SEATTLE FESTIVAL OF DANCE + IMPROVISATION
RESEARCH MODULE
AUGUST 7 – 14
The RESEARCH Module (formerly the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation) is a full week of intensives, workshops, and events centering improvisational dance practice and research. This interdisciplinary and intergenerational gathering brings together both local and inter/national faculty in Seattle each year to share their practice with movers new to improvisation alongside artists who have been dancing for decades. Immerse yourself in a nurturing and rich environment where embodied research in somatics, contact and group improvisation, and creative and social practice create a week of extraordinary possibilities.
FACULTY
G^2:
JOHN MARIA GUTIERREZ +
BETH GRACZYK
KAREN NELSON
S. AMA WRAY
MEG FOLEY
SLOWDANGER
TAJA WILL
MIGUEL GUTIERREZ
+ MORE
FACULTY
G^2:
JOHN MARIA GUTIERREZ + BETH GRACZYK
MEG FOLEY
KAREN NELSON
S. AMA WRAY
TAJA WILL
MIGUEL GUTIERREZ
SLOWDANGER
FULL week
of research
Registration for the full week of the RESEARCH Module lets you create your own immersive schedule of intensives, classes, jams, and events. Opt in to your choice of one 3-day intensive, one 4-day intensive, and one 5-day intensive. Read more about this year’s intensives below, and keep checking back as we confirm more workshop and event offerings.
The RESEARCH Module: Full Week includes
- One 5-day intensive with S. Ama Wray OR G^2 (your choice)
- One 4-day intensive with Taja Will or afternoon drop-ins (your choice)
- One 3-day intensive with Miguel Gutierrez OR Meg Foley (your choice)
- All morning practices, drop-ins, and jams
- Tickets to all RESEARCH Module sharings + performances
$650
INTENSIVES
Intensives offer the opportunity to learn with visiting artists working in movement improvisation and creative practices, somatics, contact improvisation and more. Spend time in deep movement research over the course of a 3-, 4-, or 5-day intensive. Prices vary, and for the most immersive experience, invest in a full week pass to create your perfect RESEARCH experience.
G^2: Physical Dance Theater & Tools for the Imagination
with Beth Graczyk + John Maria Gutierrez
In this class we will write, sing, move, and use our creativity to share and construct seed ideas for structured improvisation. An array of tools, puzzles, and physical games will be employed to draw from what is always there (the present moment) and what we find (our history) to generate and explore material. We will utilize the energy generated to find unusual, yet natural portals into an infinite range of possibilities within our imagination. The culmination of our learning together will give us space to craft real-time choreography malleable to each student’s unique vision.
CLASS SCHEDULE
MON – FRI, AUG 8 – 12 | 12th Ave Arts
12:30 – 2:30 PM | M, T, W, F
12:30 – 5:30 PM | TH (includes a 1 hour break determined by faculty)
What is Embodiology®? “Movement that Inspires the Mind”
Embodiology® is a culturally inclusive approach to improvisation, a neo-African improvisation-as-performance methodology. It is a practice which priorities embodiment of rhythm and building collaborative relationships between performers. You will learn how to play with and navigate through rhythm’s multidimensionality, embody its features (silence, tonality, repetition, speech-patterns) enabling you to create spontaneously and confidently. Workshops includes live music.
CLASS SCHEDULE
MON – FRI, AUG 8 – 12 | 12th Ave Arts
12:30 – 2:30 PM | M, T, W, F
12:30 – 5:30 PM | TH (includes a 1 hour break determined by faculty)
Bioenergetics + Divergence + Mutations + Care Work in Contact Improvisation
This workshop is multi-threaded: practice, pedagogy analysis and futurist methodology. A shared space where each participant will be tasked with tracking their personal and our collective nervous systems in radical ways. 2022 and the 50th birthday of CI lead to reflections of generations past and insist the present moment will inform the foundation for the future of this form. We will prioritize ritual over research, and embodied resonance over theoretical articulation.
This workshop will not focus on teaching the tools, patterns, choreographies or mindset for a beginning CI practice. However, this workshop does invite the most devout practitioners and ones who’ve forever or recently rejected this form.
CLASS SCHEDULE
MON – FRI, AUG 8 – 12 (NO THURS) | 12th Ave Arts
3:30 – 5:30 PM
beautiful crystals imply slow growth
Counter patterns, angular unconformity, shifting divides, rootless mountains, stream capture, fatigued rock, surface of no strain. Beginning from explorations of surface contact, texture, and pressure and using these <<< geological terms as tools to find somatic relief, we will mine openings for performance-making in collaborative vibration with our environments. We will do long form improvisational scores with geological principles, have collective body dance parties, and use fiber and textile materials as body-building objects and collaborators: drag, extension, adornment AND mirror, reflex, enabler, facilitator to ground in the material moment and pursue the implications beyond. This process is a choreographic measure to examine “what is actually happening?” and to make dances with the potential answers.
CLASS SCHEDULE
MON – WED, AUG 8 – 10 | 12th Ave Arts
9:30 – 11:30 AM
Self Strange Making
In this workshop we will engage approaches to improvisation and performance practice that inform my work: continuous movement practices, exploring the senses, working with the Feldenkrais Method, creating instant performances, and interspersing movement with reading and writing. We challenge ourselves to uncover our questions and answers through movement, inverting the conventional proposition that thought comes before action. I see dance as a mode of perceptual inquiry, and I resist defining it as a non-verbal “language” because languages are meant to be understood and I like that dance defies linguistic comprehension. But since words are always present, always mediating everything, we will see how we can manipulate them. We will complicate our ideas of what constitutes “communication,” “good improvisation,” “listening” and “development.”
CLASS SCHEDULE
THUR – SAT AUG 11 – 13 | 12th Ave Arts
9:30 – 11:30 AM
DROP-INS + MORNING PRACTICES + JAMS
DROP-INS
These two-hour drop-in classes are led by Seattle-based and visiting faculty and explore topics of dance creative and improvisational practices, somatics, contact improvisation and more. Each class costs $18, or buy a full festival pass which includes access to all drop-ins in addition to up to three intensives, as well as all performances, events and jams. Pre-registration encouraged, but day-of drop-ins are available if space allows, with preference given to full festival participants.
Faculty: Karen Nelson [+collaborators], slowdanger, Kris Wheeler, Taja Will, Meg Foley, NEVE, G^2, Miguel Guiterrez, S. Ama Wray
MORNING PRACTICES
These morning hour-long practices are free and open to all, offering daily containers to practice Tuning Scores led by Karen Nelson, and Contemplative Dance Practices led by Sheri Cohen. Begin your SFD+I days off with these practices, or drop-in before work to start your day with collective movement. RSVP encouraged, but day-of drop-ins are welcome as space allows.
Faculty: Karen Nelson, Sheri Cohen
JAMS
These are three-hour jam sessions facilitated by local and visiting faculty. Some spaces will be open free jam, while others will have prompts, scores, music and other invitations. Jams are $10 to attend. Pre-registration encouraged, but day-of drop-ins are welcome as space allows.
Faculty: Amy O’Neal, Taja Will, AVID, Kaitlin McCarthy
REGISTRATION
+ PRICING
HOW TO SIGN UP
Registration for this year’s festival is online through Mindbody. To sign up:
- Find the option for which you would like to sign up.*
- Click the sign up button next to that option.
- Click next, then sign in with your Mindbody profile or create a new Mindbody profile.
- Click next, enter your payment information, including selecting the pay-in-full or deposit option, and click check out.
You will immediately receive a confirmation email that your payment has been processed. You did it!
Within seven business days, you will receive a second email from us that either confirms your registration, or asks for more information to finalize your enrollment. It is at this point that you will communicate your intensive preferences if you are purchasing the full RESEARCH module.
*For RESEARCH Module full week registration, you will give us your intensive selections after you sign up and pay. We will keep the website current if intensives fill so that you are aware of what is still open when you sign up.
PRICING
$1400 | Full SFD+I Pass*
Includes registration for the TRAIN Module (any cohort), RESEARCH Module full week, which includes one 5-day intensive, one 4-day intensive, one 3-day intensive, all workshops, jams + more, and two tickets to all SHARE Module performances (more information coming soon!)
$650 | RESEARCH Module: Full Week*
Includes one 5-day intensive, one 4-day intensive, one 3-day intensive, all workshops, jams, + more.
Want to sign up for just one intensive or class? Until June 30th, registration will be limited to full module registration only. On July 1st, we will open remaining spots for a la carte registration for individual intensives and workshops.
A la carte (available on July 1)
$500 | 5-day Intensive (G^2 or S. Ama Wray)
$350 | 4-day Intensive (Taja Will)
$250 | 3-day Intensive (Meg Foley or Miguel Gutierrez)
$18 | Drop-in Workshop
$10 | Jam
*Full SFD+I Pass, TRAIN Module (all cohorts), and RESEARCH Module payments include a $250 non-refundable deposit.
Payment Options
To reserve your spot, you can either pay in full or hold your place with a non-refundable $250 deposit. Full payment to confirm your registration is required by June 30, 2022.
Registration for a la carte intensives, classes, workshops and jams in both modules will open on July 1, 2022 and spaces will be available on a first-come-first served basis. To register a la carte you will pay in full, though let us know if you need to discuss a payment plan.
Please contact Shirley Wong, operations@velocitydancecenter.org, for any questions or clarifications about registration or payment.
Refund Policy
Velocity’s refund policies were created to offer as much flexibility to our community as possible, while still protecting SFD+I from risk and instability.
The refund schedule for the Full SFD+I Pass, TRAIN Module (all cohorts), or RESEARCH Module full week is:
- Before June 30: All registration fees, less the $250 non-refundable deposit, are fully refundable for any reason.
- After July 1: All registration fees, less the $250 non-refundable deposit, are 50% refundable for any reason.
- After your first class begins: All registration fees are non-refundable for any reason, including illness or injury.
The refund schedule for any a la carte intensives, workshops or classes (available after July 1, 2022) is:
- After you register: All registration fees are 50% refundable for any reason.
- After your first class begins: All registration fees are non-refundable for any reason, including illness or injury.
WORK/STUDY
Velocity’s Summer Work/Study program provides the opportunity for participants to receive discounted attendance to the Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation in exchange for festival support.
TBIPOC Tuition waiver
As a part of Velocity’s Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation we are providing $10,300 in fee waivers to dancers who identify as Transgender, Black, Indigenous, and/or as People of Color, in an effort to shift power to Transgender and BIPOC communities.
Applications are now closed.
COVID-19 SAFETY
While we are doing all we can to keep the studios a healthy space, everyone must manage your own health and risks accordingly. We are requiring masking in all indoor classes, workshops, backstage, technical rehearsals and performances (both onstage + audience). We will also require all participants to show proof of vaccination.
If you are unvaccinated, you can provide a negative COVID-19 antigen or PCR test within 72 hours of each class. If you are an ongoing unvaccinated participant, we suggest that you test twice a week. We’ll check with you on Monday and on Thursday. If you are a drop-in participant, we’ll check before each class.
The studios you will be dancing in at 12th Ave Arts have robust air filtration systems and we will monitor class sizes to allow for adequate distancing. We have ongoing cleaning protocols in place.
If you have any questions, please reach out to operations@velocitydancecenter.org.
FAQ
When is the RESEARCH Module?
RESEARCH Module intensives + classes are M – F, August 8th – 13th.
There is an opening circle event + jam on August 7th that we encourage participants to attend, and the final participant + faculty sharings of work are throughout the day on August 13th, plus a closing circle + jam on August 14th.
Where are the festival classes?
All classes and events will take in-person at 12th Ave Arts. Click HERE for directions to the studios.
How do I access the festival as a drop-in participant?
Morning and evening classes are open for drop-ins. Registration for these classes will be through MindBody, where drop-in participants can register and pay.
Registration for Drop-In classes (and individual intensives) will open on July 1.
Until then, you can register for the full SFD+I festival or full TRAIN Module above or one of our ongoing classes HERE.
DOES VELOCITY PROVIDE FINANCIAL AID, SCHOLARSHIPS, OR WORK/STUDY?
We’re offering two programs to help make the festival more accessible:
- We are offering 100% tuition-waivers for the 2022 Summer Festivals to TBIPOC dancers. To learn more and apply, click here.
- The work/study program is open to everyone, and participants receive a 50% discount to the festival. To learn more and apply click here.
How many people will be in my intensives/drop-ins?
We have currently capped all RESEARCH Module offerings at 25 people.
What is Velocity's refund policy for SFD+I?
Velocity’s refund policies were created to offer as much flexibility to our community as possible, while still protecting our beloved SFD+I from risk and instability.
The refund schedule for the Full Festival Pass, Train Module (all cohorts), or Research Module (full week) is:
- Before June 30, 2022 all registration fees, less the $250 non-refundable deposit**, are fully refundable for any reason.
- After July 1, 2022 all registration fees, less the $250 non-refundable deposit**, are 50% refundable for any reason.
- After your first class begins, all registration fees are non-refundable for any reason, including illness or injury.
**When you purchase a Full Festival Pass, Train Module (all cohorts), or Research Module your $250 deposit is non-refundable. If you pay in full, your deposit is included in your payment, and is still non-refundable.
The refund schedule for any a la carte intensives, workshops or classes is:
- After you register, all registration fees are 50% refundable for any reason.
- After your first class begins, all registration fees are non-refundable for any reason, including illness or injury.
I'm coming to SFD+I from out of town. Do you provide housing options?
To be announced. Velocity has worked with on campus housing at the UW, Cornish Commons, and Seattle University to house SFD+I participants in past years. Due to the uncertainty of 2022, this year’s partnership is still unconfirmed, though we hope to solidify plans soon.
Please email Shirely, at operations@velocitydancecenter.org to be the first to learn more information about 2022 housing options.
Is the SFD+I venue accessible?
12th Ave Arts is fully accessible for wheelchairs and walkers. The lobby and bathrooms are at street level, and seating is available without the need for an elevator or stairs. The venue is also equipped with an Assistive Listening Device. For special needs, advanced word to the event producer can help in preparations.
OTHER QUESTIONS?
Meg is teaching a workshop August 9, 3:30 – 5:30 PM + beautiful crystals imply slow growth | 3-Day Workshop August 8 – 10, 9:30 – 11:30 AM.
Meg Foley (she/her) is a queer dance artist, educator, and parent who creates performances and somatic-based events using movement, design, and choreographic thinking as affirming practices of self: gender expression, sexuality, desires, and connection to others. Her current research examines the somatic, emotional, and psychic resonance of intersecting embodiments of parenting, queerness, gender, and belonging. Gay families, trans families, how we are formed… She investigates rocks, body heat, spirituality, and how we gestate ourselves in our distinct lineages: cultural, genetic, material. Her practice is daily, improvisational, and builds detailed movement vocabularies out of scientifically-engaged research and lived experience. She grew up in the DC area, was a creative movement baby and did a lot of club dancing, and now is a queerdo mama, mostly in Philadelphia. megfoley.org
The Problem of Relation August 12, 3:30 – 5:30 PM
+ Self Strange Making | 3-Day Workshop August 11 – 13, 9:30 – 11:30 AM.
Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, performer, music maker, writer, video artist, educator and Feldenkrais Method practitioner based in Lenapehoking, currently known as Brooklyn, NY. He makes performances to create empathetic and irreverent spaces to talk about things in complicated ways beyond the limitations of propriety, party lines, and conventional logic. He has presented his work internationally in venues including the Wexner Art Center, REDCAT, Festival d’Automne/Paris and American Realness. He has received four New York Dance and Performance Bessie Awards, a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, and he was a selected artist for the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
G^2 is teaching a workshop August 12, 9:30 – 11:30 AM
+ G^2: Physical Dance Theater & Tools for the Imagination | | 5-Day Workshop August 8 – 10 + 12, 12:30 – 2:30 PM + August 11, 12:30 – 5:30 PM.
G^2 stems from artistic dialogue between John Maria Gutierrez (he/they) a NYC-born, 1st generation Dominican-American, and Beth Graczyk (she/her), a Seattle-born 3rd generation Polish-American. Their unique connection celebrates their diverse backgrounds and through a cultivated trust, have found ways to share their intimate struggles, hopes, and dreams with each other in a space that honors their differences while seeking to find empathetic understanding of each other. G^2 manifests material by collaging diverse improvisational concepts, post-modern, modern, hip-hop, and contemporary dance, theater, acting, poetry, and music into a multi-dimensional and imaginative worlds. G^2 has shared work in Detroit, NYC, and China and are faculty for the Peridance Certification Program in NYC where they co-teach Improvisation.
Taja is teaching a workshop August 9, 9:30 – 11:30 AM + Bioenergetics + Divergence + Mutations + Care Work in Contact Improvisation | 4-Day Workshop August 8 – 10 + 12, 3:30 – 5:30 PM.
Taja Will (they/them) is a queer, chronically ill, transnational adoptee; a ritualist, educator, performer, choreographer and Healing Justice practitioner.
For Taja, the foundation of Healing Justice lives in the practice, pedagogy and performance of dance improvisation and cultural somatics. This lineage is led by queer, trans, disabled and BIPOC folks, it is radical care work and essential for interdependence. They hypothesize these conditions create generative, alchemical, magical and virtuosic spaces for contact + improvisation to emerge.
Taja is a current Jerome Hill Artist fellow, and is based in southside Minneapolis, Mni Sota Makoce, ancestral lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe.
Dr. S. Ama Wray is teaching:Embodiology® August 13. 9:30 – 11:30 AM
+ What is Embodiology®? “Movement that Inspires the Mind” | 5-Day Workshop August 8 – 10 + 12, 12:30 – 2:30 PM + August 11, 12:30 – 5:30 PM.
For over 30 years, S. Ama Wray (she/her) has been performing, teaching and choreographing across 3 continents. With London Contemporary Dance Theater and Rambert Dance Company she toured Russia, China, USA and across Europe. As the Artistic Director of JazzXchange Music and Dance Company she was Artist-in-Residence at The Royal Opera House and Southbank Center, UK. Wray now also pursues ethnographic research and the Comparative and International Education Society presented her with the 2018 African Diaspora Emerging Scholar Award. Her current work encompasses knowledge embedded within African and diasporic performance practices. After completing her PhD at the University of Surrey in 2017, Wray developed Embodiology®, a culturally inclusive approach to improvisation. She has published work in British Dance, Black Routes(2016) and The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation (2019).
The methodology has also been utilized in an integrative medical setting with Nimishia Parekh, MD, working with her IBD patients. Disseminating the praxis internationally has included Temple University where she gave the 2017 keynote for the International Dance Studies Colloquium. and in 2018, she was Artist-in-Residence at: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Atlantic Center of the Arts, Florida and New Waves! Institute,Trinidad and Tobago. Here in OC through JazzXchange Wray brings jazz dance and music back into closer alignment, as it was at its inception. Collaborators have Included include Wynton Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin, Julian Joseph, OBE, Nicole Mitchell, Mojisola Adebayo, Fleeta Siegel and Kei Akagi. Additionally, in 2017 she co-founded the Africana Institute for Creativity, Recognition and Elevation with Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
Estrel
slowdanger is teaching SPI August 8, 3:30 – 5:30 PM.
anna thompson (they/them) & taylor knight (they/them) are co-founding artistic directors of slowdanger, a multidisciplinary performance organism based in Pittsburgh. Their practice centers the body, researching its relationship to other bodies, environment, sensory information, technology and the unknown.
slowdanger has been presented by the Kennedy Center for the Arts, Springboard Danse Montreal, Carnegie Museum of Art, Place Des Arts, Usine C, Andy Warhol Museum, Kelly Strayhorn Theater and more. slowdanger was one of Dance Magazine’s 2018 ‘25 to Watch’ and has been supported by The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, The Heinz Endowments & Pittsburgh Foundation Investing in Professional Artists Award and more.
Karen is teaching Tuning August 8 – 12, 8 – 9 AM
+ Touching Again August 8, 9:30 – 11:30 AM.
Karen Nelson (she/her) rests playfully within dance improvisation and Buddhist study and practice. As explorer-collaborator, teacher, maker, touring performer, author/contributor to Dancing with Dharma and Contact Quarterly she has been a mutator of the form Contact Improvisation 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/Image Lab) into her physical-sensation based approach to dancing, along with investigating dominant cultural narratives and re-vers(ion)ing these fictions within her own embodiment and wider community.