of sensation and time. We will perform our scores daily.

MELT-Technique
Class begins with systematically readying our bodies and minds for full-out and detailed dancing. Our goal is to increase our awareness, articulation, physical facility and focus. The warm-up is simple and straightforward with an emphasis on alignment, physical mechanics, and space for sensation and feedback from our bodies as we work collaboratively to arrive at dancing. In doing phrase work, we hone our skills, apply our training and deepen the understanding and intelligence in our bodies.

MELT-Feldenkrais®
In this workshop, you'll have the chance to experience the Feldenkrais Method® through a series of Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® classes. The Feldenkrais Method® studies the works of our nervous system and our ability to recognize and create movement patterns that are both more efficient and more pleasant. The method emphasizes awareness, distribution of effort/action through the whole self, expanding self-perception and our ability to carry out our intentions. This workshop is ideal for dancers and people from different backgrounds interested in discovering more about their physicality in a pain-free way and enjoying a larger sense of well-being.

MELT-Workshop in Performance
How does self-direction function in your creative practice and performance work? Are there different approaches, choices to be made? All solo, collective, choreographic/directorial practitioners interested in cross-disciplinary processes of creating and performing are welcome. The workshop is designed to expand your awareness, experience and skills in self-direction. We follow a sequence of questions, explorations, performance, reflective action and conversation, drawing on different modes of live performance. Please bring in 1-3 minutes of your material for starters.

MELT-Choreography For Warming-up to Dance
Participants will learn a selection of choreographic materials created by Irene during her ongoing interactions with professional dancers and dance teachers. These choreographies can be used as a very efficient warm-up for dance, as well as a musculo-skeletal conditioning program, neuro-muscular fine-tuning, and mental preparation for the greater awareness and expansiveness required of us all as creative performing artists. Areas of focus might include: dynamic trunk/pelvis stabilization, foot sensitization and articulation, hip joint mobilization, freeing of hands/arms, and enhancement of breathing.

MELT-Technique
This summer we will take the time to let our bodies and minds explore what we need, what we want, and what the moment calls for. Class will begin with improvisational structures to allow our minds to expand into the possibilities of our physical imaginations. We will then work with technical forms and phrases to freely explore how our patterns may be blocking us from more deeply experiencing weight, lightness, initiation and intention. The luxury of dancing together for five continuous days will allow the possibility for pleasure, rigor, inquiry and change. The merging of the unconscious life of movement through improvisation with conscious attention to the details of dancing is part of the energizing practice we will explore in each class.

MELT-A Re-Education – Klein TechniqueTM
Klein TechniqueTM has been in development since the 70s by Susan Klein and is a cohesive movement system that connects the body and mind. It is firmly grounded in the principles of change, possibilities, and efficiency through the tools of process, theory and practice. We work on "letting go,"- letting go of muscles, thoughts and habits that hold us back from moving from our deepest and most connected self, and that fix us in set configurations. We become connected and grounded; efficient and alive.

MELT-Making Dances: Using dance as the question and answer
Making Dances explores our relationship to dance as a viewer and maker through observation, dialogue and making. Reveling in the process of revealing one’s artistic voice, I offer opportunities for the dance maker to look, experiment, “fail/succeed,” dialogue, create, and experience. Through the daily practice of dance making, we journey through the discovery of frameworks or structures derived from one’s own concepts, history, embodiment, or from the work itself; explore the concepts of distillation and interruption; examine the possibility of universal moments; discuss dance’s potential to engage in contemporary issues, while leaning towards a more informed artistic voice using dance as the question and answer.

MELT-Sissy Vop
Sissy: …a timid man or boy considered childish or unassertive Vop: … a high-spirited kick tossed in the air Sissy Vop is a collection of (e)feminized training rituals aimed at releasing enculturated oppressions in the body. Going to the edge of our physical limits is important for this release, and we will enter through a combination of rigor, rhythm and recuperative practices. Through altered states, disorientation studies, solo forms and group provocations, we will address the body and performance space as a site for transgression, transcendence and transformation.

MELT-Advanced Releasing into Scores
Utilizing a deeper knowledge of somatic techniques, we will dive into advanced releasing. Releasing will give us room for expansion and the power to explore emerging improvisational scores. Some scores stay as purely physical phenomena, extracted from releasing work, while other scores will be transformational, emerging and working from the base of the "empty" body.

MELT-Practicing Courage
This workshop considers dance making not as a craft that can be taught but as a space that we can create together, sharing resources and knowledge, and engaging with the process of making as an individual and collective practice. We will continually challenge ourselves to be present in our making through a series of structured exercises and conversations that challenge ownership, aesthetic preference, preconceived concepts of form, commitment and desire. Please bring a notebook.

MELT-Deepening Technique, Explorations in Body-Mind Centering®
This participatory workshop will introduce explorations of the embryological origins of human development to investigate core concepts at the heart of dance expression and technique: the formation of the body's midline axis; the relationship between front, middle and back body; the spiraling development of the limbs; origins of breathing. All taught through guided somatizations, partnering and individual improvisations. Repeat participants welcome; the class material will expand beyond what was taught in the last two summers.

MELT-Technique
This class will dedicate itself to promoting spatial and corporeal awareness through clarity and precision. Inviting ourselves to observe, welcome, enhance, abandon and rediscover movement patterns, qualities, focal points, personal habits and preferences in order to stay alert in the present moment. By using walking as a physical neutralizer and awareness stimulator, through a gentle warm up of set exercises, we will transition to a pre-conceived phrase to share experiences while encouraging individuality.

MELT-Dance Making Strategies
This workshop will rely on discourse, both choreographic and verbal, as a means of critical reflection of our own taken-for-granted assumptions about dance and choreography, as well as the assumptions of the traditions in which we each participate. Participants will develop palettes of materials – movement, ideas, questions – via directed improvisation, then experiment to find different strategies for organizing the materials. Points-of-departure for investigation include: how the audience builds a theory while watching a dance, what constitutes dance-events in each artist’s work, how events are framed, issues of consonance and dissonance, and participation or non-participation in existing traditions.