Schedule

About workshops

Gaga/people
Natalia Iwaniec

Gaga/people classes are open to everybody who likes dancing and is searching for new ways of moving. During the class we are moving without stopping, without mirrors which size us up and with a big dose of pleasure and physical effort. Teacher guides the participants using a series of instructions and inspiring them by her movement. We are looking for our groove, our individual dance in a group of people.

Gaga/people classes are open to people ages 16+.

https://www.gagapeople.com/en/

https://www.facebook.com/nataliaiwaniecgaga

 

From Inside to Outside – Contemporary class
Marion Sparber

I teach Contemporary dance training with emphasis on spirals and floor work. We start the class by opening our channels of awarness and feel the inside and the outside, everyone and everything that surrounds us. The warm-up is focused on passing through the whole body and expanding our flexibility and strength - never abandoning a flow of natural and organic movement and feeling our feet as our base and connection to the ground.

We use the playfullness to get inspired, let go and surprise ourselves. With the help of exercises and games in different constellations - in a group, with a partner and by ourselves - we listen to the weight of our body and direct it through the space, putting awareness into proximity and distance as well as our orientation and relationship to the room and the others. We play with the off-balance and shift of the axis. An other important aspect of the training is the attention to the momentum in movement, the grounding of our center, the natural flow of breath and the expansion of our extremities. By integrating changes of dynamic and musicality into our movement phrases we constantly recycle our energy and avoid muscle-fatigue. We move as a continuous spiral into the floor and out of the floor, using the attack and release as our guidelines and try to work from the bones and the spiral connections in our body, letting go of unnecessary tensions and holding of the muscles. The skeleton as a motor for movement and the center as the inside of a flower that grows into all directions. The clearer and stronger our connection to the ground, more freely we can move. We learn which parts of the body are pushing and receiving the floor and which can relax and react to the impulses. I like to dance with a strong and physical movement quality using the eyes scanning the space constantly. As techniques of inspiration for my class I use a lot dynamics of a wave or the wind, as well as the image of an octopus expanding from the centre. I am very inspired by the Flying Low technique by David Zambrano and the Release technique mixed with my personal investigation. I like to establish a collective mind and body inside the class to enhance the group power giving an energetic push to the individual source of creativity.

 

espaciocontinuo: Contemporary dance technique class
Alan Fuentes Guerra

espaciocontinuo makes a reference to the idea that we live in a world of constant change. Therefore we, as dancers, should be aware of this fact and allow our perception to be open and ready. Our attention needs to be sharp and we must be prepared to accept the change and go with it. I like teaching Contemporary dance technique with an emphasis on floor work; with the purpose of applying the sensations harvested from the floor into a vertical standing position. Activeness and strong physicality are important to me, so I keep an alert-open-sensitive state during the entire class. We start the session by warming up our whole body as well as our mental attention towards it. The beginning of the class is focused on amplifying the range of motion of all the articulations in the body from smaller to bigger, mixed with a playful way of working on strength and flexibility. The next step in the development of the class is in acknowledging and directing the breath, which should be connected to the movement of the body itself. In this way, we create a continuous flow that is intended to stay along the class. Improvisation, partnering, space awareness, attention of our body and attention to others are mandatory elements to every performer, so I make specific emphasis on developing these skills as part of the training. All in the end, espaciocontinuo is intended for the dancer to develop helpful tools in the path of self expression!

 

Shared Levitation Partnering Workshop
Marion Sparber and Alan Fuentes Guerra

We start the class by opening our channels of awareness and connect to our partner by manipulating, testing and speculating with his/her structure and weight. A special focus in this phase is the use of our whole body doing the task, not only being limited to our hands and arms. In this first part the use of playfullness allows us to connect to our instinctive and primitive side, tuning into a shared natural flow of breath. With the help of exercises in different constellations, every time changing and adapting to a new partner and universe - we listen, follow and direct the movement as one functioning organism through space. We get ready to jump, cross, push, pull, avoid, embrace and suspend each other. We like to focus on an organic way of Partnering, based on action/reaction principles inspired by contact improvisation, acro-dance, social dances and fighting techniques. We like to access the movement from a perspective of a deeper connection and try to avoid the superficial habit of copying shapes. Instead, we motivate every couple to find a unique way of communicating with the partner and look for individual solutions and variations of the material. Another important aspect of our class is the constant change of the level of activity for both roles. We learn how much resistance, power and direction is needed to reach our maximum together by investigating with the given tools, and finally learning fixed partnering material and extracts of our duet “Porzellan-Haus” at the end of each class.