classes and workshops
>general info



june 2007


june classes
Jeremy Nelson
June 11 – 22   M W F   10am – 12pm
Movement Research at Eden’s Expressway
Contemporary Technique
The classes are influenced by Nelson’s 20 years of continuing study in the work of Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein, and by more recent studies in Alexander Technique™, Contact Improvisation and Body-Mind Centering®. The focus of the class is to integrate this investigation and alignment work into a more formally structured dance technique class. We will begin with a warm-up which focuses on our skeletal structure to access the deep supporting muscles of the body, allowing mobility and suppleness in the superficial muscles and emphasizing the connection to and use of the floor. The class builds from simple exercises to phrases of movement that involve moving boldly, covering lots of space, taking chances off balance and finding a strength, specificity and ease in our dancing.

Vicky Shick
June 5 – 28   T TH   10am – 12pm
Danspace Project
This class seeks to prepare an articulate, alert and neutral body, ready for precise dancing with intricate coordinations that we will work on together. There is a simple, straightforward, continuous warm-up that relies on the use of release, alignment, momentum, weight and strength. Clarity, simplicity of movement, attention to detail and concentration will be our goal. 

Gerald Casel
June 25, 27, 29   M W F   10am – 12pm
Movement Research at Eden’s Expressway
Contemporary Dance Technique
An experiential laboratory for movement, this class provides strategies for dancers to expand their range of motion to reveal their truest movement potential. Dancers will be encouraged to find the dynamics of stability and freedom in their bodies by modulating use of the muscular and skeletal systems as they move on and off-balance. Students will seek and acknowledge their habitual patterns by transforming them into dancing that is clear, intelligent and loaded with intention. Classes are informed and influenced by Casel's studies of yoga, Klein/Mahler Technique, anatomy, choreography and his students' spirit of inquiry.


ongoing classes

Juliette Mapp
March 17, April 21, May 19, June 2, June 16
SAT   4:30 – 7:30 pm
$20 per class
Movement Research at Eden's Expressway
Using the luxury of three hours of dancing together, we will take the time to investigate different states of awareness. Each class will be three-fold, beginning with a guided improvisation to inspire the imagination to expand into the unique life of different parts of the body, followed by dancing within technical forms to support our range and work as dancers, and concluding with a phrase that integrates concepts of weight, lightness, initiation and intention. The technical forms and phrase will be specifically structured to build our knowledge of individual physical patterns that may be blocking us from deepening the use of our selves as artists. In the process of learning a phrase, we can observe how we retain “set” material. The merging of the unconscious life of movement through improvisation and conscious attention to the physical imagination is part of the energizing practice we will explore in each class.

Systems and Developments of Dance Improvisation:
an ongoing investigation
taught by Daria Fain, K.J. Holmes or Jennifer Monson.
January 6 – June 30 SAT 11am – 1pm
June 2 - K.J. Holmes
June 9 - Jennifer Monson
June 16 - K.J. Holmes
June 23 - K.J. Holmes
June 30 - K.J. Holmes
Movement Research at Eden's Expressway
In these classes, students will explore somatic approaches to fine-tuning the body as an instrument and source for dance improvisations based on the eclectic and extensive experience of the three teachers. Investigations will vary each week depending on the teacher and may include: awareness and perceptual play; time and spatial elements of instant composition; experiential anatomy through Body-Mind Centering® and the Alexander Technique™; and skills and practices of Contact Improvisation, martial arts forms and Chi Kung. All three teachers share interests in empowering the individual in relationship to self, others and the environment and in discovering new challenges and risks within movement and performance.

Barbara Mahler 
February 1 – July 19   T TH   10am – 12pm
Movement Research at Eden’s Expressway
The purpose of this class is to re-educate the dancer’s body, interweaving theory and practice on a physical and organic level. From this comes the potential for students to discover a range of intelligence in their dancing, as well as to help them discover and develop their own choreographic vision. Initially inspired by the work of pioneer kinesiologist Dorothy Vislcoky, and then continuing for upwards of 20 years with Susan Klein, Barbara Mahler has learned to see, feel and teach each person/body individually to help their body function at its highest level of efficiency and function.


Daria Fain
March 5 - June 27 MON WED 10am – 12pm
Body Language, 241 Bedford Avenue #7 (bet N 3rd & 4th), Brooklyn
The Affect of Perception on Performance: An ongoing experiment in creating means to apprehend language as performers
This forum is addressed to participants in the performing arts who are interested in experiential and theoretical research in perception. It proposes a mind/body practice based on movement and internal “activation” of energy using Chinese energetics as a basic principal to develop sensory perception. By heightening sensory perception, the experience of one’s activity becomes multidimensional. The sessions will offer open improvisational situations and structures that integrate the senses, organs, body systems, emotions and directions in space. This work will immerse the student in an intra/extra-corporeal journey.

Contact Improvisation

Margaret Paek teaches for the month of June.
February 7 – July 25 WED 6:45 – 9:10pm
Cathy Weis Studio
Contact Improvisation is a partnering dance form. Skills such as rolling, releasing, giving and supporting weight, expanding range of spatial concentration, lifting, catching and falling help one move with and through gravity, share weight in motion and use momentum and flow in physical contact. These weekly classes, open to adults of all levels of movement experience, are informed variously by the individual teaching artists.