Moving and Dancing: Strategies
Class will begin by working with information from various somatic approaches, considering body systems in addition to, and in conjunction with, the skeletal/muscular model. Warming up will be a goal here�call this the “technique� focus. We’ll follow this with directed improvisation and full out dancing, working with ideas from my recent dances as springboards: notions of the “queer� and avoidance of censorship, using embarrassment as a fulcrum; and (like a vase) scores that examine the notion of speech metaphors in relation to dance, and/or propose an alternative exploration of the “isness� of the performance moment.

Alexander Technique for Dancers
The Alexander Technique is a means of identifying mental and physical habits that interfere with one's ability to attend to the moment and make choices. Through observation, dialog and hands-on work, this workshop aims to introduce principles of the Technique and examine common assumptions (and their accompanying sensations) of such dancerly concerns as strength, support, stability, power and subtlety, opening the body and brain to new information and refining the organization of the performing body and mind.

The Presence of Space
Each day will start with a new approach to touch, facilitating awareness of internal and external space and warming up our sensed communication capacities. From there we will work in duet forms that activate the dynamic presence of space. This will lead to solo practices built from the process of touching, dancing together and listening with each other. We will work with sensory and conceptual space, activating physical imagination through energetic modes of moving and communicating with each other. Over the week we will build solo and duet forms that integrate these approaches to space and performance.

Technique
This class seeks to prepare an articulate, alert and neutral body, ready for precise dancing with intricate coordinations that we will work on together. There is a simple, straightforward, continuous warm-up that relies on the use of release, alignment, momentum, weight and strength. Clarity, simplicity of movement, attention to detail and concentration will be our goal.

BODY of SOUND
Join an adventure into unmapped ground for voice-movement. Enter the cellular tonal field through vibrational rhythms. Open to sensory warmups and restorative presence. Liven to insightful finds that surprise and embrace your fun-loving self. Respond authentically to stimulating image-sound-language prompts. As we dive into new skillsets, we stir the soundbody and its yearnings, stories, memories, and intentions. We explore individually, with partners, and in the circle. What unfolds? A true gathering of voice-movement vignettes, gateways to personal balance, horizon mind, and performance reach.

Choreographic Thinking
In this class we will focus on elemental aspects of choreographic process and the attendant metaphors 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.

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 musculo-skeletal system.

Technique
The class begins with a simple warm-up focusing on the breathing, internal structure, weight and the body’s articulations. Directed exercises give the opportunity to observe and experience our own particularity and range of mobility. Sequentially we integrate the parts of the body and the use of the floor. Later in the class, a phrase is provided for individual explorations: to manipulate it, to watch it, to re-interpret or to copy it. This class is the result of personal investigations and is influenced by many years of study and work with Jeremy Nelson, Klein-Mahler technique and, more recently, Alexander Technique and other somatic work.

Seeking the Specific
Rooted in the material of our bodies, we can discover a fascination for its details. In these classes we will observe body and movement with particularity, then, connecting these aspects into a multi-faceted whole, uncover a different perspective within our moving - one that brings new complexities and possibilities, and effortlessly, opens new doorways into the unknown.

Practicing Presence, Discovering Form
This class considers composition not a craft that can be taught but a space that we can create together, sharing each other’s resources and knowledge, and engaging with the process of making dance as an individual and collective practice. We will employ exercises that reflect how we engage with being present in our making, moving and thinking in an effort to listen to and uncover our underlying reasons for dancing. Class will also examine how we arrive at form, perhaps expanding our notions of what form can look like or feel like. This will be done through a series of structured exercises that challenge ownership, aesthetic preference, practical issues and commitment to performance. Please bring a notebook and 2-3 minutes of pre-existing dance material that you know well (preferably your own choreography if possible).

Your Dance - Your Technique
Each class will be organized around a specific point, or points, of technical research. These explorations will range from functional anatomy: "How is the spine’s energy centered in the body?" To observations about awareness: "How can/does the “inward eye� project outward into support?" We will use shared hands - on information, exploratory exercises and improvisational movement to find personal relationships to these questions. Group curiosity and momentum will guide our process to build content and insightful experience. Individuals will be guided and encouraged to apply these technical discoveries into their own deep, passionate, physical movement explorations; expanding their personal vocabularies.

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 is 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. The result - a clarity and sureness of movement, efficiency, fluidity, and a new level of understanding the innate intelligence of one’s body. The class is open to all. The workshop will focus, experientially, on the deep internal musculature that lies closest to the bone within the pelvis – the deepest and most supportive connections that move, and ground us - between the pelvis, the legs and the earth.

The Craft
Over the course, participants will work to develop new material and will be encouraged to challenge the boundaries and assumptions they bring to their creative process. Continuing and deepening the core exploration of the basic and numerous aspects of Space, Time and Movement participants will search for articulate words to communicate about ideas, images and concepts about dance. The work will incorporate tasks and exercises as well as exploration and experimentation in the use of various forms, styles and vocabularies of dance and movement for the creation of something new. We will examine dance as a meaningful form of expression and communication by comparing traditional dance, popular, ethnic and cultural forms against contemporary choreographies. Considering the influences on these forms and in turn how they influence contemporary dance forms both locally and globally.

Technique
Alone and in partnerships, we will concentrate on enhancing our movement facility. Using improvisational and set warm-ups, there will be a daily focus on the volume and weight inside the body and its relationship to the floor, offering a grounded approach to our dancing. Focusing on the inherent rhythm in the body, we will develop a personal musical dialogue, noticing the time when a movement has come to its completion, when another one has begun, and how long we allow each to last. Technically demanding phrase material offers ways of moving with detail and a sense of abandon.

Chaos and Order - Exploring Movement Skill and Movement Invention
In this workshop, RoseAnne Spradlin will introduce participants to aspects of the Body-Mind Centering® approach to working with the brain, spinal cord and cellular levels of organization to find support and clarity in innate movement patterns and to free the mind for creative movement invention. Classes will involve some study of reflexes and movement patterns and how they are supported by various levels of neural organization – sensory and motor tracts of the spinal cord and low, middle and cortical structures in the brain. Students can expect to leave the workshop with concrete tools to improve movement integration and to explore creative movement.

Composition/Physical Relationships
Through a series of improvisations and choreographic sketches, we will explore making dances as the process of creating a series of physical relations, between performers and within time and space. We'll begin by cultivating internal bodily states through the use of images and partner work, manifesting these states in movement, and then reversing this process to structure physical situations, which affect our bodily state. With this information we'll set out to mix and match our materials, using limitation as an integral part of composition, in our search for dance that exhibits a personal movement language, an evocative aesthetic sensibility, intelligence and guts.