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 and the development of the spine; the relationship between the front body, middle 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.

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. Through a gentle warm up using a series of set exercises, we will transition to a pre-conceived phrase to share experiences while encouraging individuality.

MELT | rituals and experience
A composition workshop for choreographer directors balancing the presence of the body within a performance environment of ideas, sounds, objects and imagery. Consisting of strategies both physical and intellectual, the workshop considers dance-making as the act of conjuring a shared experiential journey. It attempts to enhance the ability of artists to navigate the multiplicity of lenses through which their work is seen.

MELT | 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. OPTIONAL workshop days: TUES WED 10am-5pm (**Please note this workshop takes place at Abrons Art Center, 466 Grand Street)

MELT | Moving and Dancing: Some Strategies
Class will begin by working with information from different 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.

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 | Workshop in Performance
What is self-direction? How does that translate into your performance and work with others? Welcome all solo, collective, choreographic/directorial practitioners interested in cross-disciplinary processes of creating, structuring and performing. The workshop is designed to expand your awareness, knowledge, skills, experience and strategies for self-direction. Our work follows a sequence of questions, exploration, performance, reflective action and conversation, drawing on different modes of live performance. Please bring in 1-3 minutes of your material for starters.

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 | Making Dances: Using dance as the question and answer
Making Dances explores our relationship to dance as a viewer and a maker through observation, dialogue and making. Known for creating a new vocabulary with each new work, Donna Uchizono revels in sharing the process of revealing one�s artistic voice: �I am interested in offering opportunities for the dance maker to look, experience, dialogue, create, so-called �fail� and succeed, discovering frameworks or structures derived from one�s own concepts, history, embodiment or through the work itself while interrupting habitual patterns that no longer serve. Through the daily practice of dance making, we journey through the creation of methods from one�s own thought process; explore �interruption� and �distillation;� develop awareness of the concerns that drive one�s own work and identify concerns in the work of others; discuss dance�s potential to engage in contemporary issues; examine the possibility of �universal� magical moments and lean towards a more informed artistic voice using �dance� as the question and answer verbally, physically and philosophically.�

MELT | Technique
This class aims to prepare an alert body and mind for intricate and robust dancing. Through a progression of activities, we will increase our self-awareness, level of articulation, strength, technical facility and focus. The warm-up is simple and straightforward, leaving space for sensation and feedback from our bodies as we 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.

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
Using the luxury of five continuous days of dancing together, we will take the time to investigate different states of awareness. Each class will be three-fold, beginning with a guided improvisation to inspire the imagination to expand into the unique life of different parts of the body, followed by dancing within technical forms to support our range and work as dancers, and concluding with a phrase that integrates concepts of weight, lightness, initiation, and intention. The technical forms and phrases will be specifically structured to build our knowledge of individual physical patterns that may be blocking us from deepening the use of ourselves as artists. In the process of learning a phrase, we can observe how we retain �set� material. The merging of the unconscious life of movement through improvisation and conscious attention to the physical imagination is part of the energizing practice we will explore in each class.

MELT | A Re-Education - Klein Technique™
Klein Technique� 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. The results: a clarity and sureness of movement, efficiency, fluidity, and a new level of understanding of the innate intelligence of one's body. To this end 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 or locked configurations. From here, we work to get down to the deepest tissue, the bone. When the bones are aligned we become connected and grounded; we become efficient and alive. We will work on the deep internal musculature and supportive connections in the pelvis that move and ground us - between the pelvis, the legs and the earth and back up through the skeleton. Open to all levels and movement styles.

MELT | Practicing Making
This workshop considers composition not as a craft that can be taught but as 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 reflect on 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. We will examine how we arrive at form, perhaps expanding our notions of what form can be. This will be done through a series of structured exercises and conversations that challenge ownership, aesthetic preference, commitment and the practical issues surrounding dancemaking. Please bring a notebook.

Workshop: I AM ONE WHO
Developed during the past 21 years by Ra�na von Waldenburg and based on the physical actor training of Jerzy Grotowski and Stephen Wangh (An Acrobat of the Heart), this innovative approach to performance teaches artists to embody the present moment with barefaced sincerity. A series of physical presence exercises trains the performer to literally bring all parts of him/herself into the work, generating impulses that are utterly alive, surprisingly truthful, and emotionally resonant. Performers learn to develop constructive vocabulary for giving and receiving critical feedback in an ensemble-based environment where peers are vital to the learning process.

MELT | Technique
The classes are influenced by Nelson�s 25 years of continuing study in the work of Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein, and by more recent studies in Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais� and Body-Mind Centering�. We will begin with simple exercises and stretches that encourage mobility and suppleness in the superficial muscles, establish clear connections and directions through the bones, and create a dynamic and weighted relationship with the floor. We will take this information and apply it 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.

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 | Sysems/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.