I invite you to come to class with the belief that your body has all it needs and that within the collective of the room, we expand our resources even further. We���ll use guided improvisations, honoring each individual���s unique pathways for engaging and understanding. We���ll also work with simple exercises and imagery, utilizing specific ideas about anatomy and kinesiological function. The accumulation of this information will help us access states where physically efficient, creative engagement is the default choice! Class will end with an application of these ideas to choreographed phrase work.

Using the morning technique class structure as a model, this class will focus on dance as a physical, conceptual and experiential practice, with an emphasis on the cultivation of presence and active engagement inside of the form. Class will begin with imagery and gentle preparation culled from various bodywork modalities and simple technical exercises to heighten awareness of movement possibilities, then will expand into choreographic structures, improvisations and performance constructs, exploring ways to simultaneously integrate precision and discovery.

Beauty, awkwardness, form, strength, weakness. Intended to be both laboratory and class, we will delve into the design of the body and its potential within a given moment. Through open practices, stretch and placement, technique studies, and movement phrases habits will be discovered, challenged, and seen through a new lens. A concentration on the forces through the legs will lead to finding the range in separate body parts and ways to use your weight into the floor. My hope is for you to feel present and challenged and to leave class with a few answers and many more questions.

In class we will tune our physical awareness through an experiential approach to moving. Merging both choreographic structures and improvisational modalities, we will be guided by the notion of investigation to look for an entry point where a dancer���s interpretation merges with choreographic direction. In practice, we will begin on the floor and make space to honor our bodies��� unique progressions while gently moving towards embracing our full range of motion. We will examine concepts such as skeletal support, easeful joints, falling and momentum, and sequential movement. Class will continually be guided by an artistry and philosophy honoring individuality, embracing room for failure, and a constant questioning of our choices.

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.

We will take the time to investigate different states of physical awareness by using a three-fold structure. We will begin with a guided improvisation to observe the body and its natural movements through awareness of breath, weight, tension and release, taking time to notice the body���s qualitative presence moment-by-moment. We will follow by dancing within technical forms to support our range and work as dancers. We will conclude with a phrase that integrates concepts of weight, lightness, initiation and intention. The merging of the unconscious life of movement through observation and improvisation and the conscious attention to physical direction is part of the energizing practice we will explore in each class.

Using improvisational and set warm-ups we will focus on the volume and weight inside the body and its relationship to the floor. Exercises that bring awareness to the sternum and pelvic floor encourage the feeling of release in the limbs from those places of support, allowing us to fall and suspend off-center. Using these physical tools inside technical patterns and phrase material, we will work towards a more grounded and direct approach to movement.

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.

This workshop encourages students to increase their movement possibilities and take risks in dancing by maximizing the benefits of the warmed-up body. The warm-up moves smoothly from floor to standing with a strong focus on anatomy to strengthen connections of correct alignment with an increase of fluidity in the joints. Dancers will develop an understanding of the connections between their body and the floor, and will learn how to use momentum and breath to explore physically-full dancing with the least amount of muscular tension. During phrase work, dancers will learn how to incorporate information from the warm-up to execute more complicated sequences, and attention will be paid to controlling the use of breath to maintain a strong center from which one can explode into the space.

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 each of the students to observe and experience their own particularity and range of mobility. As the class progresses we look to integrate the parts of the body and the use of the floor. A grounded, alert body will be prepared for a dynamic phrase material that involves focus on the details, dropping in and out of the floor and fast changes of direction and levels. The class sometimes ends with an individual manipulation of the provided phrase. This class is the result of personal investigations and is influenced by many years of study and work with Jeremy Nelson, Klein technique and more recently Alexander Technique���.

The Presence of Space
In this morning class we will start with touch to facilitate awareness of internal and external space and as a means of 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. We will go from there.

The base and foundation of this class is rooted in the focus of a grounded, articulate, free and responsive, rhythm-based pelvis and spine with multiple and constant attentions on the weight and directionality of the entire pelvic region with use of the full foot and the complete range of demi pli��. This is a contemporary movement class that utilizes source materials, elements and movement languages of traditional American Modern, ballet, folk and pop idioms from the Southern U.S., Caribbean, Southern, Western, and Central regions of Africa���comprising what Wilson often refers to as ��œPost-African, Neo-Hoodoo, Modern Dance.���

I invite you to come to class with the belief that your body has all it needs and that within the collective of the room, we expand our resources even further. We���ll use guided improvisations, honoring each individual���s unique pathways for engaging and understanding. We���ll also work with simple exercises and imagery, utilizing specific ideas about anatomy and kinesiological function. The accumulation of this information will help us access states where physically efficient, creative engagement is the default choice! Class will end with an application of these ideas to choreographed phrase work.

Upside Down/Right Side Up
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, challenging the body to defy preconceived notions of what a body can achieve in motion.

A Re-Education: Klein Technique
This ongoing class is grounded in the explorations and studies of the body, at rest and in motion. It is an approach to movement re-education in development since 1972. The work provides the technical and conceptual underpinnings to support all styles of movement, and aesthetic viewpoints. The purpose of the work done in class is to re-educate one's body with an interweaving of theory and practice on a physical, experiential and organic level. The result is clarity and sureness of movement, and a new level of understanding the innate intelligence of one���s body. In order to move most efficiently it is necessary to let go of the muscles that fix the body into a set and locked configuration, which hold us back from moving. When the bones are aligned we become connected, powerful and strong. The body becomes efficient and strong. The main thrust of the work is for all of us to find our own essence, identity and integrity and take that into movement. The class is open to all levels, dancers and non-dancers alike. www.barbaramahler.net

Alexander Technique
Alexander Technique looks at the way we carry out our intentions. Often we use a process that is habitual, unconscious, and counterproductive. The technique offers a practice of staying open and alert in the moment, observing our familiar tensions and choosing to move without them. Beginning with the assumption that we are perfectly designed for movement and balance, we engage our mind to undo layers of interference, creating opportunity for change.

Personal Practice for Performance and Dance
Over the last two decades, choreographer RoseAnne Spradlin has been synthesizing studies in Body��Mind Centering�� and Chinese Medicine to arrive at strategies for internal cultivation and training for contemporary dance/performance artists. In these classes RoseAnne will share her explorations, leading guided somatizations and personal and group improvisa��tions to explore key concepts in embodiment. No previous knowledge of BMC�� or CM is necessary; classes may be taken individually but information will accumulate over the course of the class series.

The Athletics of Intimacy, Improvisations
Classes combine skills and practices of Contact Improvisation, applications of Body-Mind Centering�� and tutoring of somatic improvisational approaches in solo, duet (strong emphasis on partnering) and ensemble dancing. I am interested in the very physical, the very sensorial and the very imaginative, and in discovering new challenges and risks within our movement.

Contact Improvisation
Contact Improvisation is a partnering dance form. Skills such as rolling, releasing, giving and supporting weight, expanding range of spatial concentration, lifting, catching and falling help one move with and through gravity, share weight in motion and use momentum and flow in physical contact. These weekly classes, open to people of all levels of movement experience, are informed variously by the individual teaching artists.

Irene will teach selections of the material choreographed in response to her interaction with professional dancers and dance teachers since 1990 as well as new material she is creating now. These choreographies can be used as very efficient warm-ups 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.

All Dance All Improvisation All the Time
Bring your improvisational practice to the space, share it, release it, find another, be a part of it, practice it, dance alone and with others. Afterwards, talk about it as a continuation of the dialogue that sprung from the Studies Project - Inter-Generational Exchange in Improvisational Practice. These discussions will be facilitated by Danielle Goldman and Jennifer Monson.

Contact Improvisation
Contact Improvisation is a partnering dance form. Skills such as rolling, releasing, giving and supporting weight, expanding range of spatial concentration, lifting, catching and falling help one move with and through gravity, share weight in motion and use momentum and flow in physical contact. These weekly classes, open to people of all levels of movement experience, are informed variously by the individual teaching artists.

Alexander Technique
Alexander Technique looks at the way we carry out our intentions. Often we use a process that is habitual, unconscious, and counterproductive. The technique offers a practice of staying open and alert in the moment, observing our familiar tensions and choosing to move without them. Beginning with the assumption that we are perfectly designed for movement and balance, we engage our mind to undo layers of interference, creating opportunity for change.

Alexander Technique
Alexander Technique looks at the way we carry out our intentions. Often we use a process that is habitual, unconscious, and counterproductive. The technique offers a practice of staying open and alert in the moment, observing our familiar tensions and choosing to move without them. Beginning with the assumption that we are perfectly designed for movement and balance, we engage our mind to undo layers of interference, creating opportunity for change.

Contact Improvisation
Contact Improvisation is a partnering dance form. Skills such as rolling, releasing, giving and supporting weight, expanding range of spatial concentration, lifting, catching and falling help one move with and through gravity, share weight in motion and use momentum and flow in physical contact. These weekly classes, open to people of all levels of movement experience, are informed variously by the individual teaching artists.

Skinner Releasing Technique
Think, feel, play. The Skinner Releasing Technique is a movement-based and imagery-based process of discovery. SRT enables one to discover their own mechanical logic, intuitive awareness, and personal imagistic realities. The intended long term result of SRT is a mature person who is a self-motivated and self-propelled critical thinker. The SRT pedagogy is highly structured and rigorous and yet the classes unravel within a sense of ease and mystery. Partner graphics, structured improvisations, and guided imagery allow the student to find clarity within the physical self. In addition to becoming better movers and dancers, we happen upon empathy which in turn can lead to compassion.

Alexander Technique
Alexander Technique looks at the way we carry out our intentions. Often we use a process that is habitual, unconscious, and counterproductive. The technique offers a practice of staying open and alert in the moment, observing our familiar tensions and choosing to move without them. Beginning with the assumption that we are perfectly designed for movement and balance, we engage our mind to undo layers of interference, creating opportunity for change.

Contact Improvisation
Contact Improvisation is a partnering dance form. Skills such as rolling, releasing, giving and supporting weight, expanding range of spatial concentration, lifting, catching and falling help one move with and through gravity, share weight in motion and use momentum and flow in physical contact. These weekly classes, open to people of all levels of movement experience, are informed variously by the individual teaching artists.

Contact Improvisation
Contact Improvisation is a partnering dance form. Skills such as rolling, releasing, giving and supporting weight, expanding range of spatial concentration, lifting, catching and falling help one move with and through gravity, share weight in motion and use momentum and flow in physical contact. These weekly classes, open to people of all levels of movement experience, are informed variously by the individual teaching artists.

Alexander Technique
Alexander Technique looks at the way we carry out our intentions. Often we use a process that is habitual, unconscious, and counterproductive. The technique offers a practice of staying open and alert in the moment, observing our familiar tensions and choosing to move without them. Beginning with the assumption that we are perfectly designed for movement and balance, we engage our mind to undo layers of interference, creating opportunity for change.

Contact Improvisation
Contact Improvisation is a partnering dance form. Skills such as rolling, releasing, giving and supporting weight, expanding range of spatial concentration, lifting, catching and falling help one move with and through gravity, share weight in motion and use momentum and flow in physical contact. These weekly classes, open to people of all levels of movement experience, are informed variously by the individual teaching artists.