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Modern Things 4

Gerald Casel

This course immerses dancers into more nuanced levels of somatics, and other contemporary forms and practices by exploring refinement, greater perceptive skills, and deeper access to dynamic range of motion and discernment while moving. Participants will investigate the underpinnings of contemporary dane practices through a critical lens questioning somatics, experiential anatomy, and the connections between mind-body/self-community. Working as a laboratory for movement and expression and by consciously shaping the body’s intuition, students will be urged to acknowledge their habitual patterns – transforming them into dancing that is articulate, expressive, and charged with intention. This class will address anatomical principles that are essential to any movement practice (i.e., imagery and functional use of muscles and bones, dynamic alignment, coordination, balance, strength and spatial clarity). Acknowledging systems of power that are embedded within somatics and contemporary and post/modern dance, students will also analyze histories of somatic practices and explore ways to make them more personal, culturally responsive, and emancipatory.

Class begins with a warm up consisting of gentle movements that investigate internal sensations that become expressed outward. Floor-work that progresses to standing exercises evolve into more complex rhythms and patterns. Movement phrases investigate flow and effort while paying attention to the dancer’s awareness of time, energy, focus and their relationship to gravity and other beings.