BREAK EVERY RULE:

What if failure sparks new potential? Grounded in queer love-centered survival skills, this class explores the connection between breaking rules, failure, and possibility. We’ll disrupt norms, embrace complexity, and practice skills like re-training reflexes, collaboration vs. competition, touch, and relational impact. Together, we’ll break explicit and unspoken rules, freeing how we live, dance, and connect. This will be a queer, trans, and BIPoC centered space. We will practice taking care as we traverse the complex and high-risk realities of being racialized and gendered bodies in relationship with one another.

BIOS:

Makisig Akin (they/them)

I am a queer, transgender Filipino choreographer, dance artist, facilitator, and activist. I was born and raised in the Philippines and am currently based in Berlin and Colorado. My work focuses on the recognition of intersectional identities, reconnecting with my ancestry, and decentralizing Western ideologies in dance making. Holding spaces for QTBIPoC folx is an integral part of my artist activism. I co-direct The Love Makers Company with Anya Cloud, co-founded Emerging Change Tanzfestival with Nara Virgens, regularly teach/facilitate internationally, and received an MFA from UCLA.

Anya Cloud (she/they)

I am an experimental contemporary dance artist originally from Alaska and currently based between Colorado and Berlin. As a queer white person, I orient my work to cultivate radical aliveness as an artist-activist practice. Collaboration, questioning, and deep physicality are central to all of my work. I co-direct The Love Makers Company with Makisig Akin and regularly teach at festivals and in communities internationally. I teach at the University of Colorado Boulder, earned an MFA from UCSD, and trained in the Feldenkrais Method®.

*Photo by Amanda Tipton

SPARKLE BRAIN BALLET:

“I love to teach ballet and I love to find joy.  I think that these things are not mutually exclusive.  This class is basically just ballet class but very round and groovy.  (Emphasis on the groovy.) Come spin, stretch, flail, and sparkle.”

BIO:

Joseph Hernandez is a choreographer and writer based in Seattle, Washington. His work as a choreographer has been presented with critical acclaim by such organisations as The Joyce NYC, Festspielhaus Hellerau, The Semperoper Dresden, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, Theatre St. Gallen, and Whim W’Him Contemporary Dance Seattle, and the Staatstheater Nürnberg. His work The Lavender Follies was filmed for European Television by ZDF Deutschland and has now been disseminated worldwide. He has taught at SUNY Purchase College, Dance Arts Faculty (Rome), and Cornish College of the Arts, well as the Royal Danish Ballet, and Artof (Zurich) summer courses. He served as a founder and jury member for Tanznetz Dresden’s STUDIO ROUND, curating showings and performances/discussions by creators from all over Europe. His installation series Nielsson Conversations was hosted by S T O R E Contemporary in Dresden, Germany. In addition to his freelance work, he was appointed Associate Choreographer at the Northwest Dance Project in 2022.

*Photo by Quinn Wharton

DEEP REST:

With the intention of cultivating a sense of calm, this class will focus on states of deep rest as a way to access intimate spaces within our dancing. 

In the form of a guided meditation, we start with the body. Instilling a sense of stillness and quiet, we listen and begin to move from the intimate spaces that connect us to ourselves and to each other.

Softness/Stillness/Quiet/Porous/Gentleness/Presence/Joy . . . all words that come to mind as we tune our attention towards our bodies, ourselves.

BIO:

Peggy Piacenza has been creating performance-based artwork and building community in Seattle for over 30 years. Her work embodies a wide spectrum of experience drawing from explorations in improvisation, video art, performance, meditation and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her latest project,The Forever Project, utilizing video installation and live performance, premiered in January 2024 at On the Boards. She is a 2024 recipient of the Artist Trust Fellowship Award. In addition to her own work, she is currently working with NYC/Toronto-based performance collective Same As Sister (S.A.S.). She is a co-founder of Base, a non-profit organization dedicated to elevating risk and invention in dance, performance and multidisciplinary art. 

*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 continual stream of sequences, each using the architecture of the body to make progressively challenging movement comfortable, playful, strengthening, and sustainable. As the flow gathers momentum, these concepts grow in complexity and dynamic range. With clarity and care, active investigations are supported and fed throughout the class by weaving biomechanical safety into energetic efficiency, full-body engagement, innovative inversions, and fluid choreographic sequencing.

BIO:

Undercurrent is an evolving experimental entity hosting floorwork classes, university courses, interdisciplinary performances, movement innovation, immersive retreats, and community gatherings since 2017 under the direction of Hilary Grumman. After earning her BFA from CalArts, Hilary pursued floorwork training with Piso Móvil, Flying Low, Psico-Físico, RUBBERBAND, Jorge Crecis, Adam Barruch, Ihsan Rustem, Moving Air, Duela-Cemento, A Surprised Body, CONTINUUM, Breaking, and Austrian Bodyparkour. Drawing from these methods, followed by 8 years of independent research as an Artist in Residence at Fremont Abbey, Hilary has developed a cohesive, meticulous, meditative, and rigorous movement technique under the umbrella of Undercurrent. This approach intertwines biomechanical safety and energetic efficiency with innovative inversions, full-body engagement, and fluid choreographic sequencing. Undercurrent leads courses at the University of Washington and Cornish College of the Arts and workshops at art and activist organizations globally, including FIDCDMX with La Infinita Estudio, New York City Center with NVA & Guests, Mosswood Hollow Retreat Center, Mark Morris Dance Center, Peridance Center, Dance Complex Boston with co/motion, Bodies of Empowerment SF, EDGE Ciudad de México, and AWID Forum Brazil. Hilary hosts additional movement investigation and community-building events through collaborations with contemporary artists and educators, such as Alethea Alexander, Nicole von Arx, Babatunji Johnson, Ground Grooves, Ballet Rituals, Actualize, and RUBBERBAND dancers. As an individual and co-creator, Hilary is invested in pedagogy, collective caretaking, activist organizing, experiential design, submersive performance, perpetual curiosity, and being outside. Dive deeper at DanceUndercurrent.com

*Photo by Stefano Altamura

A LIFE DURING WARTIME:

Come dance with Keyes! This is a movement based class utilizing street and contemporary forms to connect with your body and the other bodies in the room. We will warm up, learn phrase work and unearth the tools used to create phrase works.

BIO:

 Keyes Wiley (they/them) is a multi-hyphenated performing artist, dj, light and sound designer. They are currently a dance faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, resident dj of the drag performance show TUSH and the artistic director of the performance group The NoGoodDoers. Not too long ago they were a Managing Artistic Director for the DIY performance space Studio Current. From 2010-2015 Keyes formed the dance co. The New Animals and was also a member of Lingo Productions directed by KT Niehoff before branching off into solo performance. Beyond that Keyes has performed/collaborated with Keith Hennessy (SF), Keyon Gaskin (PDX), Alice Gosti, Ben de la Creme, Jinx Monsoon and many others. More recently Keyes has and continues to perform in the works of dani tirrell, Kitten n Lou and will be touring with the drag queen Betty Wetter. Their work has been seen/presented at On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, Inscape Arts, Bumbershoot, Co-, Washington Ensemble Theater, Seattle International Dance Festival, Gibney (NYC), Risk Reward (PDX) and others. Keyes’ considers themselves a natural born collaborator and thrives in rooms with artists who feel the same.

The Move: Experiments inside the Groove

Dive into contemporary approaches to movement through groove + musicality, technical exploration, and choreography.  Class is informed by historic and current movement practices including Black social dance, improvisation, floor work, and modern technique. We will be guided by music from the Jazz and Hip Hop continuum and discuss music just as much as we practice movement.  As an experiment in groove, we’ll find a chorus of movement together. 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, choreographer, curator, and educator originally from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the body and what it carries using physical and archival research to explore memory and history. She approaches her practice as an imaginative space grounded in rhythm where improvisation, Black vernacular movement, and choreography meet. Nia-Amina is co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project that organizes with the intention of bringing together diasporic people involved in creating and supporting movement based experiences. She has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic and film work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. In 2021, she was recognized as Dance Magazine’s 25 Artists to Watch. Nia-Amina holds a MFA from UC Irvine and a BA from Stanford University.

IMPROVISATION FOR WARMTH + PERFORMANCE: EXAMINING INSPIRATION:

Designed for people who enjoy dancing for long periods, this guided, research-based contemporary improvisation class will dive into many intrinsic layers of movement. We will generate warmth and touch on skeletal, muscular, imagery, narrative, and memory-based movement and how rhythm, texture, vocalization, and dynamics inform, support, and distort the experience. We will connect our conscious mind to our practice and examine the spectrum of inspiration, culminating in spontaneous score-building and composition. Bring your curiosity and the desire to tread the line between chaos and order.

BIO:

Tariq Mitri is a gay, Palestinian-American dancer and choreographer in Seattle, WA. In 2015, he graduated from the California Institute of the Arts and has worked for multiple choreographers in Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York, including Kate Wallich + The YC, MADBOOTS Dance, WHYTEBERG, and others. From 2019 to 2021, he was the Rehearsal Director and Co-Director of Brooklyn-based dance company HEIDCO. Tariq’s work has been presented by the International Dance Festival New Orleans, Velocity Dance Center, Friends of Waterfront Seattle, The Seattle Art Museum’s SAM Remix, The Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, and CO—. He also was a 2024 recipient of the Body Space Time Residency through the University of Washington.

*Photo by Jacob Rosen

CONTEMPORARY IDEAS + INQUIRIES:

Contemporary Ideas & Inquiries is an advanced level class that will investigate and challenge our habits and routines within our dancing body. Class begins with a somatic, sensorially driven, improvisational warm-up, progresses to structured floorwork and standing material, and culminates in phrase work that focuses on weight, release, softness, ease, and articulation. Themes include finding ease in effort, questioning impulse and finding pleasure in surprise.

BIO:

Emma Lawes (she/her) is a dancer, educator and producer based between Los Angeles and Seattle. She is on faculty at Orange County School of the Arts and California School of the Arts SGV and is one half of CO-, a production and event company that produces dance performances & parties in vibrant environments. She has performed works by Keyes Wiley, Sean Ardor, Mary Grace McNally, Kate Wallich, Tom Weinberger, Sidra Bell, Liz Houlton, Babette Pendleton, and others. As a maker, she has presented her own work at Base: Experimental Arts + Space, 10 Degrees Arts + Events, Mutuus Studio and Atwater Village Theater. She is a graduate of the University of the Arts with a BFA in Dance Performance under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield.

*Photo by Lexi Dysart

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

Contemporary Technique:

Class focuses on Mr. Byrd’s movement aesthetics: achieving a particular balance – clarity of line, rhythmic force, gravity and emotional weight. In addition, there is a balance of usage between the upper and lower halves of the body (one area does not dominate the other) and an ease of moving from standing to the floor. In other words, the body moves as a coordinated whole, equally articulated and expressive in the torso/trunk or the leg, whether standing or on the floor.

BIOS:

 Donald Byrd is the Artistic Director of the Seattle based Spectrum Dance Theater, a TONY nominated (The Color Purple) and Bessie Award winning (The Minstrel Show) choreographer. He has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, The Joffrey Ballet among others; and has worked extensively in theater and opera including The New York Public Theater, The 5th Avenue Theater, CenterStage (Baltimore), Seattle Opera, Dutch National Opera,The Atlanta Opera, The Israeli Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and San Francisco Opera. Awards, prizes, and fellowships includes

Doris Duke Artist Award, James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award, Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts (Cornish College of the Arts), Masters of Choreography Award (The Kennedy Center), Fellow at The American Academy of Jerusalem, James Baldwin Fellow of United States Artists, Resident Fellow of The Rockefeller Center Bellagio, Fellow at the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue (based at Harvard), and the Mayor’s Arts Award for his sustained contributions to the City of Seattle.

*Photo by Marcia Davis