BODYSTRAIN:

 In this drop-in class, participants will explore basic breaking movement within its original freestyle and battle context, as well as learning BRKFST methodology, which deconstructs the form for performance arts spaces. Dancers will gain insights about breaking culture and its values of originality and inclusivity. Topics that will be discussed will include: “biting” (dance plagiarism), “flipping moves” (changing them), developing style and composition. Breaking is traditionally performed as a solo dance form that celebrates individuality in “cyphers” (dance circles) and “battles” (competitions). For performance art, participants may partner up and explore BRKFST’s approach to adapting the form for theater stages or other performative spaces.

BIOS:

BRKFST Dance Company from Minnesota utilizes breaking to create performance art that is intellectually stimulating and physically rigorous. Their work is informed by breaking culture where earning respect from battles and passing knowledge to the new generation is fundamental. The lived experiences of this collective of artists, who identify as working class, queer and BIPOC, inform their compositions.

Selected BRKFST Dance Company accolades include: 

2025 & 2024 Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) Flexible Support Grant 

2024 Caroline Hearst Choreographer-In-Residence at Princeton University & Creative Residency at The National Center for Choreography – Akron (NCCAkron) 

2023 National Performance Network Creations and Development and Storytelling Grants 

2022 New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Production Grant

*Photo by Amanda Tipton

THE MOVE: EXPERIMENTS INSIDE THE GROOVE:

Dive into contemporary approaches to movement through groove + musicality, physical exploration, and choreography.  Class is informed by historic and current movement practices including Black social dance and improvisation. Bring all of yourself, that means any foundational movement practices or dance styles/genres of movement, party dances, and social dances; bring all the ways your body moves.

BIO:

Nia-Amina Minor is a movement artist from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the body and what it carries using physical and archival research to converse with memory. She has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. Nia-Amina is co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project that celebrates embodied research through performance and curation. Nia-Amina was Dance Magazine’s 25 Artists to Watch in 2021, and one of Seattle Magazine’s Most Influential People in 2025. She is currently on faculty at Cornish College of the Arts.

*Photo by Jim Coleman

FLOORWORK:

Undercurrent offers a deep dive into the vigor, mechanics, and joyride of floorwork through a seamless and immersive physical practice. In these classes, movers will be guided through a continuous stream of sequences, each utilizing the body’s architecture to make progressively challenging movement comfortable, playful, strengthening, and sustainable. As the flow gathers momentum, these concepts grow in complexity and dynamic range. We prioritize biomechanical safety and energetic efficiency in service of full-body engagement, innovative inversions, and fluid choreographic sequencing.

BIO:

Undercurrent is an evolving experimental entity facilitating floorwork classes, interdisciplinary performances, movement innovation, university courses, touring workshops, and community gatherings since 2017 under the direction of Hilary Grumman. Weaving 14 years of diverse floorwork training with 9 years of independent movement research, Undercurrent offers a cohesive, meticulous, meditative, and rigorous floorwork technique and immersive choreographic works that delve into the thrill of kinesthesia, communal care, and risk. The creative process and teaching practice are co-directed by dance artists Alethea Alexander and Hilary Grumman.

*Photo by Jazzy Photo

BALLET RITUALS:

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 warm up before moving into barre and center practices that have both familiar exercises and those which explicitly diverge from classical structure and are rooted in contemporary research.

BIOS:

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 collaborations extend into creative processes that are rooted in environment generation and responsiveness. Recent projects include new work presented by Washington Ensemble Theater (2024); a premiere at Mini Mart City Park, curated by Maia Melene Durfee (2023); and a research-based residency at the Henry Art Gallery, in partnership with Velocity (2022).

Alethea (M.F.A., University of Washington) is a Seattle-based dance artist and educator, and co-founder of Ballet Rituals. Community, sensuality, care, effort and collaboration are central tenets of her creative and teaching work with dance partners human, object and sonic. Alethea teaches community classes with Dance Undercurrent, is Training Manager and teacher with Dance Church, and regularly guest teaches at Cornish College of the Arts and University of Washington (Seattle). She performs her own improvised and choreographed works in collaboration with multidisciplinary artists in Seattle and nationally. Other teaching appointments include Whatcom Community College (2014-2016), Velocity Dance Center’s SFD+I summer festival (2019, 2022-2024), as well as recurring guest teaching for ODC Dance (2013), Bellingham Repertory Dance (2013-2017) the Seattle Piano Institute (2017-2023), Sam Houston State University (2019-2021) and others.

Hannah is a multi-disciplinary performer, creator, and educator living and working in Seattle. She holds a B.A. from Bennington College in dance and mathematics. Her choreographies and installations are centered around queering forms and hybridizing reality and fiction, in service of giving viewers a dynamic and unusual perspective on their own bodies. Her recent work has been supported by Velocity Dance Center, NWFF’s Collective Power Fund, MAP Fund’s inaugural microgrant initiative, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture, and the Freeway Park Association. She is passionate about communal care, collaboration, and building sustainable and reciprocal systems of support for artists.

*Photo by Allina Yang

SOUL LINE DANCE:

Get ready to step, groove, and connect! Soul Line Dance is a joyful Black American social dance tradition with roots stretching from the resilience of enslaved Africans to the Harlem Renaissance, the swingin’ ‘50s, the funky ‘70s, and the Electric Slide wave of the ‘90s. Today, it thrives as a vibrant celebration of music, movement, and shared rhythm.

In this class, we’ll begin in an intro circle to ground ourselves and honor the history behind the steps. After a lively warm-up, you’ll dive into line dances set to soul, R&B, and funk tracks. Expect repetition that feels good, full-body movement, and a vibe that welcomes everyone—no partner required, just your energy and groove!

Whether you’re brand new or a seasoned dancer, this class is an invitation to celebrate culture and connection—one line at a time.

BIO:

dani tirrell (dani as pronoun), recipient of Seattle’s 2019 Mayor’s Arts Award, is a Black, Trans Spectrum, Queer choreographer, dancer, and movement guide whose work centers Black identity, community, and storytelling. dani’s artistic practice has reached audiences across the U.S., from Detroit to Seattle to Washington, D.C., fostering spaces for reflection, connection, and transformation. 

*Photo by Allina Yang

SPARKLE BRAIN BALLET:

BALLET CLASS! We will do the normal ballet things, but we will explore them with excitement, humility, creativity, and intellect.  I teach ballet because I love it.

BIO:

Joseph Hernandez has acted as a choreographer  dancer,  writer, curator, educator, and persona non grata in some of the world’s most famous institutions and least famous internet circles.  He comes from Germany but now lives in Seattle, WA – where he hopes to  adopt a dog and find some meaning in creation again. He took a break from making dance (or making art of any kind for that matter) because he got tired.  (He got tired of making work for dance companies that treat their employees like cattle and who cling to the past because they are greedy and scared.).  Art is one of his biggest loves and he is excited to be making it on his terms.  BLUE SCREEN is where you will find collaborations, events, essays, and baseball caps with pithy slogans.  BLUE SCREEN is amorphously organized public forum where he intends to enlist a lot of people he loves to display their grief, growth and resilience alongsinde his own.

CUNNINGHAM TECHNIQUE ®

Class as a celebration of the body moving in space. Beginning with the Cunningham back exercises and progressing outward as we warm up, we’ll experiment with how our upper and lower bodies move together and separately. We will shift our weight, find freedom through verticality, and begin to travel— first slow, then big and fast. Exercises range from simple, familiar movements to layered combinations of limbs, torso, and rhythm. We will curve, arch, tilt, twist, fall, run, turn, balance, lengthen, and leap with clarity, commitment, and playful rigor. The fight to make the step happen is the interesting part.

BIO:

Una Ludviksen (she/her) is a dance artist from Seattle. She has performed in New York, LA, and Toronto with the Merce Cunningham Trust, and is an authorized Cunningham Technique® teacher. She has performed for GREYZONE NYC, Dylan Crossman Dance, Emily Schoen Branch, AnA Collaborations, POGO Dance, and CO- in Seattle, New York, Toronto, Frankfurt, and Berlin. Una co-founded DANCE CLASS with Tariq Mitri and Ashley Menestrina, and is on faculty at Bainbridge Dance Center. She received her BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance with further study at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

THE BODY: an improvisational landscape

In this non-codified improvisational dance class, we will enter into inquiry and embodied research—THE BODY—an ever-shifting site for a multifaceted range of movement possibilities and perceptual awarenesses. Rooted in the North American and European postmodern and contemporary dance traditions, the improvisation practice is an investigation of presence and a deepened understanding of each mover’s layered physical landscapes.

BIO:

Alia Swersky has been a Seattle based artist for several decades. She is a movement artist, performer, and educator deeply immersed in dance improvisation, durational and time-based work, film, site-specific performance, sound and movement collaborations, and environmental installation. She is always beginning again, and this current iteration of herself feels both unknown and unfamiliar. Recently going through cancer treatments has altered her in ways that continue to unfold—revealing the constancy of change itself, and learning to meet oneself in artist  practice from new perspectives. Alia holds degrees from Cornish College of the Arts and the University of Washington, where she earned her MFA in Dance. She is currently an Assistant Professor and Chair of Dance at Cornish College of the Arts @ Seattle University. 

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. 

HOUSE:

House Class focuses on foundational steps and variations, feeling the music, finding your voice through freestyle, and working on steps through drilling, combos and choreography while working solo and with others. This class will help others learn some history of House dance as well as gain a larger vocabulary in movement. There are different warmups I utilize including body weight exercises, functional movement, freestyle and other dance-based warmups. My classes work on connecting the movements in your body and learning to make them your own and help speak your voice through the movement, everyone has a different body and relates to movement differently, so we work towards what feels best for you after working on a base. Freestyle is a big part of class and showing your authentic self, you will hear various types of music in class during freestyle sections, but foundation portions of the class will be to various types of House music, freestyle is a part of the warm up and class WILL ALWAYS END IN A CYPHER. Class will not tolerate any misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, or any other form of disrespect to individuals in any way. Class is open to all levels, and anyone can take something away. Come ready to be yourself, have  fun, be challenged, and sweat! Feel free to message me for any questions.

BIO:

Majinn (They/Them) is a queer, disabled, mixed Black LMT and dance artist and educator who utilizes their training in multiple dance forms to find and express their whole self. They believe that to be the best person they can be they need to continuously push their own comfort zone. Majinn works to help guide people in becoming more confident and connected in their bodies, find joy in movement and be able to speak their voices primarily through Black social dance forms. One of Majinn’s biggest goals in dance is to spread the histories and cultures of Black social dance forms in and out of academia so that the cultures are learned and more respected. They also aim to give back to the communities that these art forms were created from through any way they can. Majinn’s art is for themselves and the communities they come from, always striving to be authentically themselves in their movement and work. You can find Majinn under Majinn_Moves on Instagram

*Photo by Erin O’Reilly

Whole Self Integration: Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement®:

This pre-performance class will center and ground you, preparing you to be your most present self on stage. We’ll do some Awareness Through Movement®, guided movement sequences that we inhabit with gentleness, curiosity, and freedom of exploration, and call upon other materials—writing and drawing, for example—as needed to support your process of whole self integration

BIO:

Sheri Cohen (she/her) has steeped in the movement arts for over 35 years in the fields of dance, yoga and the Feldenkrais Method®. She enjoys a lively private Feldenkrais® practice in the Seattle area, teaches classes, retreats and workshops, and trains new practitioners in Feldenkrais professional trainings. Sheri presented dance performances for over twenty years in Seattle and abroad, including deeply researched historical works and on-the-spot improvisations. Her influences include a wide variety of techniques and somatic practices (contact improvisation, tuning, Deep Listening, Skinner Releasing, Contemplative Dance Practice and more), all of which influence her creative work and teaching. Sheri’s teaching combines playfulness and rigor, creating an environment in which all individuals are dancers and learners. More info at: shericohenmovement & shericohendance

HYBRID HIP HOP CONTEMPORARY IMPROVISATION:

Through merging the experimental and social natures of street, club, and contemporary forms, we explore connections and differences in the ways these cultures frame, perceive, experience, and express freestyle/improvisation.  We will honor history, movement foundations, consciousness of our personal positionality to these dance cultures, and multiple approaches to musicality and rhythm. The methods taught in this class can be applied to all forms of dance, however, experience in these forms will be helpful and allow the participant to go deeper in the practice. We will embody rigor and play simultaneously working solo, in duets, and groups through actively listening, reflecting, and vibing. Come with an open mind and a desire to get free. 

BIO:

Amy O’Neal (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, curator, and dance educator merging contemporary and street dance since 2000. She creates for experimental performance, concert dance, dance film, music video, and virtual reality and has toured eight acclaimed evening length works nationally and internationally. From 2000 to 2010, along with musician and composer Zeke Keeble, O’Neal co-directed locust, a dance/music/video performance company based in Seattle. From 2010 until now, she creates dance experiences merging practices and values of hip hop, house dance culture, and experimental performance. O’Neal is a grantee of Creative Capital, National Performance Network, National Dance Project, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art, among others. She is a two-time Artist Trust Fellow, DanceWEB/Impulstanz scholar, a Kennedy Center Social Impact Residency Artist, Visiting Dance Innovator at Harvard, and Herb Alpert Award nominee with a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, where she earned the first Distinguished Alumni Award in 2014. With friend and colleague, dani tirrell, she co-founded the first house dance classes in Seattle at The Beacon: Massive Monkees Studio in 2014 and co-organized Seattle House Dance Project, a three-day event with battles, performances, classes, and discussions in 2017. She founded the street dance curriculum at the University of Washington in 2017 and serves as Part Time Lecturer at The University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance in Los Angeles since 2018. A Velocity Dance Center artist since 1996, Amy served as Curating Artist in Residence 2023-2025. She is the Executive/Artistic Director of Hybrid Dance Lab, a performance platform for street/club dancers to experiment in the theater and transform rigid ideas about culture into more just, connected, and liberated social realities. She continues to work between Seattle and LA.

*Photo by Erin O’Reilly