Helena (she/her/hers) is a multidisciplinary artist focused on art as process, rather than product. As an experimenting ground for ideas, emotions, and beauty, performative arts and contact improvisation have been an integral aspect of Helena’s identity and curiosity for the past 5 years. She finds inspiration in nature and in the subtle complexities of human relating. Alongside improvisational arts, Helena composes poetry and music. She is currently based in Seattle, Washington, USA, but has her roots in Asia.

Alyza DelPan-Monley (they/she) believes in the expressive power that can be accessed in the body through movement. Known for their embrace of whimsy, quirky non-sequitors and esoteric theatricality, they take inspiration from physical theatre, clowning, puppetry, cartoons, and a myriad of movement styles. As a movement designer and choreographer, their work has been presented at Cafe Nordo (Violet’s Attic, Jitterbug Perfume), Washington Ensemble Theater (Teh Internet, Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again., Straight White Men, Dance Nation), and ArtsWest (Office Hour, The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion) and at 5th Avenue Theatre (ASTH, Sweeney Todd). They perform and collaborate regularly with Salvage Rituals and they are a company member and dancer with MALACARNE. Alyza is Velocity Dance Center’s Curating Artist in Residence through September 2023. As a mixed-race queerdo 2nd gen immigrant, they are always thinking about the liminal identity and the assumptions made on the perceived body, and how performance can both expand and restrict the possibilities of legibility. They strive to participate in and build processes where everyone feels like they can exist in their fullest selves by cultivating and celebrating every bodies’ unique form of expression.

Karen Nelson continues to inhabit a crossroad of dance improvisation in the US’ Pacific Northwest and abroad. A longtime dance explorer, teacher, maker, touring performer, author/contributor to Dancing with Dharma and Contact Quarterly, she has been a mutator of the form Contact Improvisation (CI) since 1977. She co-founded mixed-ability experiments Dance Ability and Diverse Dance Research Retreat and integrates Material for the Spine (Steve Paxton) and Tuning Scores (Lisa Nelson) into her practice along with interrogating whiteness and intersectionality within her own embodiment and larger community.

Drop-in Class: Mon, AUG 7 | 9:30–11:30 AM

More information coming soon!

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My name is Alice Gosti and I am an Italian-American immigrant choreographer, curator and hybrid performance artist who creates site-responsive performance rituals and live art installations that examine how history, politics and place enter the body and condition how we move and relate. I was born In Perugia, Italy to an American mother and an Italian father. Raised in a bicultural family of installation architects, my art lives and breathes the dualities existing within a multicultural environment.

I moved to occupied Duwamish and Coast Salish land in 2004 to study dance at the University of Washington. In 2018, alongside a team of collaborators, I launched MALACARNE, an experimental performance ensemble that relies on transparent and equitable partnerships with artists, community members and institutions in pursuit of social justice. Throughout my career I’ve been committed to building transformative performance rituals that fight reductive ideas regarding class, sexuality, gender, ability and ethnicity. I most recently received the Amazon Artist in Residency Award and in 2021, I received the Princess Grace Award, Choreography Honoraria, for my lifelong commitment to dance and centering immigrant realities.

I create work in direct relation to a region, its history and culture. And my work celebrates stories and landmarks without forgetting, appropriating or colonizing. I have mounted socio-political performance rituals that bridge history and memory with the architectural and emotional landscapes of: cathedrals, factories, fountains, military batteries, immigrant detention centers, waterfronts and other nontraditional performance venues. Through performance spectacles like “How to Become a Partisan,” “Material Deviance in Contemporary American Culture,” “Invisible Womxn” and “Bodies of Water,” I’ve investigated fascism, unfettered capitalism, the othering of women and Seattle’s complex relationship to water.

A thread through all of these projects is my goal to jumpstart critical imagination practices and foster meaningful place-based connections between artist and audience, and medium and messages.

I view art as a critical imagination practice. We need art to imagine the world we want to see.

Art is how we ensure that we still know how to imagine that which is not yet real, how we dream about the future.

Drop-in Class: Sat, AUG 12 | 3:30–5:30 PM

Telepathy (from Ancient Greek τῆλε (têle) ‘distant’, and πάθος/-πάθεια (páthos/-pátheia) ‘feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience’)[3][4] is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person’s mind to another’s without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. This is the definition that one can find on wikipedia. I both love and hate definitions. They imply that there is a right and a wrong. But they are always a great place to start. To destroy to build one-owns definitions.
This is ‘fake telepathy’ because I have never actually studied telepathy not I have the credentials or knowledge to teach it.
This is a series of exercises to play, question and wonder about togetherness as an embodied practice.
I’ve always wondered about non-verbal communication. How groups of dancers/movers/performers can get so clear and precise with communicating intention without talking.
Maybe it’s not telepathy. Maybe it’s magic. Let’s be in this experiment together. In this experiment around togetherness together.
The workshop will begin with a warm-up – a ritual on being together, and will continue with a series of improvisational scores, experiments based on listening, opening, sharing and communicating all without using words.

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Born in 1989, NEVE grew up disabled, mixed-race, and queer on a river in the part of New Jersey where they drive trucks and horse-drawn wagons over the rolling green hills (Lenni Lenape). NEVE began dancing professionally in 1998 with the all-Black, Harlem, NY-based integrated dance company Def Dance Jam Workshop.

NEVE received their BA in dance and visual culture in 2012 from Hampshire College, and moved to the Bay Area to work with/in Sins Invalid, AXIS Dance Company, and queer porn in 2013. In 2014, NEVE met one of their life partners while on tour with cabaret Mangos with Chili, and moved to Seattle (Duwamish) to be with him more often in 2016. Here, NEVE has premiered two evening-length musical dance works in 2018 at Gay City Arts, and in 2019 at Velocity Dance Center.

NEVE is a 2020 Pina Bausch Fellow, a 2022 Arc Artist Fellow, and a 2022 Disability Ford Futures Fellow! Their latest major choreographic work, “Flora hereafter: how flowers survive” premiered in AXIS Dance Company’s 2021 Home Season at Z Space in SF, and has toured to Frankfurt, Dubai, and New Jersey.

NEVE loves life, the delights and pains of embodiment and love, the sparkle-ache and promise of growth, the higher power inside all of us, the earth’s lullabies and war cries, drinking color, and kissing/thinking/dreaming/learning/winning with their local and international queer family (especially their cat child Caravaggio).

NEVE believes in God(exxes), Collective Access and Liberation, Transformative Justice, Land Back, Right of Return, Reparations, Anarchism (in relationships and governance), the Loch Ness Monster, the Multiverse, the concept that all living beings are people, and
You. They are currently a contributing writer for the South Seattle Emerald, and collaborate with their confidante in arms, fellow Seattle multidisciplinary artist Saira Barbaric as themselves, and as Mouthwater. Stay tuned for news of the 2024 Mouthwater dance festival, which Mouthwater is producing as Velocity Dance Center Made in Seattle artists. @mouthwaterdance on IG and velocitydancecenter.org/mouthwater

nevebebad.com

Drop-in Class: Mon, AUG 7 | 3:30–5:30 PM

This is a contemporary improvisation for composition class centering the wisdom of Disability Justice and of Disabled ways of movement making. It is open to all! Utilizing their vast dance background in both western and global traditional and contemporary dance forms, including integrated dance and contact improvisation, NEVE will lead participants through an entirely access centered dance, play, and potential composition experience. While not walking isn’t accessible to everyone, and we will talk through the ways to make this limitation work, participants will be encouraged to dance using their bodies, chairs, the walls, and the floor. Anything but upright traveling on two feet is what we will be exploring. Expect some floor barre, contact and improvisational games, and delicious prompts for creation. [photos by Michelle Smith-Lewis].

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Fox Whitney’s queer + transgender point of view is at the heart of his interdisciplinary performance project, Gender Tender founded in 2012. GT engages a team of artists trained in Fox’s unique methods modeled on visual art practices, cults, riots and QT history. He is also a musician, filmmaker, actor, dancer, writer, yoga + meditation facilitator and teaching artist. Fox and collaborator Otto are the lead artists of the queer + trans centric indie rock, pop punk, performance art/psychedelic band Light Aloud. This project grew from their collaboration inside of Gender Tender and a conceptual sound project that grew from the performance Melted Riot SPECTRA(L) that happened at On the Boards in 2022 called the Gender Tender Experiment. Light Aloud features special guest artists from all disciplines. 

Fox’s ongoing project, MELTED RIOT is the main focus for his performance centric interdisciplinary art making. The project is ongoing and includes a series of in person and digital performances, videos, sound pieces and text based works. MELTED RIOT uses tactics rooted in dance, durational performance, and visual art to investigate the effects peaceful and violent forms of support and sabotage have on the bodies, minds, and spirits of the transgender and queer community. MELTED RIOT softens the word riot (a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd) replacing the word VIOLENT with: somatic, satirical, surreal, psychedelic. Inspired by the Stonewall Riots, this performance research project uses a crowd of close and socially distant voices, bodies, and sculptural interventions to investigate radical extremes inspired by the photographs taken during the Stonewall Riots of 1969, investigations into music and artworks from various collections (Henry Art gallery, Stonewall Inn jukebox playlist of 1969) and the QTBIPOC viewpoint of lead artist Fox Whitney. MELTED RIOT is a surreal protest song, a queer meditation, a psychedelic research project, a punk prayer.

Fox’s work has been commissioned and produced by the Henry Art Gallery, On the Board’s NW New Works Festival and Solo Festival; Velocity’s Next Fest NW and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation; the Seattle International Dance Festival; Yellow Fish Epic Durational Performance Festival and was selected for the inaugural season of Seattle’s Gay City Arts. Fox was the Artistic Director of Velocity Dance Center 2020-2022. He has performed in work by Will Rawls, Heather Kravas, keyon gaskin, Morgan Thorson, CommonForm Dance Project, Malic Amalya and Gabrielle Civil and has exhibited his dance films and visual art nationally. His most recent projects have included full length performances of Melted Riot at Treefort Music Festival in Boise ID and as part of Artists at the Center on the Armory stage at Seattle Center this past spring. He also premiered the full length interdisciplinary Gender Tender performance Melted Riot: Spectra(l) co-produced by Velocity and On the Boards featuring a cast of 20 artists this past June at On the Boards.

He has also been an active gigging musician playing with the collaborative band iteration of Gender Tender- The Gender Tender Experiment at various venues in Seattle as well as touring and recording with his other band project Rachaels Children. Fox is the drummer for RC; highlights have included playing The Underground Music Festival in Denver and touring through Boise and Salt Lake City, playing the Capitol Hill Block Party and various venues in Seattle like The Sunset and Cafe Racer. 

Drop-in Class: Tue, AUG 8 | 3:30–5:30 PM  

This workshop explores the intersection of live music, dance and meditation practices inspired by Fox’s performance group Gender Tender and his band Light Aloud. Meditations, scores for improvisation and live music will be a part of this workshop. The name Light Aloud comes from the name of a Gender Tender score Fox wrote that starts with meditating on a black and white image of police officers pushing a protester to the ground that was taken during the Stonewall Riots in 1969. The band continues to investigate the way image + sound + movement  intersect with dance, performance, queer and transgender history and contemporary QT life.

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Ashley Menestrina is a movement artist, performer, and teacher, with deep connections to improvisation. She has been performing her own work around the world since 2016. Her self-choreographed solo, “Always a Creature” has been performed several times in NYC.  Her second solo work, “The Human Condition: Absent Presence” premiered at The Martha Graham Theater in April 2018 and has since toured in New York City, Los Angeles, Turkey, Mexico City, Portugal, Oklahoma City (received ‘Best Creation’ Prize at Solocoreografico Festival), Israel, taking home 3rd place at the International Choreography Competition in Jerusalem as part of Jerusalem International Dance Week, and Germany (taking home the ‘Best Creation’ award again).  Her newest work, “Combative Echoes” was originally shown in Thessaloniki, Greece for Die Wolke Art Group’s Unit Motives: GRM festival in 2019, and was accepted into the 24th International Solo-Dance-Thetare Festival Stuttgart in 2020, as well as the 39th Edition of Battery Dance Festival held in NYC. Ashley is looking forward to the creation process of a new solo work titled, “The Woman in the Wire Suit” as well as furthering her teaching practice. Since moving to Seattle in 2021, Ashley has created a new work thanks to Velocity Dance Center’s Bridge Project program. This creation was performed at SIDF and Gonzaga University where she also commissioned a new work for their repertory company. Additionally, Ashley has worked with Anna Mlasowsky for the Amazon A.I.R program, Emily Schoen Branch, and Maia Melene Durfee in collaborative processes. 

Drop-in class: Tues, AUG 8 | 9:30 – 11:30 AM

The Connective Tissue Series is a movement-based improvisational practice. This series enables us to mindfully link the relationship of our own physical tissue to the more metaphorical connections that allow us to be seen and heard in everyday life. These realms of interconnectedness can be seen as our physical road map, our mental cognitive awareness, our internal sensorial mechanisms, and our external sociable informants. This series invites you to personally experience your own unique molecular nuances, sense them, understand them, grow them, and ultimately integrate them into surrounding portals of connectivity. Class will consist of various tasks that land us in our bodies and surroundings. The class will build into a durational improvisational experience that involves layering ideas. No experience required beyond your own curiosity. 

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Victoria is a certified SPRe Somatic Educator and Bodyworker as well as a certified GYROTONIC and GYROKINESIS trainer. She has been teaching embodied practices in New York and Seattle since 2004, including contemporary and classical dance, improvisation, somatic writing and artmaking. 

Victoria’s work begins with anatomy understood as an interconnected fascial system where all the parts affect one another. From there she layers how emotional and historical patterns also shape our moving, feeling bodies. She works to create language that accurately expresses your own body’s sensations/emotions. Artistically this creates multi-layered bodies of work, and as a student, this process can help you make more sense to yourself and feel equipped to speak and act on your needs, wants and desires. The movement and creation is our way of attuning to the sensations of your tissue, as well as updating your structure to match your emotional understanding.

 There is nothing she loves more than coming to understand each person’s story as your body speaks. She approaches this work with gentle, abundant curiosity about how your body is communicating your history, your feelings, your ambitions, and your blocks. Structural anatomy is the blueprint for all of our work, whether it’s movement-based rehabilitation, or emotionally intelligent bodywork. She is always working with all the parts of you. 

 “I believe that movement is life, and where there is flow there is pulsation, abundance, creativity and growth. Where there is tension or a lack of movement, there is information about our experience. “ 

Drop-in Class: Fri, AUG 11 | 9:30–11:30 AM

Somatics are deeply personal and in this class we will map our personal landscapes of shape, tension, history and desire. The tools are writing, drawing, bone-mapping floorwork, partnering where desired, and multiple layers of self-mapping.

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Alia Swersky is a movement artist, performer and educator deeply engaged in dance improvisation, durational time-based art, film, site-specific work, and environmental installation. She is an artist and an educator with degrees from Cornish College of the Arts and an MFA in dance from the University of Washington.

 Her artistic path over the last two decades has been shaped by this yearning for deep and meaningful connections with people and places. As a co-creator, ritual maker, and a “horizontal” director, Alia seeks to touch others through dance, somatic presence, vulnerability, and fierceness. Her work ranges from full audience participation to intimate acts of One-to-One performances, site-specific dances for film and live performance, as well as durational time-based art that includes physical acts of endurance, repetition, stillness, subtlety, singing, soft energetic grace, abstraction, caricature, and a deconstruction of clichés such as extreme high femme expressions. Her teaching and art-making seek to create practices that embrace endurance on stage and in life as acts of resistance, resilience, release, and beauty.

As a performer, Alia has also toured nationally and internationally as a member of the LeGendre Performance Group and has performed in the works with many Seattle artists, some of which include The Maureen Whiting Company, Khambatta Dance Company, Jurg Koch, KT Niehoff, and Salt Horse.

 As an educator, she has taught at Cornish College of the Arts for sixteen years and in the Seattle community at Velocity’s Strictly Seattle Festival, and the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). She was a long time Co-artistic director of Dance Art Group (DAG), a non-profit organization that promotes the practice and appreciation of dance and somatic education in the Seattle area, including the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.

Drop-in Class: Sat, AUG 12 | 9:30–11:30 AM

The entry point of this class is a deep practice in kinesthetic listening and training the reflexes to be responsive and receptive to constantly shifting conditions. Each person/body is welcome with their unique set of circumstances, orientations, identities, and movement sensibilities. This is part of the experiment––to introduce the fundamentals of contact improvisation within an atmosphere of curiosity, investigation, interrogation, questions and imaginations. How does our listening allow for myriad perspectives to co-exist and merge into nuanced communications with self, others, and the environment through touch? We will explore movement practices in solo, duet, and group constellations that connect us to some of the principles of Contact Improvisation––shifting points of contact, counter-balance, falling, recovering, weight sharing, touch and tone, rolling, spiraling, momentum through spherical space, and whatever else is emergent in the room.

This is an uncodified improvisation dance form in which we will research a range of physical expressions––from the still and subtle to the out of breath play with gravity and momentum. Essential to our work together is awareness in building trust, consent, boundaries, agency, self- care, and collective-care.

As a group, we will seek to learn and understand fundamental principles of CI, while co-creating with what is present and evolving.

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Choreographer and performer, Mariana Valencia is based in New York City. She received a BA at Hampshire College in Massachusetts in 2006 and her work has toured nationally and internationally in the UK and the Balkans. Valencia works through dance, text, and sound using humor, abstraction, and self-representation. Valencia has held numerous residencies and received awards for her choreography including the Creative Capital Award 2023, a Bessie Award for “Outstanding Breakout Choreographer” 2018, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists 2018, a Jerome Travel and Study Grant 2016. She was a 2019 Whitney Biennial artist. Her commissions include, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, The Shed, Performance Space New York and Abrons Arts Center. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence. She’s worked with artists AK Burns, Elizabeth Orr, Em Rooney, Fia Backstrom, Geo Wyeth, Guadalupe Rosales, Jazzy Romero, Juliana May, Jules Gimbrone, Kim Brandt, Lauren Bakst, Lydia Okrent, Morgan Bassichis, MPA, O’Helen, robbinschilds and Heera Gandhu. Valencia has published two books of performance texts, “Album” (Wendy’s Subway) and “Mariana Valencia’s Bouquet” (3 Hole Press).

Drop-in Class: Wed, AUG 9 | 3:30–5:30 PM 

“scores for dance” explores improvisation through score-making. The scores function as altars for dance in the presence of the body’s improvisational functions. The workshop offers a buffet of references including: sound, popular culture, and self-narrative. Each student will create one score by the end of the week together; movement, writing, observation and discussion are central in the workshop. Please wear clothes that you feel comfortable moving in.

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Alethea Alexander and Hannah Simmons began co-teaching under the name Ballet Rituals in Spring 2022. They arrive at ballet practices from different histories: Hannah from a rigid classical training and Alethea from an academic approach. They have a shared desire to queer the form and dismantle their relationships to ballet and academia’s problematic power structures. Their approach examines the tension between softness and rigor and, above all, prioritizes pleasure and joy. Alethea and Hannah’s collaboration extends into creative processes that are rooted in environment generation and responsiveness. Recent projects include a research-based residency at the Henry Art Gallery (in partnership with Velocity) and a premiere at Mini Mart City Park (curated by Maia Melene Durfee).

Lavinia Vago (she/her) is an Italian dance artist, performer, educator, maker, collaborator, and director based between Seattle, NYC, and Berlin. She experiments and creates dance works researching and attacking themes of disobedience, kinesthetic empathy, queerness, pressure, collective joy, altered states and transcendence inside experimental soundscapes.

As a dance artist she performed, created works and toured with Sidra Bell Dance NY, Loni Landon Projects, Vim Vigor Dance, Saint Genet, Tom Weinberger, Out Innerspace Dance Theater, and most extensively with RUBBERBAND. She co-directed and performed with Kate Wallich / The YC between 2010 – 2020. She now creates and tours with artist Tainzhuo Chen | Asian Dope Boys in Physis and TRANCE (Mwoods / Beijing, Trauma Bar / Berlin, Kampnagel / Hamburg, Norberg Festival / Sweden, Komische Oper Belrin, Dark Mofo / Tasmania).  

She is the Artistic Programming Director and Lead Teacher of Dance Church®, where she directs all programs for online and in person classes and partnerships, as well as lead of all bodies inclusivity and outreach initiatives. She also teaches Dance for Parkinson’s, the Rubberband Method, and masterclass series and workshops aimed to subvert, queer and rethink dance contemporary technique, floor work, and improvisation.

The Move: Experiments from Inside the Groove
with Nia-Amina Minor

Tues, JUL 18 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Wed, JUL 19 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Thurs, JUL 20 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register

Open to movers of all levels this class focuses on contemporary approaches to movement through groove + musicality, technical exploration, and choreographic investigation.  Class will be informed by historic and current movement practices including Black social dance, improvisation, floor work, and modern.  We begin with a guided improvisation and stamina building warm-up that explores body awareness based in sensation and musicality.  We will then move into skill building exercises to increase strength, flexibility, and balance in order to enhance the dynamic range of movement.  Finally, we will explore choreography as a site for collective gathering as well as individual expression.   

The format of this class will remain experimental and flexible allowing for opportunities to move and reflect together.  Together we will consider the ways we can use skill and choice making to inform our groove while engaging in process oriented experiments rather than product driven ones.  An experiment in groove, this class invites participants to be responsive and curious.

Dance as an act of revolutionary defiance : a technique class
with Lavinia Vago

Tues, AUG 1 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Wed, AUG 2 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Thurs, AUG 3 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register

How can we re-establish “technique” with a futuristic approach, and no longer as a thing of the past? While using dance as a tool to open unknown spaces of thinking and action, we will move our bodies, minds and spirits in an effort to find self-discovery, awareness, and mindfulness. Through improvisational escapes, psychological journeys, emotional dynamics and empathetic exchanges, we will attempt to discover and expand our collective joy as a space for healing. In a dance space that is queer and decolonized, our body is a political weapon to destroy everything that no longer serves us. This is our technique, now let’s dance.

Risky Business
with Drama Tops

Tues, JUL 25 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Wed, JUL 26 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Thurs, JUL 27 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register

In “Risky Business: a dance class” [a 3 day workshop (also available as daily drop-ins)], Drama Tops channels their queer experiences by challenging dancers to take up space, be heard, and practice radical fearlessness. This class flows from internal to external, beginning with introspective movements that connect the participant to their body, moving towards projecting their whole, confident self through space with phrase work and daring partnering. Drama Tops believes risk-taking is for everyone.

Undercurrent
with Hilary Grumman

Fri, JUL 21 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Fri, JUL 28 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Fri, AUG 4 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register

Dive into the flow of getting low by unpacking the rigor, mechanics, and efficiency of floorwork with care, curiosity, and precision. These uptempo sessions offer a constant stream of movement to warm the body, juice the joints, discover new pathways, and cultivate both a personal and community practice. Learn how the natural architecture of your body can make challenging floorwork feel smooth, strategic, strengthening, and sustainable! As class progresses, these foundations grow into more complex sequences, inversions, and tricks, culminating in a choreographic phrase that incorporates the themes and tools of each session. *We recommend wearing soft layers that are comfortable to move in and cover your whole body.

Ballet Rituals
with Hannah Simmons & Alethea Alexander

Mon, JUL 17 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Mon, JUL 24 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register
Mon, JUL 31 | 10:30 AM –12:30 PM | Register

Ballet Rituals is born out of an active interest in queering the technique and culture of ballet. Class begins on the floor with a sensory and somatic warmup that encourages softness, proprioceptive tuning, and efficiency. From there, we move into a barre practice that offers both familiar exercises and those that explicitly diverge from classical structure and are rooted in more contemporary research. Class culminates with four juicy and expansive center phrases: tendu, adagio, waltz, and jumps.

Our classes are designed to help contemporary movers revel in what the familiarity and structure of ballet has to offer while simultaneously shedding those parts of the practice that don’t serve us. Pop-indie playlists underpin the ritual and rhythm of ballet shapes and pathways and help to root us in togetherness and joy. We indulge in and subvert the familiarity of form through creative pathways, anatomical clarity, and collective practice. We play and laugh our way through experiencing ballet as a ritual, in community.

We treat ballet as a practice, not an ideology, and reject hierarchy, patriarchy, silence, and authoritarianism wherever possible. We use a co-teaching model, encourage singing along, and offer classes at a sliding scale whenever we can to help meet these goals.

Beginning Hip Hop
with Jaret Hughes

Mon, JUL 17 | 5:30–7 PM | Register
Fri, JUL 21 | 5:30–7 PM | Register
Wed, JUL 26 | 5:30–7 PM | Register

In this class participants learn how to breakdown the basic fundamentals of Hip Hop, including isolations, foundations, how to snake, body roll, hip roll, bounces and more.  Each class will include a warm-up with conditioning, progressions across the floor, drills and learning a 3 – 4 min choreographed dance to help prepare you for the stage!  This high energy, confidence-building class will have you shakin’, movin’ and not to mention sweatin’!

Beginning Contemporary
with Keyes Wiley

Mon, JUL 24 | 5:30–7 PM | Register
Fri, JUL 28 | 5:30–7 PM | Register

In this class participants will learn how to use the floor to their advantage and is open to every body! Using principles from break dancing and other contemporary forms we will focus on anatomically sound technique with respect for individual’s physical facility. The class emphasizes deep muscular core support, efficient movement mechanics, and use of weight, as well as movement quality and expressive phrasing. In addition, dancers will learn to recognize physical patterns and challenges and develop a strategy for personal growth and change, deepen our ability to have intention with movement and create a personal performance strategy. Set to cool grooves and pop music we will work hard so we can play harder.

Intermediate Contemporary
with Wade Madsen

Tue, JUL 18 | 5:30–7 PM | Register
Tue, JUL 25 | 5:30–7 PM | Register

This class will begin with slow movements that warm the body up and strengthen basic core values in the body and move to more complex combinations and patterns. Basic dance vocabulary and exercises will be used throughout the class along with some improvisation culminating in some phrase work and set choreography for the intermediate dancer.

Intermediate Ballet
with Chris Montoya

Thu, JUL 20 | 5:30–7 PM | Register
Thu, JUL 27 | 5:30–7 PM | Register

Ballet class is geared towards students who have a knowledge of ballet vocabulary and positions, as well as students desiring a healthy approach to ballet technique. Classes are taught with an emphasis on anatomical alignment, accumulative learning, musicality, and the movements are broken down for clarity of the positions to progress with confidence.

Intermediate Ballet
with Chris Montoya

Thu, JUL 20 | 5:30–7 PM | Register
Thu, JUL 27 | 5:30–7 PM | Register

This class is geared towards students who have a knowledge of ballet vocabulary and positions, as well as students desiring a healthy approach to ballet technique. Classes are taught with an emphasis on anatomical alignment, accumulative learning, musicality, and the movements are broken down for clarity of the positions to progress with confidence.

Intermediate Hip Hop
with Keyes Wiley

Sat, JUL 22 | 10:30 AM – 12 PM | Register
Sat, JUL 29 | 10:30 AM – 12 PM | Register

Hip-hop refers to street dance styles primarily performed to hip-hop music that have evolved as part of hip-hop culture. Styles include breaking, house, popping, and more. In class, dancers will address movement qualities, dynamics, timing and personal style. Classes generally start with a warm-up and learned “groove” progressions, then work on a combination which chains movement in a longer sequence. Hip-hop/ Street Styles can range from smaller isolated movements to large full bodied expressions and possibly a “freestyle” (improvisational) component. At the of the day the goal is to have fun!

Multi-hyphenate art maker Keyes Wiley (they/them) is a designer of dance, theater, music, lights and sound. Their vast movement vocabulary continues to grow from break dancing to musical theater and now more burlesque! Wiley has been an arts educator in Seattle since 2009 teaching at Rainier Dance Center as the director of hip hop/street styles dance, choreographing with Seattle Children’s Theatre and teaching at their alma mater Cornish College of the Arts. You can catch them in action as dj dark_wiley monthly at TUSH & Peekaboo both at the Clock-Out Lounge.

Keyes has performed, collaborated or created work with Keith Hennessey, Kitten N Lou, Dani Tirrell, On the Boards, the CD Forum, Velocity Dance Center, Gibney Dance (NYC), Cal State San Luis Obispo & many others.

Chris was born in the small town of St. Johns, Arizona but grew up in South Phoenix. Chris began their academic journey with the University of Arizona, taking time off periodically to work with professional dance companies. Chris started their professional career with Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago as a second company member. Chris continued their career with David Taylor Dance Theatre, Scorpius Dance Theatre, and Center Dance Ensemble, guesting periodically with Queen City Ballet and Legacy Dance Theater. Chris also enjoyed dancing on pointe with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, performing as Doris Vidanya around the world, including Japan, Israel, France, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Finland, Spain, and Italy. Moving to Seattle in 2011, Chris completed their undergraduate degree with Cornish College of the Arts, while also performing with Seattle Dance Project and Men In Dance. While at Cornish, Chris’ goals shifted from professional work to teaching dance in higher education, which led Chris to receive their Master of Fine Arts from the University of Washington.

Wade has been teaching  in the Seattle area since 1977  He has toured nationally with the Bill Evans Dance Company ,Tandy Beal & Company (touring and company Member with Dayna Hanson Group He has performed with,  Peggy Piacheza, Amy O’Neal and Amii Legendre dance groups Wade has been producing work with his own company, ’Wade Madsen & Dancers’ along with various tours nationally and internationally. Madsen teaches Privately in the Gyrotonic method, Yoga, strength  and contemporary technique at Exit space. He was a professor of dance for over 37 years at Cornish College of the Arts.

Jaret Hughes (he/him) has over 25 years of dance experience, with Hip Hop being his specialty along with training in Modern, Jazz, Ballet and African. Jaret has over 20 years of choreographing and teaching experience with all ages, including over 22 years at Elizabeth’s Dance Dimensions in Kirkland, Washington, over 10 years at Velocity Dance Center and over 5 years as a guest instructor at Pacific Northwest Ballet. Jaret’s choreography credits include the L.A. Clippers Spirit Dance Team (guest choreographer), Seattle Supersonics Dance Team for 5 years, founder of Twisted Elegance from Seattle and LA’s debut of 2wisted Elegance with the help of his good friend Joey Cooper, Modazz Competition Teams at Elizabeth’s Dance Dimensions, Elite Dance Camps, co-choreographer and dancer for EVE in LA, Assistant Choreographer / Assistant Artistic Director for the “Invitation Feedback” YouTube video contest submission for Janet Jackson and guest choreographer for The Purple Lemonade Collective. Jaret has shared his choreography expertise with various high school and college dance teams throughout Washington, California and Idaho.

Lore Aschoff (Death Lore) is an artist with a background in dance, performance art, death & dying. They are one half of clown-art-drag duo Lesbian Death Bed and a former Managing Artistic Director at Studio Current. Their work has been produced in festivals at Velocity Dance Center and in all kinds of nooks and radical crannies throughout the city.

with Alia Swersky

Mainstage Theater

The Opening Jam will be just that…An Opening / A Opportunity to Begin Again and Again…Alia will guide participants in an opening score to meet & mingle which will then lead us into Open Dancing. This is not specifically a Contact Jam, but all styles and desires are welcome with awareness of consent always in practice. Come as you are. Meet yourself & meet one another. We will see what collaboratively emerges.

MAINSTAGE

Enter Anytime Jam with Karen Nelson

Enter Anytime Jam will start with group scores of 1 minute solos and evolve duet and ensemble interactions that based on individual dancers’ appetites and consent may or may not include touch or weight — powered as well by live vibes from wonderous musicians cellist Lori Goldston and mgdangam player Doug Mackenzie.

STUDIO

Open Jam

This Open Jam is a non facilitated space with no music for Participants to jam.  This space is not centered on Contact Improvisation but contact is welcome.

MAINSTAGE

Poetry Jam with Ryuta Iwashita

Poetry Jam : a playful, poetic arena where texts become the landscape as they travel in and out of our bodies as our partner. There will be no music, but there will be a microphone, a stand and a sound system.

STUDIO

That’s A Handful! Research Jelly Jam with Alyza Delpan-Monley

Alongside the Mainstage Jams, CAiR artist alyza will be facilitating an explorative space as part of their research for their upcoming show That’s a HANDFUL!

MAINSTAGE

Seattle Jam with Helena Zhao

This will be a contact improvisation open jam, with a facilitated warm-up focused on tonality, listening, and support. Physical touch within duets, trios, and ensemble work is possible. It is also possible to engage in this jam with no physical touch. There may occasionally be music if the moment calls for it, and sounding by dancers is welcome and encouraged.

STUDIO

Open Jam

This Open Jam is a non facilitated space with no music for Participants to jam.  This space is not centered on Contact Improvisation but contact is welcome.

aka THE DREAMACHINEHAPPENING

with Light Aloud

Mainstage Theater

A dance + sound + light show Happening inspired by the performance art of the 1950s-1960s (Alan Kaprow coined the term) and an object called the dreamachine-a stroboscopic flicker device viewed with closed eyes that produces visual stimuli and hypnagogic states (aka relaxation) created by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs’s. This Happening will feature music from synth punk psychedelic band Light Aloud and special guests. Come to dance (scores for improvisation offered by Fox or do your own thing); come to watch (visuals galore); come to meditate (close your eyes for the dreamachine to take effect); come to connect and chill (a/c in august yes).

Open Jam

Mainstage Theater

This Closing Open Jam is a non facilitated space for Participants to jam on the final day of the festival. This space is not centered on Contact Improvisation but contact is welcome.