We want to create an environment of pleasure, lively interaction, and respect by emphasizing mutual authenticity and co-creation

Using artistic creation as a framework, the gathering and sharing of information, comes from everyone involved. This can be a spiritual practice, exploration and research whereby one learns to assume responsibility for their own well-being and how they relate to others.

It is an opportunity to embody a new way of being that art reveals and is open to anyone who wishes to participate. It is an exploration of what it means to participate. We co-facilitate by offering tools to the community that we ourselves are using, both in and out of our artistic practices.

Together, we are constantly living, refining and sharing the experience.

We want to provide people with an artistic experience they may not otherwise have access to and to expose individuals to their hidden talents and creative impulses ( which is a connection to divinity)

Making Dances.

Weekend workshop

Cost $700/ negotiable plus accommodation

This workshop includes all aspects of the choreographic creative process and may combine aspects of any of the following classes. It is open to professional dance artists to practice their craft and to curious observers who wonder what dances are made of and who, might want to try. The itinerary will include solo practice, body work, improvisation scores, discussion, and structures for setting choreography. Our goal will be to make dances by following our curiosity, listening to, and trusting our motivations and by working together to identify and communicate our own interests and each others. We will practice seeing without judgement and percieving with generosity... the next dimension to understanding and breathing life into our dancing world.

Dynamics

1.5 hours Cost $250

This class introduces movement possibilities provided by sustained, swing, wave, vibration and percussive dynamics. It is a basic tool for creating an expressive vocabulary or simply experiencing a variation from one¹s usual way of moving. Dynamics of movement relate to personality and emotion and can open many doors to the imagination.

Elements

2.5 hrs Cost $250

This class consists of five meditations: earth, air, water, fire, ether which inspire movement from a spiritual or phenomenological perspective. The dancers relation to these elements is an ancient practice and spans many cultures.

Authentic Movement:

2 hrs to full weekend workshop ($200-700)

This technique is a formal practice developed by Mary Starks Whitehouse. One person witnesses another person moving in space. The witness, especially in the beginning carries a larger responsibility for consciousness, as she sits to the side of the movement space. She is not ³looking at² the person moving, she is witnessing, listening-bringing a specific quality of attention or presence-to the experience of the mover. The mover works with eyes closed in order to expand her experience of listening to the deeper levels of her kinesthetic reality. Her task is to respond to sensation, to an inner impulse, to energy coming from the personal unconscious, the collective conscious, or the super conscious. The mover and witness usually speak together (afterwards) about the material that has emerged during the movement time, thus bringing formerly unconscious processes into consciousness.

Authentic movement expresses that which cannot be put into words, giving voice to the ineffable, intangible meaning and condition of being alive.

Contact Improvisation:

2hrs- full weekend workshop ($200-700)

Partner dancing based on the principals developed by Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith. This is a formal dance technique practiced by communities all over the world. Its origins are in Aikido (martial arts) and can be extremely physical or minimal, depending on the practitioners.

Ci practiced with awareness not only brings us closer to ourselves but also obliterates the traditional societal forms of relating based on hierarchy and either dependence or independence. It offers a pathway toward understanding and embodying true inter dependence, mutual support based on commitment to personal authenticity and curiosity to discover and create connection with others.

This practice also rewrites the very idea of connection, viewing it not as agreement but as lively exchange of curiosity in and awareness of what is really happening in this moment. We learn that we can disagree and still be connected, that our diversity expands the possibilities for contact.

Releasing Technique,

2.5 hrs $250

Anatomical analysis and poetic imagery are combined to guide a mover through the internal to the external landscape of the body. Hands on body work is incorporated with structured dance improvisation explorations to provoke the body to physically dialogue with spirit. This class is based on the methods developed by Joan Skinner. It encourages us to let go of unnecessary tension in the body and agendas in the mind to allow ourselves to be moved by mysterious impulse and become intuitive and spontaineous.

Modern/Jazz Dancing;

I.5 hrs Cost $150

A basic and traditional dance class informed by the techniques of Graham, Limon, Horton. The class will begin with simple isolated exercises choreographed in sequence, will gradually travel in space and will finish with a choreographed combination of movements to music. This class may include jumping and be quite vigorous. This class is for those who like to be challenged by learning and practicing set steps.

Creative movement with text or poetry

2.5 Cost $250

This class is for those who are interested in storytelling and creative writing and its relation to movement. We will move to write and write to move. We will explore the effect and power of word and image.