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acrylic on paper by Gerald Casel

acrylic on paper by Gerald Casel

For more information please contact Gerald Casel.

Email: gerald@geraldcasel.com

 

 

GERALDCASELDANCE Summer Intensive: Resilience

July 24-28, 2017 at Joe Goode Annex

Led by Gerald Casel and collaborators, this one-week summer intensive will focus on the process of cultivating resilience. We will offer dancers and choreographers the opportunity to take a daily somatics-based modern technique class and an improvisation/composition lab.

This intensive is designed for pre-professional (17+) and professional dance artists as well as dance technique / composition teachers and dance scholars. Our carefully crafted program provides space for all attendees to deepen their understanding of somatics and technique and to enliven choreographic processes with a group dedicated to practice and performance as a place for personal growth and resilience. Classes will be accompanied by Tim Russell.

 

Schedule (Monday-Friday)

10:15am-12:00pm  Somatics-based Modern Technique (open to the community)

12:00pm-12:30pm  Lunch break

12:30pm-4:00pm    Improvisation and Composition Lab

 

*Tuition $300 for the entire week ($275 if registered by July 1)

$15 drop-in for daily technique class

 

Register here:

https://squareup.com/store/geraldcaseldance

Somatics-based Modern Technique

An experiential laboratory for movement, this modern technique class explores strategies for thinking bodies to expand their range and ease of motion, revealing their truest movement potential. Class will address anatomical principles that are essential to any movement practice (i.e. embodied imagery, awakening of all body systems, dynamic alignment, balance, connectivity and spatial clarity).

We will begin with a thorough warm-up consisting of gentle floor-work, both learned and improvised (incorporating ideas from Irene Dowd, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and PNF patterns). Class progresses to standing exercises and movement phrases that travel across, in and out of the floor to investigate flow and energy while paying attention to the dancer’s awareness of time, energy, focus, breath, and relationship to gravity. Class culminates with a dance phrase that integrates mind and body, harmoniously moving with greater articulation, expressivity, and intent.

We will awaken the subtle body, question virtuosity, breathe with intention, feel a deep belonging to space, befriend gravity, sing a little, learn complex phrases, and unlearn patterns that no longer serve our dancing.

 

Improvisation and Composition Lab

This class contends with the intimate negotiations and problem-solving skills necessary to create movement within a dynamic compositional structure. One of the goals is to challenge dancers and choreographers to create interventions against choreographic systems and thinking that perpetuate supremacy of one cultural knowledge and value over another. We will explore modes of movement invention, improvisation, and composition that critically probe various choreographic tasks, structures, and assumptions not usually challenged in dance-making. Practicing various techniques that disidentify from compositional techniques that re-inscribe normativity, we will interrupt the production of sameness.

Participants will experiment with random generators, drawing, speaking, and vocalizing, tracking the mind while improvising, duration and boredom, and more. Ideas and solutions will materialize in the form of solos, duets and trios, expressing the infinite ways that movement and meaning inter-relate. We will interrogate existing pedagogies and methodologies of dance composition (Viewpoints, Critical Response Process, Forsythe Improvisation Technologies, and the use of scores) and imagine ways to be more inclusive of any dance form, ethno-cultural histories, aesthetic sensibilities, and abilities.

 

*Tuition scholarships are available for emerging choreographers and pre-professional dancers from historically underrepresented communities or from those with great financial need. We want to support dance artists who may be undocumented, immigrants, refugees, particularly people of color.

Please email geraldcasel@gmail.com for more information.