Schedule & Classes (Winter Intensive)

Those chosen to perform in a Footprints piece will intensively study the work of an influential choreographer for the full 4-weeks and mimic the experience of working in a professional company environment. They will also perform on the main stage as a fully produced part of the ADF performance series during the last week of the festival.

2022 FOOTPRINTS CHOREOGRAPHERS

CHARLES O. ANDERSON

KIMBERLY BARTOSIK

SHEN WEI

MONIQUE HALEY

Repertory
This course is designed to provide opportunities for ADF participants to work with faculty member Monique Haley in the creation or the restaging of a performance piece for the festival. An emphasis is placed on developing performance skills and engaging in Monique’s self-devised process method, the Diasporic Encounter Method (DEM). DEM is an approach used during the creative process to engage an environment in the dance space that inspires an authentic ethos and connection between the artists. African cultural values and perspectives are used as a foundation for nurturing the artist’s mind/body, self-agency, and human connectivity in a creative environment.

SHERONE PRICE

Contemporary West African Dance Repertory 
In my course, I’ll be teaching African/Modern dance movements and dances to create a contemporary African dance experience. I will develop this work into choreography for a performance or sharing for the ADF community.

GEORGE STAIB

Repertory and Performance
This class will be dedicated to developing new work in a highly collaborative environment. Based upon ideas from staibdance’s upcoming new work, ARARAT, dancers will navigate new terrain with Staib, to uncover questions surrounding new beginnings, the differences between knowing / unknowing and the fertile ground that belongs to the act of embracing the unfamiliar.

RAMÓN FLOWERS

Ballet Technique
A ballet class that incorporates an eclectic mixture of technique, musicality, and movement. The class will have an emphasis on technique and will incorporate a sense of fun while reminding the student that ballet is a form of the performing arts. Students will be given combinations that move in a challenging way, by exaggerating classical positions, and pushing them to explore their movements further.

Musical Theater Jazz

A jazz class that includes strength, flexibility, conditioning techniques, and progressions including turns, kicks, and leaps. In this class, the dancers also learn many fun and trendy dance steps that are used for all forms of dance. It is a wonderful class to get a well-rounded variety of genres. Dancers will learn choreography to popular music of today along with vintage styles of jazz hits from the last decades and popular Broadway musicals. This is a perfect class to start your dance training, but it’s challenging enough to satisfy a dancer at any level.

MONIQUE HALEY

Contemporary Jazz: The Diasporic Encounter Method
African cultural values and principals are the frameworks inside of a contemporary jazz dance space, creating a unique ethos within a dancing community. This contemporary jazz class consists of grounded and athletic movement that inspires the dancer physically and taps naturally into the emotional nature of the artist. Expect syncopated rhythms, undulation, isolations, and active use of plié, weight shifting, and stylized/technical movement within the jazz aesthetic. The dancer will be encouraged to achieve not only a strong focus on style and embodying jazz technique but also to investigate and celebrate the freedom of expression through the body.

RODNEY HILL

Hip-hop
Class description coming soon.

GEORGE STAIB

Root Theory: Discoveries Beyond Technique
Root Theory subdivides ideas to their most salient and germane molecules, challenges participants to find abandon, unlock limitations of the psyche, in order to reveal the refined and ingenious animal within. The goal is not to produce, but rather provide opportunities to challenge limitations, to absorb, anchor, support and grow.

ROSANNA TAVAREZ/JOY DAVIS

Countertechnique®
Within a clear structure of exercises, the Countertechnique® class thoroughly prepares the body for rehearsal and performance, enabling dancers to move bigger, more fluidly and spatially, while becoming stronger and increasing flexibility. Dancers are introduced step-by-step to the Toolbox (a systematically organized collection of information for body and mind) with a priority on experiencing and enjoying the difference in moving, rather than first having to understand the tools intellectually. Dancers are encouraged to be proactive in discovering connections and solutions, to be less concerned with judging themselves and to work in a healthy way with regard to body and mind. For more about Countertechnique

JESSIE YOUNG

Contemporary Practice
What do we want to learn? Why do we return to dance class and physical practice? Contemporary Practice builds off of these questions in order to find space within training to love and respect our individual and collective bodies when we dance together. We will build each class from a deep/heated warm up, improvisational scores and then end with learning phrase work. In this class, we work to translate our internal body awareness into rigorous and athletic movement–to achieve an understanding of how we learn and interact with challenges such as memorizing a phrase, translating a sequence of movement from the floor to standing, taking care and honoring one’s body while increasing a capacity for endurance. We will use floor work (spinning, balancing, passing through ledges of the body) as a lens for looking at other planes and orientations of movement and phrase work.

FACULTY TBA

Gaga
Gaga classes are based on a deep listening to and awareness of the scope of physical sensations. While class instructions are often imbued with rich imagery that stimulates the imagination, the layering of information builds into a multisensory, physically challenging experience. Gaga offers a workout that develops flexibility, stamina, agility, coordination, and efficiency of movement. The exploration of form, speed, and effort is accompanied by the playful investigation of soft and thick textures, delicacy and explosive power, and understatement and exaggeration. Ohad Naharin continues to develop and research his movement language, and the classes evolve and vary accordingly. We invite you to join us in the studio and connect to your passion to move.

FACULTY TBA

Shen Wei’s Natural Body Development Technique
Through detailed research and investigation, this class will encourage an opening of the energetic channels of the body. From an open and aligned physical structure, we will investigate movement based upon breath, internal energy, flow, suspension, center-shifting, bouncing, momentum, spirals, and joint rotations through simple exercises and traveling phrases. Special focus will be placed on transitions and floor work. Together we will explore and cultivate tools to activate our daily studio practice in new ways.

The first 50 seconds of this video features Shen Wei’s Map, a work highlighting the elements that are the basis for his Natural Body Development technique.

GAGA FACULTY TBA

Creative Process
Creative process is a lab for exploring our individual and collective physical fantasies. We are in this present moment a collection of histories that will reveal themselves in movement through play, repetition, memory, and trust. Each class will explore these moments through different choreographic lenses, adding and subtracting as the process evolves.

ROSANNA TAVAREZ/JOY DAVIS

Movement & Performance Lab
This movement & performance lab begins by exploring and deepening each dancer’s individual artistic voice by inquiring into their unique inclinations and idiosyncratic capabilities. We will create strategies for embracing the unknown, steering mindfully away from fear of failure and courageously opening to new ways of moving and being witnessed in the act of performance. We then embark upon ensemble improvisation in performance with attention to the tasks of listening, leading and instant choice-making. Dancers will work specifically with writing exercises, utilizing texts and narratives, and experimenting with Countertechnique® tools in performance. We’ll play, get messy, and step wholeheartedly into our authenticity.

JESSIE YOUNG

Making Dances
We will begin by gathering definitions of choreography. What does making a dance mean to you? What did it mean to you in the past? What do you hope it will mean in the future? Together we will create an index of interests, questions, concerns, frustrations, and blockages that come up for us when we make dances. Harnessing our collective curiosity and confusion, we will identify areas ripe for investigation. Each session, we will then work to research these areas through choreographic exercises, practices and experiments. You will leave with a toolbox through which to answer your own, personal choreographic questions. This class should be used as a laboratory for mining personal experience, dreaming new futures of dance making, and building knowledge through intuition.

MIXED MAKERS

The Mixed Makers class allows dancers to experience four different makers. Each maker will use their week of class in ways that are meaningful for them. This experience may involve exploring how to create a technique class that reflects their values, investigating creative processes and methods, teaching repertory, engaging in performance practices, or any other practice that yields insight and meaning. At the end of the week, makers have the option to share any work created with the class through an informal showing for the ADF community. We’re excited to offer this course, which allows dancers to sharpen their ability to further a new skill set each week with a different dance artist.  

Mixed Makers Faculty

• Eric Geiger
• Marguerite Hemmings
• Jenna Riegel
• More faculty TBA

Optional drop-in classes are offered on evenings and weekends. ADF faculty and guest artists provide opportunity to cross train in different forms, participate in special repertory projects, and engage in discussions and panels.