CLASSES

Rebecca Bryant- Simply Trios

Description: This class will forge pathways into the luscious (and sometimes tricky) territory of trios.  We will work both in contact and without contact to look at form and composition in addition to the physics of connection.  We will also explore the ways we connect personally as a foundation for our fully-realized dancing.

Sara Draper- Vocal Dance

Description: Vocal Dance is for modern dancers who want to explore using their voices expressively as they move.  Singing is not required (but is allowed).  This is a non-intimidating, fun way to break into vocal use for dancers who lack confidence in vocal performance.  Vocal and dance warm-ups will culminate in an energizing improvisation that integrates both.

Jordan Fuchs- Contact Improvisation

Description: We will explore transitions between alone and together. How do we transition from our solo body to our partnering body? How do we remain in contact even when not touching? How do we maintain lightness, ease, and multi-directionality, even when sharing full-body weight?

Sarah Gamblin- Juggling the Solo Life

Description: With influences derived from various sources including Deborah Hay, Nina Martin and KT Niehoff we will explore and layer a plethora of scores that invite total presence  and the recognition of the phenomenon of “composing” the solo body.

Brandon Gonzalez- Feeling the Fall: Fundamentals of Contact Improvisation

Description: We’ll explore some of the fundamental skills in CI, such as: Falling into the structural support of our partners,  spiraling patterns as a form of locomotion and tuning to sensory awareness in contact.

Ellie Leonhardt- Authentic Movement

Description: Authentic Movement is a movement form that embraces deep levels of inner knowing. It is this inner exploration that allows one to express a somatic reality that can form and transform through the AM form.  In this class, an overview of AM forms will be explored including moving spontaneously from outer and inner impulse, traditional dyad form and the long circle form.  There will be time for writing, drawing, reflection and sharing.

Sandra Mathern-  Risking Soloing

Description: What does it take to feel ready to solo in the midst of ensemble work? We will explore ways to facilitate the ease of taking the solo risk, practice seizing emergent forms and content, and open possibilities on how we make choices for our solo dancing inside a group score.

Bethany Nelson-  Contact Improvisation: End over end.

Description: A Contact Improvisation class/lab that explores being inverted.  How do we get upside down? How do we react when we find ourselves upside down? And how do we safely get back to right side up?

Leslie Scates- Ensemble Thinking

Description: Developed by Nina Martin, Rebecca Bryant, Margaret Paek, Kelly Dalrymple-Wass and Andrew Wass, Ensemble Thinking is a clarified set of improvisational tools that may be shared in ensemble performance and practice.  Ensemble Thinking is a shared vocabulary for creating spontaneous and intentional choreography as an ensemble.  Ensemble Thinking provides clear structures that allow for the development of shared material regarding dance vocabulary, architectual and spatial designs, the use of time and contact improvisation.  Ensemble Thinking develops an acute awareness for the dynamics present within an improvisational performance ensemble.

Lauren Tietz- Authentic Movement

Description:  The exchange between the witness and the mover in the Authentic Movement practice can be deeply nourishing as each practices inner listening and acceptance. We learn to explore moving and seeing from a place of authenticity and compassion with our selves as we internalize the idea of the loving witness.  We will move through a short warm up together and speak about the structure before we begin working in pairs.

Rosie Trump- Site Specific Improvisation

Description: This class will examine how site can expand the choices we have in an improvisation.  We will travel to several spaces on Rice’s campus to dance.  We will play with found movement, environmental sounds and interesting terrain.  Bring your tennis shoes!

Meg Wolfe- layers of logic in your dancing mania

Description: This class will be based around the questions:  What moves you?  Why move? We will do a gradual warm-up to tune into our body-brains, personal and collective.  We will look at building and expanding a movement language through obsession – following accumulated influences, habits, preferences, fears, boredom; how you organize your body, knowing what you are doing while you are doing it.  Reminders of our toolkit:  space, time, energy, shape, anatomy, touch, emotion, presentation, narrative. We will consider dance as a response to and a place within the world around us.

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TEACHER BIOS

Rebecca Bryant collaborates with musicians, actors and visual artists on improvisational and choreographed works combining movement, sound, text and video.  In addition to being a Lower Left Performance Collective artist (dance/theater), she is co-founder of the Past Modern Performance Duo (dance/music/theater/video).  Rebecca has performed her work nationally and internationally and has completed multiple residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program (CA) and Guapamacátaro Art & Ecology Residency (Mexico). She holds a BA in Visual Art from UC San Diego, and an MFA in Dance from UCLA.  Rebecca is currently on the dance faculty at Purdue University and teaches modern/postmodern technique, dance fundamentals and solo, ensemble and contact improvisation.

Sara Draper is Artistic Director of Dancepatheatre, choreographer of over forty works, and recipient of several choreographic awards.  She fuses modern dance with story, word, and voice and often writes text for her works, some of which are published.  Her interest in training young performers for interdisciplinary work has led to her position as Movement Instructor for Houston Grand Opera Studio, and to developing her Vocal Dance Technique for dancers.  Sara has taught Vocal Dance master classes at University of Houston, San Jacinto College, and Freneticore.

Based in San Francisco in the early 1990’s and New York City from 1998-2007, Jordan Fuchs now resides in Denton, TX where he teaches at Texas Woman’s University. A choreographer, improviser and a dancer, he seeks to extend the expressive possibilities of live performance through explorations of form and formlessness, physical relationships at close-quarters and experiments in staging and technology. His work has been commissioned by Danspace Project in NYC and presented throughout the US. He intermittently collaborates in duet projects with K.J. Holmes, Sarah Gamblin and Leslie Scates, and has also performed for artists such as Kirstie Simson, Luka Kito/Megan Boyd, Mark Dendy and Rebecca Lazier. He has curated evenings of improvisational dance at the Flea Theater in NYC and in 2009 organized the first annual Texas Dance Improvisation Festival. He has been on faculty at Hunter College and Movement Research and taught at festivals such as the TsEKh in Moscow, Moving Arts at Earthdance and Danz’Aqui in Puerto Rico. www.jordanfuchs.org <http://www.jordanfuchs.org>

Sarah Gamblin makes dances that employ both choreographic and improvisational mindsets. Along these lines she has worked with Jordan Fuchs, Ray Schwartz, Amii LeGendre, John Dixon and KT Niehoff. In the 90’s she danced in NYC with Bebe Miller and Bill Young, earned her MFA at University of Washington in 2002, is an Associate Professor at Texas Woman’s University. Of particular interest lately is fostering collaborative relationships with local artists in Denton, Texas.

Brandon Gonzalez is an influential teacher and interdisciplinary artist has explored the overlap of somatic movement, performance, and visual art. Coming from a background in art, yoga, and wrestling, CI’s non-competitive Athletic qualities were a perfect fit. He currently co-teaches CI at Texas State University and is co-founder/teacher of the weekly Giddy-Up! CI CLASS/LAB. in Austin, Texas.

Ellie Leonhardt (MFA from Mills College and a BA from Oberlin College) is currently a Lecturer of Dance at the University of North Texas in Denton. Contact Improvisation, the Erick Hawkins Modern Dance Technique, Yoga, and Authentic Movement are some of the movement forms that have influenced Ellie’s pedagogy and movement vocabulary.

Originally from Jackson Mississippi, Bethany Therese Nelson recently received her M.F.A. in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. Bethany is a choreographer, contact improviser, collaborator, educator, and filmmaker. Bethany lives in Denton, TX with her two black cats, teaches dance for the University of North Texas and Tarrant County College, and choreographs and performs with Muscle Memory Dance Theatre and Big Rig Dance Collective.

Sandra Mathern- dance artist, teacher, improvisor, has been performing and creating work for the past two decades, focusing on improvisation for over 15 years.  She has an ongoing commitment to working collaboratively and with improvisation as a performance form and has had the pleasure of performing with many veteran improvisers including Chris Aiken, David Beadle, Peter Bingham, K. J. Holmes, Nina Martin, Karen Nelson, Rebecca Bryant, and many others. Her study of improvisation has spanned from Contact to Ensemble Thinking, with many teachers including Danny Lepkoff, Julyen Hamilton, Nina Martin and members of Lower Left. She finds curious the moment-to-moment choices that are revealed by what has come before and directed by the natural forces acting upon the body. Her work focuses on collaboration, improvisation, interdisciplinary projects, and the use of digital technology. These have incorporated video-projected backdrops, live music, poetic text, set designs, and interactive performance/installations with artists from many disciplines. Sandra just completed an Artist Residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She received an Individual Excellence Award in Choreography from the Ohio Arts Council for 2010 and has been awarded over twenty grants for her the creation and production of her work. A teacher of contemporary technique, choreography, production and improvisation, she sees improvisation as an essential part of contemporary dance training. Sandra is an associate professor in dance at Denison University, Granville, Ohio.

Leslie Scates is an independent choreographer and dance artist from Houston, Texas.  Leslie teaches Contact Improvisation at Rice University Dance Program and Improvisation at University of Houston.  Leslie performs her own collaborative works in Houston and currently performs and researches performance with Jordan Fuchs, Teresa Chapman, Core Performance Company, and studies with Lower Left Dance Collective, performing with the Collective when invited.   Leslie holds a monthly Contact Improvisation Jam in Houston, and travels to continue to study the form.  Leslie continues to stretch into improvisational performance with new and trusted partners, while continuing to nurture growing performance partnerships.  In addition to dance making, Leslie surfs, sews, knits, sings, and just began a movement learning curve with Houston Roller Derby.

Lauren Tietz– I am a big fan of site-specific work. I am also drawn to the human memory’s fallibility as well as its seeming enduring unconscious influence – a sort of invisibility of memory at work in the present. I am interested in the relationship between geography and memory, between humans and the landscape they inhabit. A geographic expression of memory can emerge from the discreet traces that are revealed when working in or observing a place for an extended period of time. Site specific work can reveal what is poetic and what is scientific about an ecosystem (wild or domesticated) and the sometimes invisible residue that remains.  I live in Austin Texas where I teach Pilates in a physical therapy context and dance at a community studio. I am an MFA student in an interdisciplinary international New Media program called Transart Institute.

Rosie Trump is a dance choreographer, filmmaker, performer, educator and the artistic director of Rosie Trump | With or Without Dance.  She holds a BA in Dance from Slippery Rock University and an MFA in Experimental Dance Choreography from UC Riverside.  She has taught dance at Seton Hill University and Mt. San Jacinto College.  Currently, she is the Assistant Director of the Rice University dance program and the Artistic Director of the Rice University Dance Theater. www.rosietrump.org

Meg Wolfe is a Los Angeles-based choreographer/performer. Her work has been presented at REDCAT/New Original Works Festival, Highways Performance Space, the Commuter Festival/CalArts, Sea and Space Explorations, the Unknown Theater, Anatomy Riot, Sushi Performance, and other venues. Wolfe has taught as a guest artist at UCLA’s World Arts & Cultures program, CalArts, Scripps College, SUNY Purchase, and Hunter College; and internationally at Turku Polytechnic (Finland); Compagnie Christiane Blaise (France); Complexe Meduse (Quebec City); Tangente (Montreal); and Festival Alas de la Danza (Ecuador).