The Thinking Body
Yes, I stole this title from Mabel Todd but i mean something different. Class texts I have written in the past have presented themselves as a rather bad poem or some sort of campaign propaganda or as a possible doctoral topic. I am stopping the madness. Honestly i don't know what the content of this class will be. The container will be proposed by a lady who has a belief that technique, somatic awareness, theory , improvisation and composition can just all live together in peace, man. Is this a sudden desire for monotheism on my part?! Because I don't really mean “live together . What I secretly mean is they are all kind of the same thing. Practically speaking we will dance, probably write, maybe read. Heads up: I think of class as a performance form for all involved

Deepening Technique - Explorations in Body-Mind CenteringĆ‚Ā®
In this participatory workshop RoseAnne Spradlin will introduce explorations of the embryological origins of human development to explore core concepts at the heart of dance expression and technique: the formation of the body's midline axis and the development of the spine, the relationship of the front body and back body, the spiraling development of the limbs, and the cellular source of the body's breath and strength. All concepts will be explored in relation to both form and expression, feeling and perception, through guided somatizations, partnering and individual improvisations.

Wild Fields: Radical Strategies for Movement and Composition
This iteration of Ms. Kaye’s 1984 dance Wild-Fields, the structure of which was informed by the idea of wild fields bordered by stone walls, will focus on compositional strategies extrapolated from the narratives of our own lives. Subsequently by interweaving, layering, juxtaposing, as well as critiquing the fragments of our individual compositional strategies we will reveal a dance of us, a dance about the group and our moment together.

LD4D - Lighting Design for Dance
This classroom and practical workshop will be a technical tutorial and discussion about the process of creating lighting designs for dance. All efforts will be made to demystify lighting in order to promote informative decision making and more easeful discussion in future collaborative processes. This class is designed for anyone interested in dance lighting including dancers, choreographers, and stage technicians. Participants must be present for all workshop dates (unless noted as optional). All classes will be held at the Abrons Arts Center Playhouse. THIS WORKSHOP IS NOT INCLUDED IN PACKAGE ENROLLMENT.

Why choreography matters now
This weekly reading group begins from the premise that choreographyâ€ as concept and as processâ€ proposes important practical and theoretical inventions for thinking through this particular moment of cultural crisis. Our conversations will consider what choreography produces socially, relationally, politically, artistically. What openings does a choreographic thinking suggest for dance-making, art-making, writing, or theoretical work (not that these are ever exclusive practices). Readings will trespass from critical theory to fiction to artist writings, including texts by Shelley Jackson, Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Paulo Virno, Hannah Arendt, Miguel Gutierrez, Avital Ronnel, as examples. To ask again: Why does choreography matter now? THIS WORKSHOP IS NOT INCLUDED IN PACKAGE ENROLLMENT

Spirals
Learn a choreography which mobilizes all our freely moveable joints and exerts all our major muscle groups from their most elongated to their most shortened lengths. While moving through arcing pathways, each segment of our body volume is constantly changing its relationship with each other segment, as well as with gravity and our performance environment. This type of continuous change provides a stimulating warm-up for our sensorimotor nervous system as well as our musculoskeletal system.

Your Dance - Your Technique: Contemporary Dance Technique for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Each session will be organized around a point or points of technical research. These explorations range from functional anatomy: "How is the spine centered in the body and how does this create release, direction and support for movement?  to observations about states of awareness, “How does our inner eye direct and work with our perceptions outward?  We will use shared hands on information, exploratory exercises and improvisation to develop personal relationships to our research. Individuals will be encouraged to apply these technical discoveries to their own deep, passionate, physical movement, to enrich and expand their personal vocabularies through them.

Feldenkrais
In this workshop you'll have the chance to experience the Feldenkrais Method (cm) (one of the most profound and recognized somatic methods of our time) through a series of Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (cm) 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. Ideal for dancers and people from different backgrounds interested in discovering more about their physicality in a pain-free way and enjoy a larger sense of well-being.

Dance Making Strategies
The 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 materialsâ€ movement, ideas, questionsâ€ 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.

Technique
This class aims to systematically ready an alert body and mind for intricate and robust dancing. Through a progression of activities, we will try to increase our self- awareness, level of articulation, strength, technical facility and focus. The warm-up is simple and straightforward with an emphasis on alignment, physical mechanics and release leaving space for sensation and feedback from our bodies as work collaboratively to arrive at dancing. It is through the practice of doing phrase work that we can hone our skills and apply our varied training.

A Re-Education - Klein Technique
Klein Technique is a cohesive integration of body and mind, based on the principles of change, possibilities and a better functioning body. It is a technique based on the premise that what helps us function at our optimum efficiency are simple ideas, exercises and practice, the demands being the same in dance or everyday life. The work done in class is to re-educate one's body with an interweaving of theory and practice on a physical level, at the level of the bone and on the deep internal musculature and supportive connections that move and ground us - between the pelvis, the legs and the earth. The result - a clarity and sureness of movement, efficiency, fluidity, and a new level of understanding the innate intelligence of one's body.

Choreographic Thinking
In this class we will focus on elemental aspects of choreographic process and the attendant metaphors and philosophies implied through practice. We will initiate the construction of a highly individualized set of tools to find ways of locating meaning in dance on its own terms. Each student will create problem-solving systems based on the structure of his /her own thought process and pursue the application of these. We will question the assumptions or choreographic “default settings  of dance history and present-day tropes, re-contextualizing these through the dual lenses of personal research and contemporary culture. We will discuss ideas around abstraction and narrative; intentionality; our internal sources’ exertion on the surface of our work and many other concepts born of our exploration.

Up/Down + In-between
Classes will draw upon an athletic movement background to develop comfort in utilizing the hands as just another weight-bearing source. With these skills we will investigate various ways to effortlessly suspend and up-end the body in space, while remaining thoroughly grounded to the floor. Dance phrases will highlight the thrill of momentum and gravity as a means to develop full-bodied, risky dancing, regularly challenging the body to defy preconceived notions of what a body can achieve in motion.

Rivers of Energy - the Meridian/Organ Bond Through Masunaga's Stretching Sequence
Japanese Shiatsu master, Shizuto Masunaga, developed a series of yoga-like stretches based on the Meridians, rivers of energy traversing our bodies and exerting a sphere of influence on many aspects of our lives, including our organs. In these classes we will learn the Basic and Complementary stretches, and place focus on our organs. We will explore the way they rest and move in our bodies, give support to each stretch, and invigorate our dancing. We will carry our experiences into improvisation that reflects our internal insights.

Doing It
What is your first impulse? Can you trust it? What happens when the judge falls asleep? Can sight be a handicap? Can you know too much? This is a workshop about Composition.

Technique
Breath, core strength, sensory awareness, phrasing, weight and focus are some of the concepts employed in the warm-up and work for this class. Using references from Chi Gong, yoga, modern and postmodern structures we will warm the body, release the joints and activate the senses working with phrase material to explore and expand our skills and play!

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. Becoming more tuned to center and subtleties of touch, direction and intention, and explore musicality and phrasing.

Practicing Presence, Discovering Form
This workshop considers dance making not a learnable craft but a space, a practice and a dialogue that we create by ourselves and with our colleagues. We will share each other’s resources, knowledge and subjectivity to reveal our interests and desires in making dances. We will explore how we arrive at form through structured exercises that construct, embody, dismantle, and reassemble. We will challenge ownership, aesthetic preference, the use of language and commitment to performance. This is an experiment in which hopefully we all, myself included, discover new things and invigorate our own practice of making performance.