Modern Guest Artist Schedule

As a part of our ongoing commitment to professional dancers, Dance New Amsterdam has created the Modern Guest Artist series -- master classes taught by artistic directors, choreographers, and master teachers from renowned modern dance companies. Our guest artists represent the broad spectrum of styles in modern dance today, from contemporary and post-modern dance to contact improvisation and release work. These popular classes give dancers critical exposure to today's celebrated modern dance masters.

DNA is excited about our new partnership with our neighbor, Salomon Arts!

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, our 12pm Modern Guest Artist Series class will be held at the Salomon Arts Gallery at 83 Leonard Street on the 4th Floor. To allow for transition time, lass will begin at 12:15pm and end at 2:15pm. If you want to take a 2pm class at the current DNA building, you are welcome to leave early and/or arrive late.

Directions: From DNA's main building on Chamber's Street take a right on Broadway (going north.) Go up 5 blocks to Leonard Street and take a left. 83 Leonard is 1/2 block down on your right.

Click here for a map

Information about the space: The gallery is quiet and beautiful with art displayed. It has a wood floor built over wood, not concrete, so although it is not sprung, it has give. The space has a co-ed changing nook and bathroom, but no showering facility available. Please arrive and buzz into Floor 4 no earlier than 12pm for class. If you wish for more time to stretch and prepare for class, you are welcome to come to DNA's current building.

Class cards, checks, credit cards and cash will be accepted at Salomon Arts. You may also register for these classes at the current DNA building.

Check out new Guest Artist Donna Costello

From October 20th - October 24th
Time Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

10:00AM

 Ori
Flomin 		Ori
Flomin 		Ori
Flomin

12:00PM

 Alexandra
Beller 		Alexandra
Beller 		Alexandra
Beller

2:00PM

 Julie
Bour 		Julie
Bour 		Julie
Bour

From October 27th - October 31st
Time Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

10:00AM

 Ori
Flomin 		Ori
Flomin 		Ori
Flomin

12:00PM

 Kota
Yamazaki 		Kota
Yamazaki 		Kota
Yamazaki

2:00PM

 Bour Tami
Stronach 		Bour Tami
Stronach 		Bour

Guest Teachers' Class Descriptions

Jen Abrams

Contact Improvisation is a form based in the exchange of weight between two partners through a single point of contact. This workshop will use Contact Improv to help dancers hone their partnering skills. We will lift each other safely by establishing a solid base of support, and find efficiency through anatomical structures. We will work on communication through touch so we can sense the small changes in position and velocity that are essential to balance and grace. And we will find ease of movement in 360 degree space, opening up a range of possibilities for spiraling, being upside down, and going into our back space with a partner.

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Julian Barnett

Using a strong sophisticated technique that demands focus on the legs and limbs, as well as strength internally and throughout the physical body, the class usually begins by incorporating ballet's fundamentals and subtlety in exercises that both start on the floor and standing. This being a tool for preparing the body both in range and motion, the class continues with exercises that then take up space, force other regions of the body to pull focus, and manifest an honest sense of theatricality. Emphasizing the weight of the body juxtaposed by natural suspension, class will focus on phrase work from repertory, improvisation, and various experiences. Bringing in musicality, dynamic, and theatrical precision the class will encourage the dancer to strive for a catharsis where violence and grace can meet within the body and challenge the dancer to push beyond conventional realms of dance.

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Robert Battle/Battleworks Dance Company
Classes will be taught by Robert Battle and Erika Pujic, Rehearsal Director of Battleworks Dance Company. For current teaching schedule call the front desk at 212.625.8369 ex. 0

Battleworks' classes are crafted to give dancers a well-rounded knowledge of modern dance. The class incorporates the principles and techniques of classical modern choreographers such as Jose Limon, Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Lar Lubovitch, and David Parsons, not only for a thorough warm-up, but also to connect the dots of our modern dance history as it relates to movement. The class culminates in phrases of Artistic Director Robert Battle’s own work, which relate to the classical techniques that inspire him. For this class, Battle and rehearsal director Erika Pujic will include phrases and sections from Etudes, a retrospective of Battleworks Dance Company choreography. The goal of this class is to give students the opportunity to dance company repertory and to work with professional dancers in a rehearsal-like process.

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Batsheva Dance Company, Israel Taught by Bobbi Smith Gaga Technique, developed by Ohad Naharin, is the daily training of the Batsheva dancers. Gaga encourages and teaches multi-dimensional movement, the efficiency and texture of movement, the use of explosive power, the connection between pleasure and effort, quickness, the clarity of intention, stamina, recognizing one's own movement habits and acquiring new ones. The use of GAGA helps dancers to maximize the use of their current training (technique) and strengths.
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John Beasant III
John Beasant III, a native of Colorado, currently dances with the Gallim Dance Group and Keith Johnson/Dancers. A former member of Doug Varone and Dancers, John has also performed with ARENA Dances by Mathew Janczewski, the Aquila Theater Company, Shapiro and Smith Dance, and the Metropolitan Opera to name some others. As a choreographer, John has presented work at various universities, festivals, and other venues throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Other endeavors have included acting and singing for the stage and television. John attended the University of Utah (MFA 1996). http://www.johnbeasant.org
John's teaching methods incorporate expansive spacial and circular movement concepts to help bring awareness and efficiency to one's dancing. Attention to detail is complimented through the integration of breath and musicality, where simple-humanness is casted off the ground with a sense of physicality that holds no boundaries.

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Alexandra Beller, AD: Alexandra Beller/Dances, formerly of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co.
This class explores the qualities of released and off-balance dancing while daring students to find disparate qualities of stillness and explosion. Students are encouraged to develop an individual style driven by their internal life and the specificity of their bodies. By researching movement tasks as opposed to recreating shapes, students will begin to solve kinesthetic problems in a profound and personal way. We will focus on becoming compelling and magnetic performers, and working within a broad range of movements, from vigorous and athletic, to gestural and theatrical. The movement is approached from many systems: muscular, skeletal and nervous system, inviting dancers to work with versatility, intuition, strength, flow, stamina and ease.
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Monica Bill Barnes
A highly physical, athletic class best described as quirky, virtuosity set to music. After an easy to follow, fast-paced warm-up, individuality is encouraged through long dance phrases focusing on big physical ideas in order to better understand your body, yourself as a performer and dance to your full potential.
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Christal Brown, AD: INSPIRIT, a dance company
Focusing on core strength, alignment, agility and artistic expression, Christal Brown's classes provide a welcoming challenge to dancers of various ages and levels. Drawing from her vast experiences with companies such as Chuck Davis' African-American Dance Ensemble, Andrea E. Woods/Souloworks, The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Urban Bush Women, Brown has developed an eclectic style of moving that has been described as "liquid strength." Exploring the velocity of movement alongside sequencing and strength gives dancers the opportunity to lose their limitations and find their voice.
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Gerald Casel, AD: Gerald Casel Dance; formerly of Stephen Petronio Company
An experiential laboratory for movement, this class provides strategies for dancers to expand their range and ease of motion to reveal their truest movement potential. Dancers will be encouraged to explore stability and freedom in their bodies by modulating use between the muscular and skeletal systems as they move on and off-balance. Consciously shaping the body's intuition, students will be urged to seek and acknowledge their habitual patterns Ð transforming them into dancing that is articulate, expressive and charged with intention. Anatomical principles that are essential to any movement practice will be explored (i.e., imagery and use of muscles and bones, dynamic alignment, balance, strength and spatial clarity). Classes are informed and influenced by the interweaving of traditional contemporary dance techniques with somatic work including Bartenieff Fundamentals, developmental movement patterns and kinesiology. www.geraldcaseldance.com
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Amy Chavasse
Beginning with repeated forms that attend to breath, weight, focus and energy, we will build an extended series of phrases for a thorough warm up. The goal of opening the body and mind, committing to the practice will provide a sense of urgency and make anatomical and movement concepts physical and real. Combining set material with improvisational structures, (asking questions about movement preferences and possibilities), will allow students to claim ownership and refine their individual approaches to dancing while creating challenges and unexpected outcomes.
The movement vocabulary will reflect my experience in a broad range of modern and post-modern forms, my investigations as a choreographer and performer, world dance, social dance, story telling, a sense of place and time--all the things that impose their influences on us as dancers and people. The movement will shift wildly from detailed gesture to forceful, expansive, space- devouring dancing.
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Hilary Clark of Tere O'Connor
This class will focus on an investigation into our own personal artistry, to reckon, and consider our physical and emotional worlds, in order to deepen into the rigor of process and performance. Class begins using various modalities of organizing, sensitizing and integrating the body. Considering technique as a way to fullness and freedom. Proceeding on with improvisation and designed material to facilitate our inquiry.
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Idan Cohen
The class offers a technical training influenced and based on several techniques: Floor-work, Release, Feldenkris, Cunningham, Limon and more, taught by the award-winning Israeli choreographer Idan Cohen. The class is build to explore inventiveness and originality with a highly sophisticated and intelligent training that practices technical strength, release work, and anatomic understanding to develop artistic ability, and encourage versatility, individuality and creativity. The class begins with floor work training and continues with some movement exercises in space that work with ideas of the organic and fluent nature of movement.
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Donna Costello
Donna Costello is a performer, teacher and choreographer based in Brooklyn, NY and has worked as an independent dancer in the NYC dance community for over 10 years. She has had the pleasure of digging deep into the work of Shannon Hummel/Cora Dance, jill sigman/thinkdance, and Mollie O'Brien/mob productions for many years. She has also been influenced by her work dancing for choreographers that include: Jimena Paz, Barbara Mahler, Pele Bauch, Juliette Mapp, Stephen Koplowitz, Christine Suarez, Naomi Goldberg and Melissa Briggs. She has taught all ages and levels in a vast array of settings in and around New York and is informed by her studies with Barbara Mahler and Klein/Mahler technique.
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Sean Curran, AD: Sean Curran Company
Mr. Curran's technique class concentrates on a multi-discipline approach to contemporary dance training and technique. Beginning with a thorough and thoughtful warm-up that incorporates extensive stretching and principles of yoga, the class will progress using exercises derived from Cunningham and Limon techniques. There is an awareness of weight, flow, space, gesture, anatomy, and intention throughout the class. From this basis, we can move bigger, find more detail, and take more chances discovering new strengths in our dancing. Mr. Curran will be developing new material for a new work during the course of the repertory classes.
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Natalie Desch, of Doug Varone and Dancers
This class focuses the mind and body on a path from simple pedestrian movement to voluminous and dynamic dance by emphasizing proper alignment, core support, technical soundness, and spatial exploration. It will progress from a series of simple combinations to those requiring more and more complex coordination and physicality. Each step of the class will explore how the torso can initiate fluid and efficient movement as a clear means of effective communication.
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Elena Demyanenko, of the Stephen Petronio Company
Elena is a Russian-born graduate of the Academy of Theatrical Arts (Moscow) and is now based in New York. Since 2002, Elena has performed with the Stephen Petronio Company. This class examines a variety of situations that will allow students to develop easier, efficient and effective movement options. Participants will have the opportunity to experience the full breadth and depth of our potential, addressing every area, joint and muscle group as well as the significant body organs in every human function. Detailed awareness will be explored as a methodology to solve individual movement problems. Ultimately, participants will acquire the tools to enhance sensory learning and thus encourage the emergence of new ways of thinking, feeling, moving, and acting.
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Jason Dietz Marchant
Class begins by physically tuning into our bodies through a series of internally focused movement explorations. From that point we will build on this personal understanding of our bodies by exploring concepts of effort, weight, momentum, falling and distally initiated sequential movement. Play, taking risks, and challenging patterned movement decisions are constantly encouraged in this class.
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Lindsey Dietz Marchant of Monica Bill Barnes, Janis Brenner, Tami Stronach, Kate Weare
Working with concepts of falling and momentum, we will explore a sequential way of moving that emphasizes ease and efficiency to find a more full range of motion. Focusing on the points of initiation for each movement and discovering how those initiations move us through space, we will learn to dance both with abandonment and precision. Through these concepts we will examine the artistry of making choices as dancers and our own individual approaches to movement.
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David Dorfman, AD: David Dorfman Dance
Moving with Momentum: Material will range in style from release-based work connecting with the floor to an eclectic standing modern class. Concepts such as a weighted and grounded approach to movement, harnessing the body's momentum and force, varying approaches to contact and partnering, emphasis on intent and focus, and compositional choices through improvisation may be included. We will have fun!
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Faye Driscoll, formerly of Doug Varone and Dancers
Warming up deeply through improvisations and formal modalities this class will invite the dancer to fully sink into the body, experiencing where we are dense, spacious and perhaps not as solid as we think. We'll learn phrases of movement ranging from the spasmodic to the smooth that call upon atypical technique, thwarted and followed momentum, choice making and insertion of intention into movement. This class will physically attune, challenge and delve into questions around why we perform.
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Jeanine Durning
The class is designed to prepare the moving body through awareness and to increase the functional knowledge of our bodies (skeletal and joint systems, release with direction, weight and momentum) so that we may move with more efficiency, sensitivity, specificity and focus. Particular attention is paid to the initiations of movement and to extending the boundaries of those initiations. Attention to detail will be explored through set material as the individual comes into his/her own way of seeing, translating and experiencing movement.
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everything smaller

Technique class will begin by pouring weight into the floor to sensitize the surfaces of the body and prepare the joints for full range of motion. We will continue with an improvisation, rooting through the floor and space, taking the dancer through an individual self-exploration. This class will culminate with a movement phrase carving through space with momentum, inversions, slicing, bracing, counter-rotation, and gathering in to explode again. An emphasis is placed on genuinely responding to the constant influx of your environment as well as being prepared and enthusiastic for the unexpected.

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Evidence Company
1Offered to mixed levels or for advanced/intermediate students, this master class is designed to increase the physical and dynamic range of the dance student. Utilizing center and across the floor exercises participants will address issues of alignment phrasing and efficient physically. The Evidence movement vocabulary is a fusion of western modern and traditional, contemporary and social dance forms from the U.S., Senegal and Cote d'Ivoire.
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Ori Flomin, Rehearsal Director of the Stephen Petronio Company

The class encourages moving into spatial extremes outside of visually imagined boundaries. The warm-up focuses on discovering and strengthening connections within the body's structure and maximizing the effects of gravity to move into space. Tension between secure and grounded placement and a sense of being out of control will be introduced in phrase-work.

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Michael Foley
This class provides professional dancers with the physical, technical and kinesthetic tools to further enhance their ability to stay focused and healthy in the dance world. A combination of core-strengthening exercises along with complex physical phrasework will augment the training of the intermediate/advanced dancer. Through the use of release-based techniques and more traditional concepts of breath and movement, students will develop a clearer understanding of how working with the body on a skeletal and muscular level facilitates locomotive movement as well as enhancing individual creative expression. Dancers will be challenged on a multi-level and discover new possibilities in their dancing and they way they examine their own dance-making through the use of inversions, floor-work, center adagio and Foley's eclectic repertory.
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Maija Garcia, of Bill T. Jones
Maija Garcia's class is a full-bodied movement experience. An extensive warm-up opens the body's organic flow, developing core-strength, flexibility and balance. A fused practice of yoga and qi gong builds awareness of breath; free improvisation helps to shape and direct your intention; Contemporary dance techniques are utilized in movement phrasing that will sharpen your rhythmic articulation. Imagine fluidity, embody velocity, and empower dynamism in your dancing.
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Maria Gillespie, AD: Oni Dance
"The Contemporary Palate"
Differentiate between practice and habit to find a balance that exists between the wild expressionist and the refined dancer.
Maria Gillespie's contemporary modern technique class merges principles of mechanical precision, anatomical intelligence, strength, and expressionism. Class employees the wildness of improvisation, delight exploring momentum, disorientation, and liberation from habit. Class combines release technique fundamentals (letting go of superficial muscular effort, initiating movement from bones, sequential movement) and classical vocabulary to explore new movement that is grounded, supple, and quirky. Through the warm-up, the body can practice dynamic alignment, flow, and efficiency of movement. Class will offer opportunities for strength building and grounded support. The idea of softening gravity will be first introduced in the floor work and standing stretches. The center warm-up emphasizes mechanical precision to create functional movement in weight shifting. In more dynamic, complex phrases we will deepen our sensitivity to falling and suspension, emphasizing gravity in movement initiation and momentum to propel us in space. Once the body is connected and the mind awake, we'll thrive on movement that throws the limbs off the body, devours space, dives off center, and rides on momentum.
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Naomi Goldberg Haas
Beginning with a standing warm-up opening the spine, expanding physical space, Naomi's class moves through a combination of traditional modern dance techniques influenced by yoga and contemporary release- based movement. Focusing on correct alignment, articulation and connected movement, the class also includes a floor work section informed by Pilates strengthening and fitness. Concerned with moving from a place of purpose, the work integrates the emotional body, the thinking body, the dancing body. Class is completed with large phrase movement across the floor. Naomi's recent projects include a choreographic residency and teaching at The Yard, performances at the Joyce Soho and The Public Theatre. She currently teaches at 440 Studios, University Settlement, the Harkness Center for Dance at the 92nd Street Y and NYU.
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Daniel Gwirtzman
Dancer/choreographer/teacher Daniel Gwirtzman directs the New York based Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company. His repertory is noted for its innovative partnering, sophisticated musicality and entertaining accessibility. The class will focus on expanding one's repertoire of movement and enlarging the stylistic palette from which to color, shade and highlight that movement. Emphasis will be on maintaining a high level of physical stamina, clarity and focus. The class will explore Daniel's trademark blend of pedestrianism and virtuosity through the following concepts: suspension, leaning, and falling; unexpected shifts of weight, direction and speed. A solid, thorough warm up leads to the exploration of challenging material. Improvisation and partnering are woven into the class on an increasing basis. www.gwirtzmandance.org
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Curt Haworth, formerly with David Dorfman Dance
Curt will offer a class in Sequential Momentum - a daily technique class that will begin by focusing on our anatomical alignment, lubricating our joints while warming and stretching our muscles. While moving from our centers through our extremities and back, we will emphasize a fluid spine and grounded weight. Improvisation and weight sharing will be used to further personalize our kinetic explorations. 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.
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Holly Johnston, of Oni Dance, Stephanie Nugent Dance, AD: Ledges and Bones Dance Project
The classes are designed for dancers preparing for a professional performance career in concert dance. This class will serve as a laboratory for us to explore the moving body and how it functions within the context of contemporary modern dance. We will discover together how to awaken our inherent physical intelligence. We will make use of somatics (mind/body practices) and improvisation to encourage space for self-discovery. Practical information, observation and the cultivation of awareness are the tools at hand for investigating possibilities and experiencing our own idiosyncrasies and ways of moving. From this we will learn to hone our ability to make conscious choices and take responsibility in mani festing our intentions more clearly through creation of movement vocabulary, the use of time, space, and energy. Our kinetic explorations will include floor work to connect our body with gravity so that we can explore the skeleton's architectural framework. From this we can mobilize joint articulation and recruit muscular release to increase range of motion and degrees of freedom. We will find our bodily logic through organic and sequential movements by moving from our centers to our extremities and back. Standing exercises and phrase work will place emphasis on a fluid spine, shoulder girdle and pelvis, as well as weight shifts to create efficiency of movements. The work is intended to take dancers into high speed.
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Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Antonio Brown is a native of Cleveland, Ohio where he began his dance training at the Cleveland School of the Arts. He soon after made his way to New York where he recently graduated from The Juilliard School. During his time at Juilliard Antonio has performed works by Jose Limon, Ohad Naharin, Yuri Kylian, Eliot Feld, Aszure Barton, Thaddeus Davis, Larry Keigwin, and Camille A Brown. Over the years Antonio discovered his gift of Choreographing and has produced many works in and outside of school. Antonio joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 2007.
Originally from Mexico City, Erick Montes joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 2003. He trained at the National School of Classical and Contemporary Dance in Mexico City, and his professional career began with the Company Barro Rojo Arte Escenico. Subsequently, Mr. Montes worked with choreographers such as Lourdes Luna, Thania Perez-Salas, Alicia Sanchez, among others. In 2002, he collaborated with the choreographer Stephen Petronio in projects sponsored by Lincoln Center Out of Doors and Queens Theatre in the Park. Through the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Mexico), he received a performer's grant in 2002 and 2005. As a choreographer in 2004 he was invited to participate in the first edition of the Festival Mexico Now in New York City. In 2005 and 2007, he received a grant provided through the Harlem Stage Fund for New Work at Aaron Davis Hall. Erick has presented his own choreographic work in E-Moves, the Boogie Down Dance Series in the Bronx at BAAD, the Lit Show and the GorillaFEST 07 in collaboration with Bill Young and Colleen Thomas.
Donald C. Shorter, Jr. is from Edgewater Park, New Jersey. He began his dance training under the direction of Gretchen Studlien-Web at West Chester University, Pennsylvania, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies with a minor in Dance. He has worked with PHILADANCO, Charles Anderson, Lina and Tim Early, and with pianist Maria Martin. Mr. Shorter joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 2003.
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Luis Lara Malvacias
This class is designed to respect the individual nature of each of us, as dancers, creators and human beings with our own voices. The class begins with a simple warm-up focusing on the breathing, internal structure, weight and the body's articulations. Directed exercises and suggested improvisations give the opportunity to each of the students to observe and experience their own particularity and range of mobility. The class -sometimes- ends with an individual manipulation of a provided phrase. This class is the result of personal investigations and is influenced by many years of study and work with Jeremy Nelson, Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein, and more recently Alexander TechniqueTM and BodyMind-Centering ®.
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Ashleigh Leite, formerly of Stephen Petronio Co.

Ashleigh's class is focused on challenging oneself to expand personal boundaries. The class begins with a simple warm-up to connect our bodies to the floor while emphasizing joint release to accommodate range and freedom. The warm-up trains the body to work with maximum efficiency incorporating principles such as the connection of the skeletal structure to the floor, sequential movement, distal initiation vs. proximal initiation, counter balance, counter thrust, movement directions in space (i.e. the anatomical planes and diagonals), pelvic landmarks and spinal function. The class will further evolve into a movement playground incorporating phrases that allow the dancer to discover a new bodily momentum possible through deeper anatomical understanding.

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LeeSaar the Company
In our company we work with our instincts, sensations and exploding power, keeping the dance real, extreme, specific and alive. We try to develop our awareness of our body and its sensations. The class is influenced by the Gaga Training of Ohad Naharin, with extra attention to the creative process of the students. We promote expansion of the extremities to create more space in our dance. Every day in the studio we demand more from our self. It's important for us to transform the dancer into a dance artist with a greater ability to create and develop his/her own movement style. Our company dancers are always a part of the creation process. Students will be encouraged to develop their own artistry and sensibility regarding quality and structure of a dance. We want to help broaden the students' awareness of themselves as dance artists.
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Stephanie Liapis
Class will begin with a full-bodied warm up focusing on pelvis alignment and finding ease in the joints and limbs. As the class progresses the students will be encouraged to dance intelligently and efficiently while maintaining a sense of release and abandonment.
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Nia Love, AD: Blacksmith's Daughter Dance Co.
This is an eclectic contemporary dance technique class. It will introduce students to African dance styles, specifically paying attention to Ghananian form--a form that has a long and varied history and plays a central role in all aspects of dance throughout the world. Love's contemporary approach to rhythm, timing, space, pause and flow explores movement styles ranging from an array of aesthetics that have shaped the African American social dance idiom. Class connects concepts such as a weighted and grounded approach to movement and release-based work connecting with the earth to extensive polyrhythmic body phrases that cradle the idea of eclectic driven movement patterns.
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Mariah Maloney
This is an intermediate/advanced contemporary technique class. In this class we will investigate movement that develops ease in the joints as well as strength and stability in the body. Class focus is on breath, alignment, investigation and a deep, full commitment to the dance practice. During the past several years I have developed my teaching at many universities as well as at the Trisha Brown Studios, The Panetta Movement Center, DNA, International \festivals and the American Dance Festival. My technique class explores range in physicality and dynamics. Class begins with Bartenieff fundamental patterns and progresses through plies, tendus, weight shift, inversions, dŽgages /fall and recovery, adagio, battements, center, grand allegro and concludes in a closing circle. Class flow and materials are influenced by the many talents I have worked with over the years: SUNY Purchase, KIPOS (Aspa Yaga and Daniel Tai), David Hurwith, Trisha Brown, Gerri Houlihan, Bill Evans, Janet Panetta, Kevin Wynn, June Ekman and Hollins/ADF to name a few. Attendance at Mon, Wed and Fri class is strongly recommended.
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Belinda McGuire
A Belinda McGuire class breaks down our preconceptions of physical limitations and encourages the discovery of our potential breadth and power. In a search to satisfy an adventurous spirit through movement, we will broaden our perception of range and appreciate the depth and versatility that such newfound tools can bring. We allow the goal of sensitization to illuminate "dark" or "blind" spots of our physicality, inciting different/new enthusiasm to move, leading to a more full-bodied power and coordination. The class takes over the full space of the room, occupying the center or traveling across. Development of material is designed so that our bodies are ready to take on new challenges as they come.
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Bill Manka, of the Wally Cardona Quartet, Nugent+Matteson Dance
Curiosity is the cornerstone for developing one's art. If we are deeply curious, we will perceive space and time with a clarity and sophistication that allows access to an ever-expanding range of movement possibilities. Subtlety, nuance, passion, detachment, humor, precision, abandon...these and more, always in the service of an exquisite individual artistry and an understanding of performance as a uniquely charged engagement with the world we inhabit. Class may begin with a brief improvisation as a light warm-up, encouraging the mind and body toward suppleness of perception. We will then spend time becoming attuned to and refining the connections that our bodies provide, with an emphasis on the bones, their articulations, and the subsequent movement articulation that they allow. A great deal of time will then be given over to challenging, dynamic exercises and phrases. The material might be athletic, minute, full-bodied, disjointed, coherent, improbable, geometric, explosive, delicate, dramatic, or pedestrian. It will call on us to be as articulate and engaged as possible at every moment.
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Juliette Mapp, of John Jasperse Company
Juliette danced with the John Jasperse Company from 1996 - 2003. She has also danced with Vicky Schick, Orjan Andersson Dance Company, Stephanie Skura's Cranky Destroyers and Pat Graney Company. Juliette has taught throughout the US, Europe and Asia. She also studied Alexander Technique, Klein Technique, Iyengar Yoga and Technique, composition and choreography with Viola Farber.
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Paul Matteson, Nugent+Matteson Dance
This class investigates off-balanced yet precise multi-focused movement. We often begin with rolling improvisational passes along the floor often as a way to bring awareness to our entire body surface. We then ease into set exercises that increase in complexity, paying particular attention to technical issues that help us work efficiently and safely. A final challenging phrase with ungainly timings and ^ back to top
Heather McArdle, of David Dorfman Dance, formerly of Bill Young & Dancers
Class begins on the floor using subtle shifts of weight, rolling, and inversions allowing the body to open up and become grounded while developing a keen awareness of his/her relationship to the floor. It will be a continual exploration of personal style as it relates to set material.
Through simple exercises, and phrases will study how to initiate movement more efficiently with strength and clarity while maintaining a sense of freedom and individuality. Class culminates with a challenging phrase combining elements from the class...and manipulates them a bit for an expansive, more evolved range of movement that blends off-balanced corky gestures, inversions, drastic weight shifts, and your interpretation. Heather's teaching is influenced by her ongoing relationship with contact improvisation, pedestrian gesture, and movement as it relates to architecture, art, fashion, and people.
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Catherine Miller, formerly of Doug Varone and Dancers
Based upon the belief that sound technique enables freer movement- this class will focus on both. Dancers will be guided through a floor warm up that allows space for self- exploration. As the class comes to standing, technical and movement oriented exercises will be introduced. After looking at proper alignment and neutral, clear technique, the emphasis on "exercise" will morph into extended movement phrases. The large dance phrases are designed to create vast range of motion and a grand sense of momentum.
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Philip Montana
Class begins with a focused warm-up that emphasizes the importance of pelvic alignment, points of initiation and undulation, thus creating an unabashed freedom in the torso and limbs. All of which produces an access point for the dancer to full body integration. The class culminates in an expansive movement phrase which incorporates many of the addressed concepts while still allowing for the freedom of the dancers' "personal uniqueness".
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Adele Myers, AD Adele Myers and Dancers
Combining high energy and robust athleticism, together we launch into the thrill of motion as we ride the sweet spot of momentum. Class begins with a fluid sequence of movements designed to strengthen the core of the body while simultaneously creating mobility in the joints. Particular emphasis is placed on approaching full-bodied phrasework with muscular ease and a center-driven force powered by the pelvis. Dancing is a body language that translates the imagination into a visceral form of personal expression. Like a fingerprint, each step is distinctly yours. In an energetic, rigorous and positive environment, we transcend our personal edges through dance.
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Stefanie Nelson
My work is drawn from the impulsive body, sensitive, receptive, and vivacious. This class will draw from individual experience, focusing on the expressive, dynamic, passionate and stimulating in each of us. We will begin with a guided movement investigation designed to increase expansion of the inner body, to try to increase and develop an awareness of articulation, intention, efficiency and clarity of movement. We will indulge in the sensuality and power of our bodies, encouraging ourselves to be open and receptive to the widest range of physical and emotional possibilities. A student will learn to develop his/her own creative process by building movement phrases from material generated in the first half of class, focusing on structure and form. Students are welcome for individual classes or may sign up for the entire workshop in order to build and develop material from previous classes.
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Jennifer Nugent, of Nugent+Matteson Dance
In this class we are preparing for all out passionate dancing. Classes begin by awakening the spine through use of the breath and simple spirals. Exercises that bring awareness to the sternum and pelvic floor allow the feeling of release in the limbs from those places of support. We will practice falling and suspending ourselves off of center. Technically demanding phrase material offers ways of moving lusciously with both detail and a sense of abandon.
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Jody Oberfelder, AD: Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects
The warm-up strives to make the floor a partner in movement, including variations on yoga, releasing, gymnastics and Pilates. Improvisation is introduced as dancers resource their own unique energetic coils. Inverted movement will be explored: head, hand and forearm stands teach the upper body and arms the same skills needed for legs and feet. Learning this control leads to abandon and gives one freedom to using a full range of movement without fear. This will lead to energetic, and explosive phrase work that involves whole body integration in all relations to gravity. Dancers will find their way through phrases from the company's repertory that involve upright and inverted moving.
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Amy O'Neal co-director of locust (dance/music/video)

Oppositional Forces (contemporary dance technique)

A thorough and focused class for the curious tapping into the bodyÕs innate stability and rhythmic patterns. A simple and effective warm-up to build strength is followed by quick and challenging leg work and improvisational exercises in movement quality and depth. Phrase work focuses on musicality, attention to detail, transitions, and unexpected choices in timing and is stylistically inspired by release techniques, hip-hop, and club dance. Conceptually based on AmyÕs study of Yoga, Pilates, boxing and the innate stability of the body, we find the maximum potential of dynamic movement and balance through oppositional forces of energy that we consciously direct physically and emotionally. Through this awareness, we can be more free to tap into our imaginations, play, and reinvigorate the love to move.

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Laura Peterson
This class is about full-bodied dynamic dancing and finding the excitement of momentum and clarity. Developing an understanding of the connection of gravity, suspension, tempo and musicality requires the studentÕs creative attention and in this class each dancer as an artist is supported throughout their process. My vocabulary is developed with a sense of design, both physical and spacial. The class begins with a series of exercises designed specifically to develop an awareness of the internal dynamic and the external shape of movement phrases that culminate in a detailed and very physical combination.
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Ana Sperber
This class will explore practices which prepare our bodies and minds to dance with clarity, articulation, and expressivity, we will draw upon knowledge of anatomy, and use visualization to increase efficiency and freedom of our movement. Emphasis will be placed on directing our attention and intention towards creating an optimal space for change to happen, to allow each dancer to have the most freedom, awareness and power of expression in their dancing.
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Fritha Pengelly
This class will be a laboratory exploring the movement capacities of the human body as selected for aesthetic and expressive purposes. We will investigate expression in movement through awareness of sensation, space, time, focus and attention to detail. This class will also focus on deepening our knowledge of anatomy and biomechanics to increase movement efficiency and safety. Warm-up exercises are influenced by several movement techniques including Pilates, Yoga, the Feldenkrais Method, and Authentic Movement. The movement style and vocabulary will draw upon both hip-hop and martial arts.
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Stephen Petronio Co.
Stephen Petronio is committed to the articulation of a movement language that stretches physical possibilities and reflects the energy, speed and adrenaline that is our modern-day legacy. Petronio's language involves the transfer of energy easily throughout the body, the holding of multiple movement focuses in the body at one time, and the initiation of the two opposite ends of the spine - the tail and the head - in carving through space. Stephen Petronio's Master Class will begin with a warm-up and examination of the principles of his unique movement vocabulary. The second part of the class will explore phrases of movement derived from Mr. Petronio's choreography.
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Pamela Pietro
Pamela Pietro's teaching exists to widen the physical range and mental awareness of dancers' technical capabilities. Pamela's thorough knowledge and principles of strengthening and alignment lead to a full physical charge and response, incorporating floor and upper body that leads to the expansive movement phrases explored across the floor.
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Jennifer Phillips, Rehearsal Director: Ellis Wood Dance
Class includes a thorough investigation of centering and aligning our anatomical structures; technical standing exercises; floor work to allow for surrender to gravity; traveling across the floor using quick footwork and unexpected directional changes; then building to a highly physical, full-bodied phrase. Challenging phrases include speed, control, range, dynamics, sequential movement, distal/proximal initiations while encouraging abandon and individual expression. Phillips is highly influenced by her 10 years of working with Ellis Wood Dance, as well as her studies with Leslie Partridge, Yoga at the Breathing Project, and mentor and ballet teacher, the late Shiela Darby.
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Molly Poerstel, of David Dorfman Dance and Jeanine Durning
This modern technique class is designed to explore the individual artist and their capabilities as a porous, intuitive and facile performer. Informed by various traditional and non-traditional dance forms, students will investigate dynamic effort, weight quality and the exploration of performance states in order to cultivate versatility, physical intent, and authenticity in regard to mind, body and spirit. The investigation encourages personal permission and instinct through set material and improvisation in order to cultivate choice and artistry in the form.
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Sara Procopio
Class will begin by encouraging the body to arrive to neutral as a preparation for full-out dancing. From a neutral and aligned body, we will investigate movement based upon breath, flow, suspension, center-shifting, bouncing, momentum, spirals and joint rotations through simple exercises and travelling phrases. Exploring movement ideas in relationship to one's own natural and controlled movement qualities will open the body and mind to new ways of dancing. The class is influenced by Sara's work with Shen Wei Dance Arts as well as her own movement research.
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Joe Poulson, of David Dorfman Dance and Creach/Co
Class often begins with simple exercises and improvisations focused on preparing the body to move with more efficiency and specificity. We will explore short phrases that direct and redirect momentum, providing us an opportunity to move with strength, length, and ease through a wide range of energetic intensities. Class will culminate with a phrase that is an off-balanced play of technical restraint and individual expression.
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Lisa Race, AD Race Dance
Classes will begin by developing an ease with moving in and out of the floor in the most efficient, effortless ways possible, developing 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, while remaining thoroughly grounded to the earth, creating full-bodied risky dance phrases. Lisa danced with David Dorfman from 1989-2000. In 1995 she was honored with a Bessie for her dancing with the company. She now devotes her time to directing Race Dance, formed in 1998, and teaches at venues and festivals around the US and abroad.
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Karl Rogers, of David Dorfman Dance
This class begins with improvisational scores designed to bring dimensionality and agency to your dancing. After harnessing that personality and choice making, the class delves into more traditional modern technique as a means of exploring the moving body. Culminating with phrase material and other surprises, we will concentrate on how to make movement authentic and alive, whether improvisation or nuanced choreography. We will smile.
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Adi Salant, assistant to Ohad Naharin, Batsheva Dance, Israel
This class involves exercises that place focus on utilizing the connection between the technique and the freedom of movement. After the warm up, dance combinations will be taught, where the dancers can execute the new sensations they acquired during the class. Tools and directions will be given to expand the dancer's movement capacity. This class is full of energy and gives the dancers the opportunity to explore and reach deeper into their abilities both physically and mentally.
Gaga: developed by Ohad Naharin, is the daily training of the Batsheva dancers.
Gaga encourages and teaches multi dimensional movement, efficiency of movement, the use of explosive power, texture of movement, the connection between pleasure and effort, quickness, the clarity of intention, stamina, recognizing one's own movement habits and acquiring new ones, ways to reverse atrophy and weakness, helps dancers to maximize their training and strengths...
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Deganit Shemy, AD: Deganit Shemy and Dancers
Believing that every movement originates in the center of the body, travels out, and then returns to the center, Deganit's movement encourages the idea of an imaginary line running from the edges of the body to the center of the body. Beginning with a warm-up that usually begins close to the floor, the class then progresses to kinetic sequences moving from the floor to standing, as well as exploring where movement leads the dancer through the lightness and heaviness of the body parts. The culmination of the kinetic sequences, exploration of movement, and partner exercises, is an ending combination based in Deganit's movement vocabulary that has been investigated throughout the class.
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Todd Stone, of Trisha Brown Company
In class, we will work towards a powerful fusion of mind and body that is the essence of dance. We will work with concrete ideas of thought and physical action, towards a new wholeness in dancing. Starting from our core, warmup will address structural alignment of the skeleton, joint articulation, the use of weight ,oppositional forces in the body, and clarity of movement. Paying attention to detail, conscience and sub-conscience movement and the use of momentum, we will continue to explore our relationship to the internal, and external concepts of space. Todd movement vocabulary has been influenced by his current work with Trisha Brown Dance Company and his studies of the Alexander Technique, Janet Panetta, Body-Mind Centering, Improvisation.
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Dawn Springer
Aimed towards dynamic physicality and precision, this class guides the dancer through their daily practice by emphasizing bio-mechanical health, stamina, and expressivity. Grounded in learning through experiencing and drawing from both formal and popular dance forms, full body engagement is encouraged through out the class. Time is allotted to individualize phrase material, which is designed to challenge. As a group, we generate a virtuosic movement experience, and enjoy expansive dancing.
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Tami Stronach
Class begins on the floor so that we can drop our weight into the ground while simultaneously being supported as we open the body. We then move in a yoga based warm up that incorporates the essentials of a basic barre. The second half of class is dedicated to learning a juicy dance phrase. Ample time will be given to investigate the material inside and out so movement qualities can be identified, dynamic choices can be investigated, and new physical connections can emerge.
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BJ Sullivan
Creating a learning atmosphere that encourages both a strong work ethic and a respect for one's physical and emotional health. Providing conceptual tools that will facilitate the development of an anatomically strong technique, thus empowering students with the ability to forever analyze and investigate.
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Christina Towle
The warm up starts on the floor with deep breathing exercises, evolving into more expansive curves and arches of the body in synchronization with the breath. We will evolve from floor exercises to exercises on all fours, then only onto three limbs and eventually on two feet. Once standing we will warm the body with circular and curving movements from the top down, starting with head, arm, back, pelvis, knees, ankles and toes, with a special attention to how we use our breath in the movement. Throughout the warm up I integrate some classic leg work - plies, degage, leg brushes, grand battements with more contemporary twists, falls, and floor work. Yoga postures - as they are a part of my own personal vocabulary are integrated into the warm-up in isolation or as a part of the phrase work. Gradually, we will explore greater amplitudes of movement, different qualities of movement, develop spatial coordination (ˆ la Cunningham) and working on the bodyÕs ability to be on and off center. The class will finish with a choreographic phrase inspired by my personal choreographic style.Thanks!
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Colleen Thomas, Co-Artistic Director: Bill Young & Dancers, formerly of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co.
Artists are invited to explore the edge of movement while working with an underlying technique drawing from release, yoga, ballet, and modern. This class culminates with learning a phrase that takes a journey through abandon and control.
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Keith Thompson

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

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Nathan Trice, Director & Choreographer: Nathan Trice/Rituals
This class will focus on the ability to change dynamics with fast and slow kinetic movements on the floor and standing. We will incorporate the use of sound effects and breath. Nathan is the director and choreographer for Nathan Trice/Rituals which has presented works in New York, Japan, South America and Bermuda.
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Antonietta Vicario, AD: Antonietta Vicario makes dances; formerly of Yvonne Myer and Jennifer Nugent
This class will focus on making personal choices about dancing through an informed exploration of the body. We will begin with a mindful warm-up guided by "release technique" principles exploring effort related to tone, clarity in direction, and anatomical efficiency. We will end with vigorous, challenging phrase work that encourages risk taking, full bodied dancing, and finding personalized ways to approach movement, so each student is challenged and liberated by their own artistry.
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Elizabeth Ward,of DD Dorvillier and Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People

Working with the physical and mental aspects of technique, performance quality, and attention to the inner details of the body this class deals with the thinking body. Relying on more than our ability to mimic, this class calls on the practices of ballet, releasing technique, authentic movement, and improvisation to engage the body and mind in a dialogue where choices are available to us.
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Nicole Wolcott Associate AD: KEGWIN + COMPANY

This vigorous class combines the virtuosity of classical technique and the release of post-modern dance with Wolcott's own dramatic idiosyncrasies. The result is a quirky but highly athletic aesthetic that one student describes as, "Punk rock/release-based modern dance." Each class will focus on teaching the mind and body to work smarter, not harder by emphasizing relaxation in proper alignment, core support, technical soundness, and spatial exploration. Through the exploration of the physics of body weight in drops, catches, and turns, students may develop a technique that is both dynamic and nuanced. Dancers will be given advanced movement phrases and asked to not only physically execute them, but also approach them with an intention toward performance. Material for this class is drawn from various techniques and movement styles including Limon, hip-hop, ballet and middle - American culture.

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Ellis Wood, AD: Ellis Wood Dance
The class begins with a full-bodied warm-up, which includes release exercises and floor work combined with more technically based standing work. The class culminates with an athletically challenging phrase that includes both highly technical elements and dramatic content.
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Kevin Wynn, AD: Kevin Wynn Collection
Kevin Wynn was a soloist with the Jose Limon Company. He is the Artistic Director of The Kevin Wynn Collection. Class begins with an un-classical modern barre, then progresses to across-the-floor and center work with highly physical movement and complex gestured phrases.
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Bill Young, AD: Bill Young & Dancers
After a full-bodied, contemporary warm-up, the class culminates with learning an extended phrase from our company repertory material that emphasizes off-center work -- riding momentum at the edge of balance.
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