Technique
The warm-up focuses on our skeletal structure to access the deep supporting muscles of the body. We will work particularly with our connection to and use of the floor, and apply this information to phrases of movement that involve moving boldly, covering lots of space, taking chances off balance and finding a strength and ease in our dancing. Many years of study with Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein, and more recent studies in Alexander Technique® and BodyMind Centering® strongly influence his teaching.

Contact Improvisation: Precision Contact
This is a skills-based Contact Improvisation workshop for those that want to increase the control and precision in their dance. Working from the floor to flying with technique and discipline, we will address and practice: the modulation of speed; the development of 360° awareness; control during inversion, supporting and riding; sensitivity to the floor; integration of multiple foci; and extending the variety of qualities in your dancing and your ability to move easily and intentionally between them.

Composition
Do you like to create but have difficulty getting started? Have you started countless pieces but have trouble finishing them? In daily assignments beginning from highly structured improvisations, this class will explore how to begin, how to continue, how the mind helps, how the mind hinders, how to feel/know the "yes" when body, mind and heart are alive and in agreement, how to keep working when the "yes" doesn’t come, how the where affects what you do, how what you hear affects what you see. Through solo, duet and group forms, we will explore different ways of unearthing and structuring the voices waiting to be heard through movement, ideas, sensation, deep feeling and memory. Movement, music, words, objects and environments of all kinds will be explored.

Technique: Performance Technique
Concepts of body architecture, locomotion through space and body centering are explored. The focus is centered on O'Connor's dance language, which incorporates ballet, modern, ethnic and historical forms, both real and invented, combined with his unique system for phrase structures derived from a physical stream of consciousness. This system is characterized by an exaggerated density of steps, extreme tempo change and inorganic sequencing transformed into logic. O'Connor concentrates on developing the dancer's ability to interpret the abstraction put forth by a choreographer. His belief that the performer is not a tool, but a peer in the creation of dance informs his teaching as he encourages the student beyond the kinetic experience to aspire to artistry.

Horizons
Learn a warm-up choreography designed to enhance visual focus, hand-eye coordination, articulation of hands and feet, freedom of the spine, and the dancer’s own phrasing. In addition, this sequence can be used as a physical and mental preparation of performance.

Composition: Making Dances
O’Connor’s teaching methodology concentrates on ways to deepen a personal choreographic voice and on how to read the underlying message in one’s creative impulse. Through the daily creation of phrases, the artist focuses his or her attention on developing an analytical eye for the fundamental metaphors in the work. The process involves locating the seeds of a universal voice. To facilitate a method for developing a "vocabulary" and to extract meaning from it, a series of questions are posed based on the emotional range in the body, internal music, dramatic structure, history, culture and the inter-relatedness of the elements in the work. The goals are to: internalize a problem-solving system based on the artist’s thought process; develop an ability to bring it into the realm of theater; gain the objectivity necessary to scrutinize a work; and bring clarity to its thematic center.

Technique
This warm-up and movement class will develop from simple skeletal mobility sequences to full-out movement forms. Emphasis will be placed on the joints, examining how their range of motion relates to alignment, support, weight and articulation. The class will culminate in phrase work and traveling sequences.

Composition: Making Work
This workshop focuses on the creative process in making body/movement-based performance/dance. A variety of approaches to creating - instinctive, improvisational, analytical - is exploited to uncover your individual interests, your process and your work. The workshop consists of unequal parts making, discussing, improvising and watching the work of other workshop participants. My interest is in creating a space in which traditional notions of dance are critiqued, absorbed or discarded in the service of creating performance that comes from a vital place. An ongoing question throughout the workshop is how to make work that is located in a contemporary context.

Releasing
Through specially designed images, we will enable ourselves to let go of hidden tensions and realign with the natural forces of gravity and counter balance. Through the releasing process, we will learn how to move with more freedom and economy. Spontaneous movement explorations will allow us to creatively integrate these changes in our bodies. The experience of seeing into our bodies will give us a wonderful tool for improvisational dance.