CONTACT IMPROVISATION

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Blood, Sea

This contact improvisation workshop explores polarities and spirals through an experiential study of the embryology of blood. 

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Contact Improvisation and Consent

This class offers tools to facilitate communication and listening around consent within our CI dances, with an emphasis on dialing up our listening, rather than putting the onus on those who experience bodily trespasses to hone their ability to say "no."

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Matching Tone/Matching Power

When we look at the idea of tone through an embodied lens, we find a wealth of knowledge and material to use in our CI practice toward more dynamic, juicy, relational dances. When we look at these principles through a social lens, we find opportunities to look at power dynamics, and any biases we might have toward certain kinds of tone. 

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SOMATICS & CREATIVE PRACTICES

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Clitoral Embodiment

This Body-Mind Centering® workshop covers the embryology of the genitalia from a non-binary perspective; equal parts academic and experiential learning.

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Diaphragms: horizontality into spirals

The diaphragms are horizontal structures in the body that carry our contents and enable subtle, internal movements, unlike the longitudinal muscles that boldly carry our limbs and trunk through space. When we initiate big body movement with the internal diaphragms we can find more three-dimensionality, delicacy, and ease in and out of the floor.

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Polyvagal Theory & Protest

Using contemporary knowledge about the social nervous system and our brilliantly evolved bodily coping strategies let's co-regulate through dancing, singing, bouncing, breathing, and bodywork. 

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Embodying Neuroqueer/Neuroqueering Embodiment

Using somatic practices and newer understandings of neurology and trauma such as polyvagal theory, we will develop methods to reclaim and celebrate our uniquely weird ways of thinking, being, and making. Nick Walker, one of the people who coined the term Neuroqueer says, "Neuroqueer is both an identity and an ethos, an adjective and a verb," and describes it as "Engaging in the 'queering' of one’s own neurocognitive processes... Engaging in practices intended to 'undo' one’s cultural conditioning toward conformity and compliance with dominant norms." 

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Somatic Aesthetics

How can we use somatic practices to inspire our artistry? How does our embodiment inform our compositional choices and aesthetic values? In this lab-like environment, we'll discover when our embodied impulses create spatial harmony and when they create dissonance.  

Voice and hearing - the embryology of the pharyngeal arches

The pharyngeal arches are embryonic pouches that form at about four weeks of gestation in the head and neck. In fish they become the gills. In humans they become structures in the ears, jaw and throat that contribute both to our auditory and vocal apparatus. It is through this embryonic connection we will explore the relationship between how we express ourselves and how we listen.

The Immune-Neuro-Endocrine System 

There is growing research that links the connection between this triad: the immune, nervous and endocrine systems. How does our embodiment of these systems affect our psyche, creativity and relationship to others? We'll begin with the fluid system to understand the channels through which these three systems communicate with one another and the rest of the body.

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LECTURES

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Scar Talk

Scars are often referred to as disorganized fascia that adheres tissues and disrupts movement pathways. But what do the scars have to say about this? I have developed a performance practice in which I animate my scars as characters, allowing them to do the talking. Their stories and opinions can often be quite surprising. In this presentation, I will share my findings from years of listening to my scars, and sharing their joys, traumas, and desires with audiences.

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Intentional Reemergence: dreaming the aftertime

In January 2021 I taught a workshop series in which participants dreamed, schemed, and moved together online using tools from consent practices and polyvagal theory to envision rebuilding embodiment spaces in ways that tangibly address the inequities laid bare by the pandemic. In this lecture I will share ideas we crowdsourced for a thINKingDANCE article from those conversations.

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Embodied Palestine Solidarity

This lecture on the politics of Palestinian and Israeli contemporary dance explores how the forms reflect and/or perpetuate the Israeli occupation of Palestine through funding structures, content, and the frequent use of folk dance as source material. 

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Beyond Sex: consent as liberation

This talk offers an intersectional approach to cultivating a strong consent culture within CI spaces by addressing the ways that everyone has a need for bodily autonomy and freedom of movement.

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Disability Justice in Contact Improvisation

This talk briefly covers visible and invisible disabilities, accommodation needs, how ableism intersects with other marginalized identities, and how to create more accessible contact improvisation spaces.

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Spiritual Bypassing: an embodied and intersectional perspective

Spiritual bypassing, a term coined by Buddhist Psychologist, John Welwood, addresses the ways that spiritual (and healing) practices can sometimes be used to avoid challenging relationship dynamics or obfuscate a community’s biases and inequity. This talk outlines the ways this phenomenon shows up in contact improvisation spaces, and how to address it.