Technique
This class begins with a warm-up that draws from various sources including Kelin Technique and Alexander Technique. It focuses on alignment, the use of the deep postural muscles for support, and the connection to and use of the floor-all in the service of freeing us to move with ease, specificity, and strength. Class phrases focus on traveling in the space, moving easily in and out of the floor and taking chances off-balance.

Technique
Emphasis in this class will be put on bringing seemingly incongruous materials together. Technique and warm-up exercises will drawn from a variety of movement styles ranging from ballet and post-modern to street/club styles and martial arts. Phrases in the Elkin's idiom will be introduced, emphasizing dynamic physicality and self-expression.

Repertory
Participants will learn Volutes, choreographed by Peggy Baker and Irene Dowd as a high momentum warm-up, which especially mobilizes the eyes, spine, hips, and shoulders. Practicing Volutes enhances flexibility for the "tight" dancer and dynamic control for the "loose-jointed" dancer.

Speak for Yourslef
This workshop will concentrate on deepening a personal choreographic voice and reading the underlying message in one's creative impulse. Throught the daily creation of phrases, the artist will focus, developing an analytical eye, for the fundamental metaphors of their work. The process involves locating, through a hyper personal investigation, the seeds of a universal voice. I want the artists to internalize a system of problem-solving based on his or her thought process and develop the abilty to bring it into the realm of theater. The goal is to gain the objectivity necessary to scrutinize a work and bring clarity to its thematic center.

Technique
The goal of this class is to teach the dancer how to be an interpreter of movement, constructing a store of tools used to approach performing. The class is centered on O'Connor's dance language, which incorporates ballet, modern, ethnic, and historical forms, both real and invented. Concepts of body architecture, locomotion through space and body centering are explored. These are combined with a unique system for phrase structures derived from a physical stream of consciousness. This is characterized by an exaggerated density of steps and inorganic step sequencing transformed into logic. Musically the class concentrates on extreme tempo change and dynamic finesse.

Dance Improvisation as Cross-Diciplinary Exploration
The language of the body is motivated from mental and physical frames of essential states techniques. You will dance, develop self-awareness, break patterns, explore and potentially create a large quantity of material, dialogue with peers and ritualize your process from your own unique talent.

Implications and Uses
In this class we will begin from movement, making and looking at ways to proceed into dance from there... in opposition to ways of making that begin with theme or improvisation or systems. We will work with making movement and descisions quickly, efficiently, and with pleasure. Looking at "only" movement, what it communicates and contains, how it can be used to suggest solutions to the problems it poses. Along the way we will: see and feel how movement is communicative, how it can suggest structure, how it can take on linguistic rhythms, musical rhythms; how it can contain psychology, emotion, comment; how time and placement can be inherent to the nature of a particular movement, how the physical can precede state of mind and/or recall state of mind; how perception and sensation are related, how definitions of movement can be stretched and challenged.

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, straight-forward 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.

Capoeira into Interactive Contact Improvisation
Capoeira is a Brazilian Martial Art, which greatly facilitates full-bodied, grounded, animal moving. We will merge the skills of intentionality, suppleness, and strength from Capoeira with Contact Improvisation's weight, momentum, and kinesthetic reading to harvest bolder dancing.

Composition
Options for source material include setting the explorations from the MELT improvisation sessions, using material you've already been working on, and creating phrases from mathmetical or image-based structures. We will organize material in solo, duet, and group forms to show and discuss. We will work toward developing a personal voice, sharpening perception, and acquiring editing skills.

Tools/ Alexander Technique
The Alexander Technique is a conscious practice; a means whereby one can engage one's full presence in any given moment, in any given activity. Through observation and awareness, we can break through present limitations of the mind and body, learn how to direct our "selves" to more clearly manifest our intentions, and free ourselves of our patterns and conditioning to find greater choice. These classes will play with the principles of the Alexander Technique as tools for the dancer through hands-on guidance, dialogue and movement investigations, focusing on the moment of choice between stimulus and response, and attending to oneself in relationship to another. Students are encouraged to bring movement related issues and questions to the group to be investigated and clarified.

Motion Intensive/INTEGRATION
The class will investigate approaches to the act of motion, the creative process and performance/feedback. Energetic, somatic, and hands-on experiments will be employed to generate conductivity and reception. We will be working both in solo and in contact to discover new ideas and clarity of intention. Navigating groundwork and techniques will be used to ignite intelligence and physical power through alignment and inform 3-dimensional range into and out of gravity. Choreographic and sonic studies will also fine tune, quicken, and deepen the kinesthetic mind and expressive body. This workshop requires a desire to engage in full-bodied, full-blooded movement, to give and take weight, to fall and invert, to create and perform and react, to pool all of your resources and dance.