Thursday, October 28, 2010

Karen Nelson Seattle Workshop Dec 10-12

DAG Winter Workshop:
Karen Nelson
SENSATION & DESIGN: DANCE MAKING FOR PERFORMANCE

December 10-12, 2010
Friday 3-6pm / Saturday & Sunday 11am-4pm
Century Ballroom's East Hall, 915 E Pine St, 2nd Floor, Seattle
Sliding scale $160–180 if paid in full by 11/15/10. After 11/15/10, $185–205 if space is available.

Info/registration at Dance Art Group

Using tools from Tuning Scores and improvisation to investigate "performance," we will create a check list of concerns and desires for experimentation. Tuning Scores, as introduced by Lisa Nelson, illuminate our individual perceptual experience, and use actions and verbal calls to communicate to others and the environment during the improvisation. Sessions will begin with training in sensational awareness and build towards compositional ensemble work. The final session will culminate with an "in-progress" public showing, including a follow-up feedback process for audience and performers.

Karen Nelson's 33-year dance and performance practice has been directly influenced by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson and their respective work in Contact Improvisation, Material for the Spine and Tuning Scores, and through collaboration with many others in venues around the world. She co-founded Joint Forces Dance Co, Breitenbush Jam, Dance Ability, Diverse Dance Research Retreat, and the performance group Image Lab among other projects. Image Lab, including Scott Smith, K.J. Holmes, Lisa Nelson and Karen, intensively developed Tuning Scores for nearly a decade in the 1990s. They performed "observatories" in the US, Europe and Asia, spawning other Tuning projects that continue to this day.

Friday, October 1, 2010

TONYA LOCKYER / PROSPERITY FOR ALL

Dance Art Group / Movement Arts Research
Thursdays 6:15-8:15pm
Velocity Dance Center, 1621 12th Avenue, Kawasaki Studio
$15/class; series discounts; drop-ins and all experience levels welcome
Info at Dance Art Group

DAG/MAR features weekly classes in improvisation, performance, creative process and composition, contact improvisation, somatic education, New Dance techniques and other dance realms, with a different local teacher/topic each month.

October 7-28: TONYA LOCKYER / PROSPERITY FOR ALL

This workshop is about developing tools towards solo performance. Together we'll gather a set of questions, propositions and obstructions. (What if dance is simply being deeply physically engaged in the world? What if we can bring to our performance everything we are, do and know?) We'll improvise, write, experiment and develop strategies for organizing our materials. We'll look for the performance in life and the life in performance. By the time this workshop is over, you will have acquired new tools to engage deeply in your own questions and to observe the poetic systems at play in your work. Drop-ins possible but committing to the entire month is preferred.

Tonya Lockyer is a generator of performance -- solo, collaborative, improvised and otherwise -- a writer and dance artist who has worked around the world; a teacher committed to liberating students into their own direction. "I work interdisciplinarily but dance is always at stake in my work. I am committed to asking questions (personal, social, cultural...) about who we are and what it means to live in the world. I investigate how movement acts on us, and how we impact the world through our actions and presence." Tonya is on the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts and holds an MFA with a focus on Live Art and Choreographic Culture since 1950.

Coming in November: Jean Hindle