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Class Descriptions

Technique

Shani Collins
Class description to follow

Brenda Daniels
My class is a traditional, Cunningham-based technique class that emphasizes proper alignment, bodily clarity, and fullness of movement in time and space. Class begins with a standing warm-up that develops a fluid torso and brilliant legs. An extended adagio serves to build control and balance, while fast moving combinations elicit dynamic precision and musical verve. The class ends with lots of jumping for stamina and strength.

Adrianne Fang
Classes will be focused on exploring a sensitive and personal approach to dancing while maintaining technical proficiency.  Expression of intent and choice will be encouraged while moving progressively from simple to more complex movement patterns.  An immediate and active presence leading to generous fulfillment of dynamic dancing will be emphasized.

Curt Haworth
This is a Contemporary Technique class that has been influenced by Ideokinesis, Alexander and Klein techniques. It will begin by focusing on our anatomical alignment while lubricating our joints, warming and stretching our muscles. The work will emphasize a fluid spine and grounded weight while highlighting specificity of initiation, alignment and releasing into space. The class will build dynamically from subtle exercises into large athletic phrases that move in and out of the floor, on our hands, and through space with easy exciting sequential momentum.

Gerri Houlihan
The class is based on many of the principles from Limon technique. The center warm-up incorporates plies, tendus, rond de jambes, etc. from traditional techniques, with an emphasis on awareness of proper alignment, breath, weight and rhythm. Across the floor phrases explore these same concerns as they relate to musicality, organic movement connections, and a full and dynamic use of space.

Jennifer Nugent
Alone and in partnerships we will concentrate on enhancing our movement facility. Using improvisational and set warm-ups there will be a daily focus on the volume and weight inside the body and it’s relationship to the floor offering a grounded approach to our dancing. Focusing on the inherent rhythm in the body we will develop a personal musical dialogue, noticing the time when a movement has come to it’s completion, when another one has begun, and how long we allow each to last. Technically demanding phrase material offers ways of moving lusciously with both detail and a sense of abandon.

Lisa Race
Upside Down/Right Side Up: Classes will begin by using the floor as a partner to develop an ease with moving in and out its surface in the most efficient ways possible, and to develop a comfort with utilizing the hands as a weight-bearing source. With these skills we will investigate various ways to effortlessly suspend and up-end the body in space to tumble, fall and recover. Movement phrases will emphasize the use and thrill of momentum and gravity as a means to full-bodied, spherical dancing, and at times challenge the body to defy those qualities of momentum and gravity.

Keith Thompson
Integration Through Movement Technique
This class is geared towards movement principles that deal with the human body’s design. Warm-up exercises will draw on elements of basic alignment and structural soundness and direct the student toward flexibility, fluidity and power. We will explore and apply these methods to movement phrases involving multiple pathways, quick changing rhythmic patterns, and dynamic shifts of energy. Emphasis in the class will be put on technique exercises leading into a rigorous research that guides the student towards a new integration of mind and body

Abby Yager
Students begin by laying a technical foundation with an emphasis placed on anatomic efficiency, mechanical specificity and spatial clarity. Special attention is paid to finding freedom in the joints, weight and swing. Each class will begin with a series of exercises designed to open the body to allow the passage of weight and will follow with phrase material giving the student the opportunity to apply learned principals to more complex movement. Pace and complexity of material will be geared to class level.

Ming Lung Yang
This class focuses on developing a clear understanding of articulation, weight and efficient use of energy. Class will begin with a warm-up involving breath work, stretching and simple exercises designed to cultivate freedom in the joints, power and ease. Phrase material will follow, adding momentum, in and out the floor, change of direction and working off balance into the mix. Pace and complexity of material will be geared to class level.

Contemporary African Dance Technique

Sherone Price
Class description to follow

Ballet

Jeffery Bullock
Traditional ballet forms are recognized and extended to include new dance ideas and practices for the contemporary dancing artist/dancing body. Through barre, centre work and locomotion across the floor, ballet forms are danced out. Special attention is given to developing the skills necessary to become an expressive performer. The class will focus on detailing small positions/actions and then extending/ connecting them to large full-body dancing. Attention to proper alignment and placement facilitating efficient and safe dancing is constant. There will be select days for learning ballet repertory.

Elizabeth Corbett
We'll be working on alignment, spatial directions, and discovering freedom to move well in ballet. The class draws from a range of dance training approaches, traditional to unconventional. This is a ballet class experience within which you'll explore and gain insights into many aspects of the mechanics of the technique as well as rhythm, focus and differentiation in movement qualities.

Repertory/Performance Ensemble

Paul Taylor Project
Ruth Andrien
Ruth Andrien, former Taylor dancer and HU/ADF MFA graduate, will teach a course that offers a comprehensive kinesthetic exploration of the eclectic and soulful “Taylor style.” Students will adventure into the essence of Taylor’s choreography and examine masterworks such as Junction, Aureole, 3 Epitaphs, Scudorama, Sea to Shining Sea, Esplanade, Cloven Kingdom, Runes, Airs, and Le Sacre du Printemps to discover the enduring power and complex nature of the work. Excerpts of the dances will be taught to animate their athleticism, musicality, and imaginative spirit through study and performance. The course will provide research opportunities through archival investigation to consider Taylor’s development of subject matter, enigmatic approach to narrative, movement vocabulary, and stylistic distinction. For intellectually curious, open-hearted movers who wish to explore Paul Taylor’s legendary contribution to 20th century dance through research, theory, technique, and repertory.

Advanced Repertory
David Dorfman and Lisa Race
The concept of collaboration and group process will be utilized as the class works collectively toward the creation of a new dance, at once including strong doses of humanity and theatrical and kinesthetic excitement. Real world issues will come into play as phrases are learned and then varied by the performers. The dance will incorporate a wide range of challenging visceral technical movement and will likely use some text.

Curt Haworth
The aim of this class is to create a choreographic work that is fully expressive, physically exhilarating and mentally challenging. You will be called on to learn and retain material and the quality with which it was given. You will be called on to create and retain personal material and variations on set phrases. You will be called upon to be emotionally vulnerable and expressive and you may be asked to go beyond where you thought you could.

Creating Improv Structures For Performance
Ishmael Houston-Jones
Ishmael Houston-Jones has created and performed many solo and group pieces through the process of structured improvisation. Using movement and vocal improvisations the class will recreate some of these works as well as making new pieces.

Repertory Lab
Keith Thompson
This workshop will be devoted to investigating the building of material of a short period of time). In addition to focusing on the structural detail and clarity of the movement, we will explore the combining and manipulating of student movement ideas with Keith’s unique vocabulary and style. At the culmination of the first three weeks, there will be an informal showing of material to the ADF community. Students should come to class warmed-up and ready to dance

PAST/FORWARD
These courses include historic master works by choreographers Erick Hawkins, Hanya Holm, Mark Dendy and Laura Dean. Students who participate in this special offering will be required to audition. Work will culminate in public performances that are a part of the ADF’s performance series in Reynolds Theatre.

Improvisation/Composition

Contact Improvisation
David Brick
This class will use techniques from Contact Improvisation to create alert, fearless dancing and the ability to move with both wildness and precision.  We will cultivate playfulness in touch, energy and action to explore and refine the art of partnering.  And we will develop deep listening skills in order to develop subtle skills of response in our dances and a nuanced ability to initiate.

Voice/Gesture Exploration for Performance Art
Ellen Hemphill & Rafael Lopez-Barrantes 
This performance art oriented class is based on the voice work of the Roy Hart Theatre of France. The voice of each individual as well as the group "voice" will be explored in such a way as to contact sources of energy hidden deep within the body. The class begins with the voice as it is in each unique individual. Therefore, it is not necessary to have had previous voice training to discover what possible expression there is in each voice. The movement/gesture work in the class comes from the world of dance-theatre and will be explored in connection to the voice expression. We will use text and song and work towards informal showings of class excerpts. All the work is intended to combine exercises, voice, text and movement that can be used as building blocks towards performance. 

Improvisation Strategies
Ishmael Houston-Jones
This class is rooted in many different forms of improvisation and will offer students a foundation in diverse techniques of instinctive, intuitive, non-set dances.  The class builds upon the principles of Contact and Releasing to give students a strong, personal movement foundation.  It teaches students to use senses other than sight when improvising and asks that they allow their dances be guided by touch and sound as well as by narrative and emotion. Another component of the class is the use of both spoken and written text and the use of personal material. Students are asked to use language in an automatic and improvisational way. Then they are instructed to use the resultant text as a prompt to movement.  This may lead to short solo or group pieces.

Celeste Miller
Class description to follow

Releasing
Yvonne Meier
Special designed images will enable us to let go of hidden tensions as well as align us with the natural forces of gravities and counter balance. The releasing process is designed to let us move with more freedom and economy. Spontaneous movement explorations will allow us to creatively integrate the changes in the body. Hands on work will reinforce the given directions of energy flow along the body. Interwoven music will let us journey into a deeper state of releasing. The experience of "seeing " into our bodies will give us a wonderful tool for improvisational dance.

Jennifer Nugent
Using the skills and tools from contact improvisation there will be a daily focus on the volume and weight inside the body that can offer a grounded approach to our dancing. We will work with ideas of momentum, resistance, and re-direction in order to propel ourselves through space alone and in equal partnerships so as to be soloing and dueting simultaneously. During our time spent together we will witness each other and our unique ways of moving, closing each day with open dancing to reflect and practice the themes of the day and days prior.

Comp 21
Sarah Skaggs
This is a dance composition class that asks the question: What kinds of dances are we making in the 21st century?  How do our personal histories, desires, and choreographic approaches respond to the world around us (or not)? Working with a cross-disciplinary approach, we will investigate various topics in contemporary art-making practices—appropriation, formalism, site-specificity, ritual, technology, popular culture, and institutional critique—to inform and challenge us as we construct new dances. Students are encouraged to bring journals and dances to the class as source material.

Comp/Choreo Workshop
Keith Thompson
This course is a workshop for engaging in the practice of cultivating short movement studies of composition as a communicative performing art form. Focus is placed on the exploration of ideas and meaning. Emphasis is placed on the development of personal style as an expressive medium. Students develop the physical and perceptual skills basic to using contact improvisation, falling, rolling, giving and taking weight, moving comfortably from the floor to the air, and communication through touch to build compositions. Working alone and in small and larger groupings, students create their own movements as they learn to follow their internal impulses and respond to their fellow dancers. Mechanisms to build and deliver material will be investigated and guided by the instructor to broaden perspectives about choreography.

WFSS (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday)

Fosythe Project
Jeffery Bullock and Richard Siegal
William Forsythe’s vision “revolutionized” ballet’s potential. As artistic director of an extraordinary collection of dance artists, Forsythe and Ballet Frankfurt blazed a trail for contemporary dance for 20 years. One of Ballet Frankfurt’s evolving projects was the codification of a Laban-based, real-time movement analysis called Improvisation Technologies. Improvisation Technologies was employed by Ballet Frankfurt not only as a method to generate set phrases of movement but also as a tool for performed improvisation. You are invited to become intimate with these powerful concepts under the direction of former Ballet Frankfurt members.

Moving Whole:  Perspectives from the Feldenkrais Method™
Tessa Chandler/Jimena Paz
In this class, you will increase your sensory awareness and neuro-motor patterns, discovering how to create optimal somatic organization at any given moment.  By studying how we learn and where our blind spots are, we can reduce excessive or counter-productive efforts and move as an integrated, powerful whole.  The class will consist of gentle Awareness Through Movement® lessons, done lying or sitting on the floor, followed by guided improvisations in which you explore your new sense of self more freely.  Shedding new light on the fundamentals of dance technique, the lessons will improve awareness of:  the movement capacity of the thorax; the analogous relationship of the head and pelvis; inhibitory patterns in the jaw and lower belly; the dominance of the eyes; and breathing. Students should wear loose-fitting, layered clothing (not tights) and bring extra padding -- such as blanket, towel, and/or book for under the head -- if lying on the floor for extended periods is uncomfortable.

Ananya Chatterjea
Class description to follow

Kelly Colbert
Class description to follow

Urban Dance Forms
Wendell Cooper
This workshop approaches Urban Dance as choreography and an improvised form. Flowing yoga sequences will connect breathing with the body and build strength by exploring arm balances and inversions. The floor-work section will establish connections between Capoiera and release technique. We will play with low level locomotion, circular initiation, and “dancing with gravity,” expanding on Break Dancing techniques. Then we will sweat to house music, freeing the spine and dancing our hearts out. Finally, we will learn stylized Hip Hop choreography which cycles around to House and Break Dancing improvisation scores.

Miguel Gutierrez
Class description to follow

Ritual
Mark Haim and Ming-Lung Yang
This experimental workshop is a continuation from last summer. Based on the awareness of being, students in the class will create individualized rituals drawing on beliefs and/or emotions that determine or effect how we live (and perhaps intend to live) our lives.
Through this form of practice, we not only derive energy from nature but re-direct that energy and cycle it back into the life around us. Rather than imitating what we have known as ritual dance, we go inside of ourselves to generate individual practices that return us to our sense of self.

Body to Body
Yangeun Kim
This course deals with the ideas of sustainability, resourcefulness and even cycling and recycling of energy of the body. Using both western and non-western (traditional Korean) notions about training and conditioning for dance, students will be immersed in a new and developing course of study.

Bodywork
Toby and Deborah Matthews
This course will explore how the dancer can learn to re-Source themselves and others more deeply.  Dance (and life) can be a draining endeavor and we all need skills for taking care of our selves and our community.  Each class will begin with a movement exploration based in GYROKINESIS® that will strengthen, stimulate, and soothe your body.  We will continue our explorations with a synthesis of therapeutic movement and hands-on bodywork emphasizing our inherent capacity to heal through our relationship to both inner and outer sensations.

Yoga
Lila Pierce
Anusara Yoga is a hatha yoga system that unifies Universal Principles of Alignment with a non-dual Tantric philosophy that is epitomized by a “celebration of the heart”.   In this yoga class, you will learn to align your body in therapeutic ways while practicing a plethora of yoga poses, through both dynamic flows & steady holds.  Anusara Yoga focuses on seeing the good in life to create a feeling of radical affirmation that sets the tone for the practice.  Through skillfully working with the body, mind, & heart, the practitioner gains insight into how to line up on every level of his/her being to delight in the experience of life.

Yoga for Dancers
TaraMarie Perri
Anatomically and energetically themed classes incorporating classical yoga into a structure more sensitive to a dancer's technical and injury prevention needs. The classes offer students a deeper understanding of their own unique body strengths and weaknesses while emphasizing use of the breath and safe practice through proper alignment. Students develop strength, flexibility and focus and the benefits of their yoga practice can be directly applied to technique and performance. Techniques to properly restore the body are also taught.

Archive Project
Ursula Payne
This workshop will explore creative inquiry and self-reflection towards the making of a dance. Participants will gain an understanding of the creative process by reflecting upon the life and creative work of Dr. Pearl Primus. Issues of race, identity, gender, class, and cross-cultural dialogue will be explored within the framework of Dr. Primus’s archives and the participants’ personal experiences.

Margo Lehman Dance Notation Workshop
Ursula Payne
The goal of this workshop is to discover the practical uses of Dance Notation and Laban Movement Analysis and how they may be used as a tool for experimentation within the student’s creative process. This series will focus on the application of motif writing skills with Effort Notation and Space Harmony principles to generate movement for choreography; gaining the basic motif writing skills necessary to record short movement studies; and ways of improving the participant’s ability to learn movement sequences with increased spatial/temporal accuracy and attention to the nuances of dynamic phrasing.