Teaching and Mentoring

Creative Practice for Contemporary Dance

This workshop examines choreography as a continuum of actions, tactics and personal values that can be shared and developed by both makers and performers. 

Participants compose and perform each day, working quickly and intuitively to produce studies that are shared with the group to stimulate artistic growth and dialogue. Compositional processes derived from cinema, music, architecture, literature, visual art, theatre, physics, sport, biology and other fields become part of an evolving toolbox.

We touch on such themes as editing and distillation, adaptation and remix, working with found materials, making scores, composing with objects, space as poetry, aspects of counterpoint, shaping anticipation, collaboration and directing, expanded definitions of virtuosity, and mapping and navigating form.

Choreography Across Disciplines

Developed in partnership with Ame Henderson for the Banff Centre, this is a workshop for experienced professionals working in disciplines other than dance who are leaning towards choreographic ideas, and for dance practitioners investigating choreography in dialogue with other art forms. 

The goal of the workshop is to explore how choreographic thinking - spatial, temporal and sensory - can enhance a diverse range of artistic practices. Teaching is grounded in embodied research and knowledge sharing framed by encounters with a range of somatic and formal approaches including working with scores and improvisation structures. Physical activities are supported by open discussion, writing and dialogic walks.

Past participants in this workshop have included visual artists, performance artists, writers, theatre practitioners, architects, musicians and filmmakers.