Tag: Adult Dance Classes

DITA Master Class at Grand Rapids Ballet: Sunday, March 18th, 2018

February 27, 2018

WE’RE ON THE MOVE! 

In February 2009 DITA launched its first Master Class in the Wealthy Theatre Annex, creating relationships with the most accomplished dance educators in the region and beyond. DITA enters its 10th year of dance education and performance with a new partnership: the 2018 DITA Master Class season kicks off at Grand Rapids Ballet, home of Michigan’s only professional ballet company.

WORLD-RENOWNED INSTRUCTORS

World-renowned Graham Technique master teacher William Crowley will lead the first DITA Spring Master Class – March 18th, 2018 from 4-5:45pm at Grand Rapids Ballet.

PREREGISTRATION 

Our friends at ArtPeers made a special offer: dancers can pre-register for the first class of our 10th year for only $12! Going forward, class fees will return to normal, ensuring the sustainability of DITA Master Classes. DITA does not operate for profit, and class fees go toward space rental costs, and for our instructors, many of whom travel here from other cities. Pre-registration ends March 17th at midnight. Sign up HERE! 

 

ABOUT DITA

Led by Artistic Director Amy Wilson, DITA produces large-scale concerts, and creates live and dance-film works that are site-specific with an emphasis on process. DITA has long called Wealthy Theatre home, with dance education and a number of groundbreaking, sellout events produced at the historic landmark. DITA also has explored other spaces in the region and beyond: collaborative works regularly take place at 337 Project Space, Avenue for the Arts, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA) and SiTE:LAB. DITA was awarded the Time-Based Juror Award for their piece respirador (breather) at ArtPrize 2014. More recently, DITA joined a collective of Michigan artists on a journey to the Path of Totality during the 2017 solar eclipse, where we produced a full-length dance film that will be released in 2018.

JOIN US IN WELCOMING WILLIAM CROWLEY

Int/Adv Graham Technique
Sunday March 18th, 2018
4-5:45 pm
Grand Rapids Ballet
341 Ellsworth Ave SW
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
$17/$15 Professional/Dance Educator
$12 Pre-registration provided by ArtPeers: https://artpeers.org/pre-registration/

For dancers 16+ years old ~ for more information contact Amy Wilson at [email protected]

The Master Class introduces students to the Graham Technique, its basic principle of “contraction and release”, and the beneficial knowledge that comes from the awareness of one’s own center and core strength. The structure of the class is composed of floor work, standing center work, and traveling exercises. Intermediate/Advanced level students will also be exposed to learning phrases of original choreography.

William Charles Crowley, received his MFA in Dance from the University of Michigan and additional training at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in NYC. He has danced with numerous companies and has garnered favorable reviews from The Detroit Free Press, The Chicago Tribune, Denver Rocky Mountain News, The Miami Herald, and Dance Magazine. William is the Artistic Director of Next Step Dance based in Miami, FL., and currently teaches throughout the United States and Europe.

Most recently, William had the distinct honor of being one of the first Americans ever to teach in Cuba since 1959, as part of the U.S.-Cuba People to People cultural exchange program, at the Danza Contemporanea de Cuba in Havana.

DITA, Int/Adv Contemporary Modern w/guest artist Rachel Miller

October 5, 2017

Join us in welcoming Rachel Miller to the Annex
Sunday October 22nd
4-5:45pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St Se
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students w/ID
For dancers 16+
Email [email protected] for more information

Contemporary Modern Technique
A contemporary release-based technique class, which is informed by the Normative technique created by Erick Hawkins. The class will begin with a somatically informed improvisational warm-up, continue to floor work, center, and across-the-floor work, and end with a large sweeping movement phrase. 

Rachel Miller is a company dancer, instructor, choreographer, and Midwest Regional Alternative Dance Festival (RAD Fest) Curator for Wellspring/Cori Terry & Dancers. She attended The Ohio State University as a Dance Major, holds a BA in Creative Writing through Western Michigan University, and an MFA in Dance through Hollins University in partnership with the former Forsythe Company of Frankfurt, Germany. Miller has performed all over the country, and her choreographic and screendance works have been presented in the Midwest RAD Fest in Kalamazoo, Detroit Dance City Festival in Detroit, Big River Dance Festival in Huntington, South Bend, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Fringe Festival Praha (Prague), and Indianapolis. She is a 2005 recipient of the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and a 2010 recipient of the Kalamazoo Artist Development Initiative grant. Miller has sat on the adjudication panels for the Motor City Dance on Film Festival, RAD Festival, and Screen. Dance. Now. She is also a certified Pilates instructor, has been an Aerial Artist for ZFX Flying Effects in Louisville, has taught in the Western Michigan University Dance Department and for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. She is currently on faculty in the dance department at Grand Valley State University.

DITA, Int/Adv Modern Tech w/guest artist Penny Freeh

June 27, 2017
Join us in welcoming Penny Freeh to the Annex
Thursday July 20th
7-8:45pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students (per class)

Penelope Freeh – Biography 2017
As a contemporary ballet and modern dancer/choreographer, Penelope Freeh honors and manipulates classicism and traditional vocabularies. Tension and emotion build through structure, relationship and rigorous formality. Images layer, amassing a history of gesture and dramatic intent. She acknowledges a balletic spine and makes room for the luscious. Lines erase as quickly as they form.

Freeh has played a vital part of the Minneapolis / St. Paul dance community since 1994. She is a two-time McKnight Fellow for Choreographers, a McKnight Fellow for Dancers, and a Sage awardee for Outstanding Performer. Her work is in the repertoires of Zenon Dance Company, James Sewell Ballet, Alternative Motion Project, Minnesota Ballet, and Gem City Ballet among others. She receives commissions and residencies from performing arts high schools, universities and regional companies; she works with opera and musical theater groups; she self-produces and seeks presenters for her personal works, working frequently with live musicians and original music.

Test Pilot, a chamber dance opera she created with composer Jocelyn Hagen, won a 2015 Sage Award for Best Overall Design and enjoyed a state-wide tour of Minnesota in the Fall of 2016.

She danced for James Sewell Ballet for seventeen years, serving as Artistic Associate from 2007 – 11. She teaches at the University of MN, the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, Zenon, and TU Dance. She is summer faculty at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp and co-director of the 2017 International Ballet Ensemble.

Formative training includes: the Dayton Ballet Dance Center, the Joffrey Ballet School and two years on full scholarship at The Ailey School.

Penelopefreeh.com

DITA, Summer Workshop w/guest artist Kristi Faulkner

May 26, 2017

Join us in welcoming Kristi Faulkner to the Annex
Monday June 19th & 26th
7-8:45pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students (per class)

June 19th
Contemporary Floor Work
Based on the idea that the floor is an active partner in our dancing, we will seek to “make friends” with the floor and embrace the unwavering support it can offer. Participants will connect with a sense of weight through earthbound phrases and guided improvisation, developing an intimate connection to the floor by investigating multiple points of contact for achieving efficiency moving in and out of the floor.

June 26th
Falling and Rolling
Explore sensation and surrender while learning to make friends with gravity. Dance is physics – we will explore the ways in which momentum and surface area can help us achieve efficiency moving in and out of the floor. While maintaining a continuous flow of energy and efficient use of muscle tone, we will hover on the edges of suspension and surrender to impulse.

Kristi Faulkner (Founder/Artistic Director of Kristi Faulkner Dance) is a choreographer, performer, educator and arts advocate. Based in Detroit, she creates highly physical and humorously theatrical work that embodies difference and challenges gender roles. Community engagement is integral to her artistic practice. Through workshops, lecture demonstrations, and community-based projects, Kristi pursues her mission of making dance visceral, thought-provoking, and accessible. Her work has been commissioned and presented throughout Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and New York. She holds an MFA in choreography/performance from SUNY Brockport and is part time faculty at Bowling Green State University.

DITA, Int/Adv Modern Tech w/guest artist Carrie Brueck Morris

May 9, 2017

Join us in welcoming Carrie Brueck Morris to the Annex
Sunday May 21st, 2017
4-5:45pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St Se
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students w/ID
*for dancers 16+
for more information contact Amy at [email protected]

Carrie Brueck Morris is currently Associate Professor of Dance at Grand Valley State University. Originally from Minnesota, she graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in Dance and earned her M.F.A. in Dance at Temple University. Prior to her time in Michigan, Ms. Morris taught at Western Kentucky University, University of Southern Mississippi, and Temple University. She has been fortunate to perform with choreographers such as Lou Antonini, Marianela Boán, and Meghan Durham Wall, performing in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York. Carrie has also produced her own choreography professionally in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Civitavecchia, Italy.

Drawing on a wide range of styles and traditions, this class will weave together principles from several different techniques, but focus most heavily on select aspects of Bartenieff Fundamentals, Humphrey-Limon, and release techniques. The class will use elements of these techniques to support the study of movement efficiency, weight shifts, breath, momentum, and dancing off-center to further total body awareness and commitment while dancing.

DITA, Int/Adv Modern Tech w/guest artist Molly Ross

May 9, 2017

Join us in welcoming Molly Ross to the Annex
Friday May 26th, 2017
6:30-8:15pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St Se
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students w/ID
*for dancers 16+
for more information contact Amy at [email protected]

Join Molly for an athletic, playful, and energetic class combining floor and release techniques. Be prepared for lots of floor work – long sleeves and long pants highly recommended.

Molly Ross is an artist focused on making work that finds connections between the absurd, the flawed, and the private. In Grand Rapids she collaborates on the multi disciplinary project BIG LOTTO. Before relocating to Grand Rapids in early 2016, she danced professionally in Chicago Illinois with Khecari and Hedwig Dances. She has studied movement at the University of Michigan, the London Contemporary Dance School, and in Northern Israel on Kibbutz Ga’aton.

DITA, INT Graham Technique w/William Crowley

April 23, 2017

Join us in welcoming William Crowley to the Annex
Sunday May 7th, 2017
4-5:45pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St Se
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students w/ID
*for dancers 16+
for more information contact Amy at [email protected]

The Master Class introduces students to the Graham Technique, its basic principle of “contraction and release”, and the beneficial knowledge that comes from the awareness of one’s own center and core strength. The structure of the class is composed of floor work, standing center work, and traveling exercises. Intermediate/Advanced level students will also be exposed to learning phrases of original choreography.

William Charles Crowley, received his MFA in Dance from the University of Michigan and additional training at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in NYC. He has danced with numerous companies and has garnered favorable reviews from The Detroit Free Press, The Chicago Tribune, Denver Rocky Mountain News, The Miami Herald, and Dance Magazine. William is the Artistic Director of Next Step Dance based in Miami, FL., and currently teaches throughout the United States and Europe.

DITA, Afro-Brazilian Contemporary Fusion w/guest artist Rosely Conz

March 28, 2017

Join us in welcoming Rosely Conz to the Annex
Sunday April 23rd, 2017
4-5:45pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St Se
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students w/ID
*for dancers 16+
for more information email [email protected]

Class description
Afro-Brazilian Contemporary Fusion: This class will combine contemporary dance with movement and principles of Afro-Brazilian Dances, such as community, groundedness, and playfulness. Samba and Capoeira will be juxtaposed with turns, jumps, and improvisation. Open to all levels of expertise.

Rosely Conz is a Brazilian dancer, choreographer and teacher. In 2016, Rosely finished her MFA in Dance, already holding a MA in Performing Arts and a BFA in Dance. For the past 15 years, Rosely has been performing and choreographing professionally for Brazilian dance companies such as Dançaberta Dance Group and Packer Dance Co. She had her work funded by grants in Brazil such as FICC (Fund for Cultural Investments) and Capes (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), Merge Dance Company at the State University of Texas. Her most recent work was sponsored by the Atlas Black Box experimental studio, in Colorado.
Rosely’s present research focuses on issues related to foreignness, displacement, and cultural cannibalism. Collaboration is part of Rosely’s philosophy which led to partnerships with Ana Baer (Texas University), Bailey Anderson (CU-Boulder), Julia Ziviani (Unicamp- Brazil), Adam Sekuler (CU-Boulder), amongst other incredible artists.

DITA, Int/Adv Modern Tech w/guest artist Sara Yanney

February 13, 2017

Join us in welcoming Sara Yanney to the Annex!

Images of dance and dancers

Sunday March 19th
4-5:45pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St Se
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students w/ID
For dancers ages 16+
For more information email [email protected]

Class Description: This modern dance class will be based in Laban/Bartenieff based Evans Modern Dance Technique. There is an emphasis on body awareness and moving in a healthy, efficient way, while also exploring the dynamic possibilities of human movement.

Sara Yanney, MFA,GL-CMA, is a Modern/Contemporary dance educator, choreographer, and performer. She has been dancing with Wellspring/Cori Terry & Dancers since 2014. She also shows her work independently as the artistic director of The =ibrium Dance Project, founded in the summer of 2012, which has shown work in IL, IN, MI, NJ, NY, OH, and WI and internationally in Canada and Haiti. She has performed with the Bill Evans Dance Company, Blue Tribe African Dance Company, Blythe Edens Dance Company, Indy Convergence, Gran Lakou Haitian Folkloric Dance Company, The New Mexico Contemporary Dance Alliance, Motus Dance Theatre, and SMAG Dance Collective. Sara has served on faculty at Ball State University and Anderson University, is the founder/director of Jump Into Motion Dance Academy, which offered affordable dance and movement education to children at their schools and day cares from 2006-2013 in the Indianapolis area and in the Kalamazoo area since 2016, and is certified in the Bill Evans Method of Teaching Laban/Bartenieff-Based Modern Dance Technique. She is training to become a certified Alexander Technique teacher, received her GL-CMA (Graduate Laban-Certified Movement Analyst) from Columbia College Chicago in Fall 2016, her MFA in Performing Arts: Dance at the Peck School of the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2016, where she was a recipient of the Chancellors Graduate Student Award, and received her BA in Dance from the University of New Mexico in 2003 with departmental honors and received the Friends of Dance Scholarship, The Provost Award for Artistic and Academic Achievement, The Bill Evans Dance Teachers Intensive Scholarship, and the Barbara Kiker Award for Excellence in Dance.

DITA, Int/Adv Modern Tech w/guest artist Molly Ross

January 3, 2017

Join us in welcoming Molly Ross to the Annex15801290_10154818685651873_395422611_n
Sunday Feburary 12th, 2017
4-5:45pm
Wealthy Theatre Annex
1110 Wealthy St Se
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
$15/$12 students w/ID
*for dancers 16+
for more information contact Amy at [email protected]

Join Molly for an athletic, playful, and energetic class combining floor and release techniques.

Molly Ross is an artist focused on making work that finds connections between the absurd, the flawed, and the private. In Grand Rapids she collaborates on the multi disciplinary project BIG LOTTO. Before relocating to Grand Rapids in early 2016, she danced professionally in Chicago Illinois with Khecari and Hedwig Dances. She has studied movement at the University of Michigan, the London Contemporary Dance School, and in Northern Israel on Kibbutz Ga’aton.

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