2011 SFDI Class Descriptions

2011 SFDI Class Descriptions & Teacher Bios

5-Class Intensives

THE RED SQUARE: A PLACE MARKED OUT FOR DIVINATION / Barbara Dilley
To strengthen our composing muscles, our intuition, our finding of patterns, stories -- the way home. Using large red twine to enclose a space, letting the power generate and invoke patterns, designs, stimulating our image-in-ation/visualization. Not dancing only inside but also composing: with self/others/allies (objects)/text and sound and, possibly, dark and light.

Barbara Dilley has been investigating the interface between art-making and mind-training at Naropa University since 1974. Her lineage includes traditional and innovative dance and art practices of the late 20th century (ballet, Merce Cunningham, Judson Dance Theater, the Grand Union, and Natural History of the American Dancer) and the ancient practices of mindfulness and awareness taught by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

TOUCH MOVE TALK WRITE: OPEN STUDIO PRACTICES / DD Dorvillier
This workshop focuses on generating new practices through touching, moving, talking and writing. Practicing these conditions in different orders and durations, inventing new purposes, and fictional and not-so-fictional desired outcomes. The aim is to proliferate unexpected relationships between the different practices, and to bring about a revolution in assumptions about universal aesthetics, by proving that style, form and aesthetics can be personal, non-universal, and if desired, not given, but constructed. Please bring a notebook that has room for a lot of writing and possibly drawing, and a selection of writing materials (pen, pencil, marker, etc.).

DD Dorvillier is a dancer, choreographer and teacher. Since 1989 she's created and produced her works in NYC and internationally. She recently presented a reprise of her acclaimed No Change or "freedom is a psycho-kinetic skill" (2005), and performed in Parades & Changes, replays, a re-enactment of Anna Halprin's 1965 work by Anne Collod. Dorvillier has maintained on-going adventures with dancer/choreographers Jennifer Monson, Elizabeth Ward and Heather Kravas, composer Zeena Parkins, and lighting designer Thomas Dunn. She has worked with Sarah Michelson, Jennifer Lacey and Yvonne Meier among others. She has been a NYFA Choreography Fellow, a Movement Research Artist in Residence, received a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for Dressed for Floating (2002) and as a perfromer in Parades & Changes, replays (2010), and received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship (2007). In 2008, along with Trajal Harrell, she was artistic mentor of the DanceWeb Europe scholarship program, hosted by Vienna's ImPulstanz.

CONTACT IMPROVISATION & THE ART OF PRESENCE / Benno Voorham
Contact Improvisation will be our common ground to come into a physical and playful dialogue. Through the touch-based work of CI we will develop a greater understanding of what it could mean to "be in the moment," to navigate our bodies in dancing through time and space. We will spend time to further our skills in CI and to use these skills in different scores for improvisation.

Benno Voorham is an independent dance artist from Sweden/Holland. He directs his own work and collaborates with others in both set and improvised pieces. He is an acclaimed international teacher of Contact Improvisation and Compositional Improvisation. In both his teaching and performance work, he is interested in exploring the creative and narrative potentials of the human body through movement.

4-Class Somatic Intensive

EXPERIENTIAL ANATOMY: FINDING GROUND & EXPANSION / Susan Bauer
In this series, we invigorate our dancing and find our ground in the inspiring journey of Experiential Anatomy. Through movement, touch, partner work, and drawing, we will explore from a body systems perspective (bones, fluids, organs, fascia, etc), allowing a wider range of movement and expressive qualities to emerge. Includes time for renewal through recuperative touch and bodywork methods for continued self-care on and off the dance floor.

Susan Bauer is a dance/somatics educator who has taught in both college and community settings in the U.S. and Asia for the past 25 years, informed by her background in dance, improvisation, Body-Mind Centering®, and Authentic Movement. She is founder of "Embodiment in Education: Professional Development for Dance/Movement Educators," now in its sixth year, with past guest faculty Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Deane Juhan and Caryn McHose. Susan teaches at the University of San Francisco and has a private practice as a Registered Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist in Berkeley, CA.

Beginning Contact Improvisation Mini-Intensive

CARPE CONTACTO / Carolyn Stuart
A map of Contact Improvisation and strategies to navigate the territory. The potential for mutual well-being becomes exponential when grounded in awareness of what is and the realization that every moment is a choice point. This material offers both the immediate comfort with and the endless investigation of the infinite in CI.

ALL THE BODY PARTS ARE MINE / Carolyn Stuart
We'll work with how perspective plus permission plus presence determine potential. And we'll expand our options for connection and flow at the point of contact by exploring planes, pivots and ports while attuning to the relationship of core to periphery and surface to support.

Carolyn Stuart has been fascinated for 27 years by the enchanting effects and unfolding nature of contact improvising, and the implications therein for living life. Her primary teachers have been the process of exploration and the blindfold. She and Patrick Gracewood, her longtime CI playmate, currently offer CI events in Portland, OR.

Other Classes

CREATING PHYSICAL IMAGE / Corrie Befort & Beth Graczyk
Together we will research how the body and the imagination can play synergistically to create specific physical qualities/textures from imagistic ideas or scenarios. Using writing, drawing, watching and the rigor of each of our unique physical disciplines, we will learn tools that create rich layers for imaginative dancing.

Beth Graczyk and Corrie Befort co-create visually rich, sensation-based dance-theater. Through performance residencies in Seattle and Japan 2005-2008 they formed Salt Horse with collaborator/composer Angelina Baldoz, and currently present works in Seattle including This was a cliff, which toured nationally. Their curiosity in teaching springs from the desire to share their generative process.

BUTOH / Sheri Brown
Search for the eternal presence of pure force beyond the present civilizations of capitalism, socialism, westernization and modernization. Seek butoh not only through your eyes, but also through lenses of research, instruction, performance and studio collaboration. Bridge worlds, including the dark ones of the night, seeing through the larger "Eye."

Butoh found Sheri Brown at the turn of this century. For the past 12 years she has expanded her performance venues from North and South America, and from Asia to Europe, working collaboratively with well over 100 artists in varied genres. She now serves as the Artistic/Programs Director of DAIPANbutoh.

THE GRADUATED DROPOUT / Scott Davis
Take a soft, connected ride to the floor. This class will focus on keeping our centers connected during descents from a variety of heights and then add some approaches to find playful surprise in our dance. We'll move step by step away from bumps and disconnections toward soft, controlled, melting dropouts.

Scott Davis is a Seattle-based artist with an eclectic background in contemporary dance, improvisational dance and physical theater performance. His work includes seven years with KT Niehoff's Lingo dancetheater and multiple collaborative projects with LeGendre Performance, Cyrus Khambatta, Christian Swenson, Acorn Dance and Loon Soup Theater Troupe.

TRANSFORM YOUR LUGGAGE! MAKE CROOKED SCORES / Vanessa DeWolf
What if authenticity is not central to the "presence" of improvisation? Use lying, invention and the truth to investigate your personal luggage. This is a moving-writing-talking class; an inquiry into internal perceptions and how we construct scores. Take away your Crooked Score.

Vanessa DeWolf is a performance artist who synthesizes embodiment and spoken imagination in solo improvisations. Central to her work is image, object, memory and invention. She is passionate about feedback and dialog for artists to grow their creative processes and runs Studio Current and PROJECT:Space Available with these values.

REST / John Dixon
We'll investigate breath, bodywork, and somatic imagery to cultivate ease and autonomic curiosity in solo and group dancing. By playfully pushing the limits of stillness and blurring perceived boundaries between self and other we'll turn off our habitual motors to allow other sources of movement to unfold, balancing action with inaction, flight with floor, inspiration with expiration.

STREAMS / John Dixon
By mapping the flow of simultaneous sensory streams we'll tap into, track and tweak our various systems of physical organization. We'll then re-organize our practice into various physical contexts to amplify perceptual and physical difficulty and clarify our experiences of dissonance and desire.

John Dixon has been exploring dance via improvisation, choreography, teaching and performance since 1985. His interests in contemplative action and perceptual flux have led him to work with many inspiring artists over the years, including Karen Nelson, Lisa Nelson, Stephanie Skura, Nina Martin and Sheri Cohen.

CONTACT MEETS CONTEMPORARY: PARTNERING WITH ALL PARTS / Cyrus Khambatta
We'll integrate traditional partnering work and Contact Improvisation using elements of both to create unconventional and unusual partnering infused with more traditional architectural body structure. In the CI realm, we'll examine using full-body, multiple surface launch/receive points; equal use of front and back space; unusual fulcrum points as well as fluid, articulated and decentralized use of anatomic structural elements: joints, spine, limbs, head/tail etc. It will combine these elements with the more traditional aspects of extension, line, awareness of body shape, support patterns and use of the arms/hands as well as inter-body architecture. The exercises are designed to be intuitive and progressive, creating synergistic correlations between the forms that can be easily physically integrated into the body.

Cyrus Khambatta has studied the integration of these forms for over 20 years, specializing in creating partnering choreography that has been commissioned by companies in the Contemporary/Modern, Ballet and Contemporary Ballet forms.

CHARACTER BASED IMPROVISATION WITH THE CHERDONNA & LOU SHOW / Jody Kuehner & Ricki Mason
We will combine methods of dance composition with constructs of theater to reveal personal character based movement. We will begin with state-based improvisation, develop short works of tragedy, transform them into comedy, and then analyze and deepen them in terms of persona and gender.

Jody Kuehner (Cherdonna Shinatra) and Ricki Mason (Lou Henry Hoover) are contemporary dance artists who began working together in Seattle in 2004. They soon discovered a synergy of comedic timing and a shared passion for character driven movement. Jody and Ricki invented The Cherdonna and Lou Show in 2009 to combine their choreographic backgrounds with their desire to create comedic politicized and personal performance. They are merging movement as the impetus for character development with the artifice of drag to reveal something true. The Cherdonna and Lou Show has been supported by 4Culture, Artist Trust, and The Mayor's Office for Arts and Cultural Affairs.

FEELING/FORM / Tonya Lockyer
Deepen your improvisation/performance practice through strategies that challenge habits while developing perceptual agility and conscious specificity. Solo improvisations move into investigating taking/giving focus/support in group dances.

Tonya Lockyer is a generator of performance: solo, collaborative, improvised and otherwise. A dance artist and researcher, she has taught at Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, at universities throughout the US, and in Canada, Mexico, Russia, Poland and Turkey. She is on the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts where she teaches creative process, somatics, and Art and Social Justice.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE TECHNIQUE FOR IMPROVISERS / Amy O'Neal
A thorough and focused class for the curious, tapping into the body's innate stability and rhythmic patterns. Want to fine-tune your physical choices while improvising? Want to learn how to move more efficiently in ways that create strength? Want to broaden your bodies' vocabulary? This class will present ways in which technique and improvisation can be symbiotic, focusing on the how more than the why. Amy has been inspired by the teaching methods of David Zambrano, Frey Faust, Emio Greco, David Dorfman, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Wade Madsen, Crystal Pite, Yoga, Pilates, and most recently, Russia Kettlebells. Find the maximum potential of dynamic movement and balance through oppositional forces of energy that we consciously direct by using our imagination and not being afraid to play.

Amy O'Neal is a performer, choreographer, dance educator and the director of AmyO/tinyrage. From 2000-2010, she was the co-director, along with Zeke Keeble, of locust (music/dance/video). Over the past decade, she has toured nationally and internationally with her own dance and video work as well as with Reggie Watts, Pat Graney Company (1999-2001), and Scott/Powell Performance (1998-2004). She has created works for Spectrum Dance Theater, collaborated with Savion Glover at the Paramount Theater, and danced in Mark Haim's "Goldberg Variations" at On the Boards in 2006. Amy has choreographed for theater, commercials and for Reggie Watt's music video "F..., Shi...Stack". Amy teaches contemporary dance technique, funk and choreography at Velocity Dance Center, Seattle Theater Group's "Dance This" and the Young Choreographer's Lab, which she helped to develop. She has been a guest artist at universities in the US as well as Dance New Amsterdam (NY) and has a degree in dance from Cornish College of the Arts. Amy was choreographer in residence at Bates Dance Festival (2007), Headlands Center for the Arts (2008), and took part in the US/Japan Choreographer's Exchange through Dance Theater Workshop and the Japan Society (2009). She has received funding from all the major funders in Seattle (including an Artist Trust Fellowship and Stranger Genius short list in 2004) as well as DanceWEB (Vienna), the National Dance Project, National Performance Network, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Creative Capital Foundation. Amy is Velocity Dance Center's 2011 Choreographer in Residence.

HISTORICAL INACCURACY / Lionel Popkin
We will take choreographic notes from Ruth St. Denis's early dances (think 1906-1930) as a source to devise our own dancing structures. The question driving this class is how do movement forms that developed at the beginning of the last century cast a light on how we are dancing at the beginning of this one?

SKINNER RELEASING TECHNIQUE / Lionel Popkin
Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) engages spontaneous movement evoked by guided poetic imagery, hands-on tactile studies, and music to enable a creative exploration of technical principles such as multi-direction alignment, suppleness, suspension, economy and autonomy. In the practice of Releasing, engaging the imagination and involving the whole self integrates technical growth and creative process.

Lionel Popkin used to live in Seattle. He now live in Southern California where he teaches at UCLA. He is a certified Skinner Releasing Technique teacher, used to dance for other people (like Trisha Brown, Terry Creach and Stephanie Skura), and now makes dances with elephant costumes, portable kitchens and dead people.

OPEN SOURCE FORMS / Stephanie Skura
Cross-fertilizations and deep commonalities of releasing technique and creative process. Tools to access depth, freedom, rigor and courage in performance, movement and vocal practice. Creative empowerment to adapt these methods and discover your own. Based on decades of radical research and practice in improvisation and performance creation, and drawing from intrinsic ideas in Skinner Releasing.

Stephanie Skura, a radical and perpetual innovator and Bessie Award winner, has researched, performed and taught movement and inter-media work for three decades around the planet. She continues to investigate boundaries and intersections of dance, theater, poetry and performance. She works with movement as an activator of meaning and structure, and believes that creative freedom is a source of wellness.

THAI YOGA MASSAGE / Eric Spivack
An interactive form of meditative bodywork that combines yoga stretching, gentle rocking, rhythmic compression along energy lines, and meditation. In this "Taste of Thai" workshop, we will cultivate mindfulness of touch by using our hands and feet. Bring a pillow and two blankets.

Eric Spivack, LMP/Dipl.Ac., RTT is a nationally-certified Massage Therapist, Acupuncturist, Thai Yoga Massage instructor and Viniyoga teacher. He has studied with master teachers in Thailand and holds certificates from several Thai institutions. Eric has been teaching for 14+ years and has an integrative healthcare practice (Soaring Crane Massage & Acupuncture) in Seattle.

CONTACT IMPROVISATION: UNDERNEATH YOU IS EVERYTHING / Tamin Totzke
Immersed in. Engulfed by. We ignite the room with group attention and spirited awareness. We craft environment to viscerally tune a sensorial landscape. Texturizing dances through folding/extending, resistance/release and layering tones of touch. We work in duets to find physicality through sculpting and devouring space, always in relationship to the group.

Contact Improvisation sparks Tamin Totzke's fascination by its demanding acknowledgement of the moment, where the body's tangible connection to humanity meets the innate, intuitive self. In 2010, she taught at the West Coast Contact Festival in California and Ground Research at Earthdance. Currently, she is pursuing her MFA in dance at UIUC.

BODYVERSITY / Nala Walla
The Bodyversity explores the essential contributions of somatic and improvisation practices to the "The Great Turning" of humanity towards a just and sustainable culture, creating links with the world outside the studio. We will weave together a diversity of modalities, from permaculture to physical theater, ecopsychology and release work.

Nala Walla is a transdisciplinary performer, educator, and homesteader in Washington State, USA, offering repatterning and consulting services. Nala holds a masters degree in Integrative Arts and Ecology, and is founding member of the BCollective: an umbrella organization dedicated to creation of healthy and sustainable culture through the embodied arts. bcollective.org; harmonicapocket.com

THE 3 POINTS OF IMPROVISATION: FLOOR, CENTER, CONTACT / Andrew Wass
We will examine how each point behaves on its own and in relation to the other points. This examination will lead to greater awareness and more un/conscious choices available to us while improvising in contact.

3/2 / Andrew Wass
Using the simple rubric of the number 5, we will explore ensemble improvisation through a variety of lenses (motion, level, contact, time, distance). Does changing our mental foci affect our physical choices? Can we achieve and comprehend complexity with simplicity?

Andrew Wass began dancing in college, replacing the chemistry lab with the dance studio. A member of Lower Left and Non Fiction, he has performed and taught at festivals and universities in the United States, Japan and Germany.

Dance Art Group