Cultivate has a workshop for everyone! Whether you are a complete beginner or a professional dancer, you’ll find a class to inspire and move you. Explore contact improvisation and partnering with Bethany Nelson or Katherine Keifer Stark & Loren Groenendaal. Experiment with different approaches to composition with Karen Krolak or Ellie Goudie- Averill. Let your wild side show in Goldie Peacock’s high energy, NYC nightlife-inspired class, step outside the familiar and try Eccentric Dance with Cori Olinghouse, or hone your virtuosity with Sarah Gamblin. There are three classes for kids (one of them is for whole families to take together!) and a special workshop for seniors. Wrap up your festival with The Architects, as they take you on a deep journey of paying attention and tuning into love as a resource for composing in the moment.
Cultivate teachers: Katherine Ferrier | Ashley Hensel-Browning | Alicia Christophi-Walshe
Friday, 8/10
9:00-10:30am Alicia Christofi-Walshe | Puttin’ on the Ritz! (Seniors’ class) LRS
Get fit! Be Creative! Meet New People! A workshop designed for older adults, in which participants are gently guided through dance sequences set to music. Class begins with a seated warm-up followed by standing and traveling sequences that incorporate elements of contemporary dance technique, Laban’s fundamentals and social dance, all the while focusing on maintaining flexibility, balance and co-ordination. This workshop is guaranteed to be fun, and is suitable for older people of all abilities (no previous dance training necessary). Please dress in comfortable clothing, sneakers or flat shoes.
9:00-10:30am Ellie Goudie-Averill | Finding your Center, Finding the Floor TH
Finding your Center, Finding the Floor (Stop, Drop and Roll!) In this highly physical and fun technique class, dancers will explore ways to give in to and defy gravity. We will cultivate drive and weight release as we work towards efficiency of movement and dynamic shifts.
11:00-12:30pm Katherine Keifer Stark & Loren Groenendaal |Architecture of Two TH
Push, pull, lift, share, initiate, shift, make space, take space, fall, catch. Dance with, around, on, and under a partner as we explore moving, composing, and learning movement phrases in pairs. We will begin quietly with guided explorations of our own internal architecture, shift into building relationships and skills with a partner, and culminate in a dynamic duet phrase.
4:00-5:30 Goldie Peacock | From Cage to Stage LRS
From Cage to Stage is an improvisational dance workshop based in New York nightlife performance experience. In this class, we will bring nightlife to our daytime dance by improvising with combinations of musical, spacial and qualitative variables and constraints akin to those experienced by a go-go dancer. Putting our physical selves in this metaphorical cage will actually jumpstart and free up our creativity to compose in the moment. Class will begin with a high-energy warm-up incorporating movement from a variety of dance and fitness genres, before moving into guided improvisational exercises and then, PARTAYYYY! For improvisers and booty-shakers of all stripes. This class is rated PG-13.
4:00-5:30 Karen Krolak | Physical Poetry from Imperfect Bodies TH
Physical Poetry from Imperfect Bodies lead by Artistic Director of Monkeyhouse, Karen Krolak. Over the last two decades, Karen has developed a choreographic practice for discovering the idiosyncratic vocabulary presented by obstacles. While many of her pieces involve self-imposed limitations, e.g. a shirt of nails, an 18 foot long sleeve connecting two dancer, or a two foot long stilt attached to one leg, her creative process helps performers to embrace their physiological vulnerabilities and emphasize their unique strengths. Open to dancers of all levels.
Saturday, 8/11
9:00-10:30am Angie Muzzy & Jessica Howard |Shake and Shout! (kid’s class) TH
This modern based class embraces fun, athletic movement phrases for any student who has lots of energy to burn. Participants will move safely in and out of the floor, upside down, right side up in an assortment of ways. They will also learn various improv structures to create their own collaborative dance at the end of the class with their peers and teacher(s). (All ages welcome)
9:00-10:30am Cori Olinghouse | Freestyle Practice LRS
Drawing influence from Eccentric Dance*, an entertainment genre that evolved from the underground nightclubs of the 20’s and 30’s, with origins in Vaudeville, Charleston, and Lindy Hop, we will develop our own improvisational freestyle languages using elements of physical transformation. Students will learn basic eccentric dance techniques (rubber legging, Charleston, clowning) and will also explore rhythm, story-telling, and healthy movement mechanics. Students will have the opportunity to re-interpret eccentric dance and build their own movement languages and characters. *Eccentric Dance is a form of visual comedy that uses a vocabulary of idiosyncratic movements that is characterized by a highly rigorous and extreme physicality. Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton are two of the stars that emerged from this movement. Eccentric dance also came from such masters as: Snake Hips Tucker, James Barton, Danzi Goodell, Hal LeRoy, and Buster West.
11:00-12:30pm Ashley Hensel-Browning | Making Dances: Family Style TH
This workshop encourages families to play, move, and create together with the intention of exploring the physical space and their relationships with each other to make movement phrases. We will use improvisation and choreography structures that encourage full-body movement, curiosity, and play to build dances to share with each other. We will begin by exploring the space we are dancing in through observation, movement play, and sharing stories/memories. Gradually we will move into guided dance-building with the intention of sharing our work with each other, celebrating the space and people we are dancing with. Workshop is open to all families and ages. $10 per person
11:00-12:30pm Bethany Nelson | Harvesting Dance: A Site-Specific Workshop LRS
This all ages, all abilities workshop investigates what makes a space ripe for site-specific dance and then asks; how do we harvest its fruit for artistic creation? We will look at the functional, aesthetic, social, political, historical, communal, and ritual essence of selected spaces and consider how we communicate with that essence. Working in groups, we will select 2 spaces to harvest, create and perform a dance with that space, and articulate the intention behind our choices.
2:00-3:30 Ellie Goudie-Averill | Instant Dances: Our Common (Object)ive LRS
In this playful and challenging workshop, festival artists will come together to create original dances … in only half an hour! Each group of dance makers will be given the same set of items/props and a “toolkit” for instant dance making. The resulting dances will be performed for ArtWALK visitors and will show the personal and original ways diverse choreographers grapple with the same objects and create together!
2:00-3:30 Kai Kleinbard | Robot Invasion! (kid’s class) TH
Robot Invasion (Ages 5 and up) From C3PO to Tick-Tock, to Data, to Wall-E, robots come in all shapes and sizes. In the late 1970’s a dance form, called “popping” emerged on the West Coast as a way to imitate robots to rhythmic beats. By embodying robots, students will use their imaginations to create their own unique robots-inspired movements and characters. Freedom of expression and improvisation will be encouraged and further developed through art projects that build costumes, sculptures, and drawings (using recycled materials). Join Kai as he leads students through a world of transformation.
4:00-5:30 Sarah Gamblin | How We Become Bad-Ass TH
What does it mean to be virtuosic? When do kinesthetic imaginings override the compulsion to seek validation? Or if that compulsion is already overridden, how do we lovingly and imaginatively gear up for to rigor on a body level? With language based in somatic principles, we will employ partnering and improvisation to prepare for set movement material. We will work on our dancing from at least two levels: the level of the body via mechanics, strength, stamina and motor skills; and the level of the kinesthetic imagination– exercising a reflexive attitude in the dancing body to bring purpose, intention and imagination to performance.
Sunday, 8/12
9:00-11:00am The Architects | Last Dance (Last Chance for Love) TH
To pay absolute attention, we make a space for love to move into and through us. To conduct moving research, (re-search, looking again), we can refresh our perception and increase the probability of appreciation. From this stance, openness to the moment comes with ease, along with openness to change, openness to others, to different choices, to the myriad ways of dancing “together.” As we look again through the various lenses of the body (the sensory energy field of the heart, the intelligent decisions of the gut, memory, knowledge of form, different angles of vision), our compositional intuition can function with utmost integrity, recognizing a relationship to the whole ensemble, allowing an appreciation of our own experience, but also firing up our love for what we make together.
Cultivate 