Bates Dance Festival: Train & Create/NYC

Friday, January 9th – Sunday, January 11th

9:30am–11:00am Post-Modern Moves with André Zachery

11:30am–1:00pm Contemporary Practices with Jennifer Nugent

1:00pm–2:00pm LUNCH

2:00pm–4:30pm Making/Composition

Friday with Tania Isaac
Saturday with Ishmael Houston-Jones
Sunday with Ogemdi Ude

Post-Modern Moves with André Zachery
Fri–Sun, 9:30am–11:00am

Physical Propulsion
Physical Propulsion is a training method built primarily from two movement technologies of the African Diaspora – Capoeira and breaking. Using modalities of these two sophisticated forms as the foundation of the practice to carry the body through floorwork, standing, and aerial phrases. This class trains dancers to move logically with their weight so that momentum can produce dynamic expressions with the body in time and space.

Working from a Gyrotonic-informed understanding, the spine initiates sequencing and joint mobility. The spine is engaged as a coiling, recoiling instrument — generating propulsion into and out of the floor, opening pathways for the body within the transverse plane — the “z-axis”. The intention is to train dancers to move from the spinal column with care, in order to increase their range of motion and stamina for repetition more efficiently.

Various techniques of Flying Low (codified by David Zambrano), Laban, Límon, and Horton are sewn into the vocabulary, with Capoeira and breaking as the throughline forms. The floorwork, inversions, and off-axis recoveries inform the rhythm and musicality of the class.

Physical Propulsion is a fluid practice that keeps growing through my own inquiry and through exchange with movement practitioners around the globe. Each class is an invitation: build more comfort and courage moving into and out of the floor, find dynamic range across every level, connect with the people moving next to you, and discover something fresh, authentic, and entirely your own.

What to Expect:
Please prepare for floorwork by wearing shoulder-sleeved tops and long-bottomed joggers. It is suggested that class attendees work barefoot, without socks.

Contemporary Practices with Jennifer Nugent
Fri–Sun 11:30am–1:00pm

Dancing
How does movement become the language in which to express ourselves? What does movement do and what can it become? How do we practice our unfolding ecology and dance for each other, for ourselves? I would like to propose living in the questions and experiencing what they reveal. Through partnered movement explorations and modes of physical listening as a way to heighten our responsivity, we will improvise and learn set movements and phrase material. While creating and navigating physical landscapes, the work we will do together holds an intention and an invitation to experience conversing intimately with movement, with dance, and with each other.

What to Expect:
Improvisation, phrase work, sometimes duet explorations with and without weight sharing.

Making/Composition with Tania Isaac
Friday, January 8th 2:00pm–4:30pm

Make Something…….
We take a look at what we’re making – in the room together; out in the world and chase an understanding of trajectories of thought; what are you interested in exploring or creating- and why? Where does it live at the intersection of creative expression and intellectual curiosity where we resist one interpretation, definition or way of practice – and where we embrace art not only as expressive presentation, but also as a deeply human way of drawing out ideas and refining thinking. We look at how ideas match the structures and vocabularies. We investigate, create, experiment, edit and shape within your perspective on world-building and immersive process.

What to Expect:
Expect to create movement, to perhaps refine existing materials. Expect to speak about the ideas driving the work you’re making or would like to make. Expect to improvise and collaborate.

Making/Composition with Ishmael Houston-Jones
Saturday, January 9th 2:00pm–4:30pm

Embracing the Awkward
What is your first impulse? Can you trust it? What happens when the judge falls asleep? Can you know too much? We will engage in different approaches of partnering, releasing, scores, authentic movement and automatic writing. Challenging oneself while at the same time prioritizing care, (of oneself and of a group,) can lead to exciting and unexpected discoveries.

Making/Composition with Ogemdi Ude
Sunday, January 10th 2:00pm–4:30pm

Remember the Time
This workshop is focused on memory, nostalgia, and straddling time. We will uncover dances from our pasts as opportunities for transformed dancing in our present. What choreographies and genres live within you that are dying to come out? By engaging our past selves we will explore individual and group dance making – learning and creating compositional methods and movement and language based improvised scores. This workshop is for those searching for ways to reinvent their present performing body. I will ask you to regard the paths you have already taken, but have perhaps forgotten. The way you danced at a party in high school, at your elementary school recital, in your first day of college dance class – these are all valuable. Our dancing pasts will liberate our dancing futures.

What to Expect:
This workshop is open to all levels, but is best suited towards those with a history of movement experience. Participants will move through improvisation, composition exercises, and working with language. There will be some journaling and reading as well.

For Train and Create workshop-related questions, please email programs@movementresearch.org.

These  classes and workshops include auditive guidance.

For access-related questions and requests, please contact accessibility@movementresearch.org, subject line “BDF Train and Create.”