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Flying Low +Impro
by David Zambrano
The workshop:
*Flyng_Low
This is a dance technique created by David Zambrano. The class workshop focuses mainly on the dancer’s relationship with the floor. The class utilizes simple movement patterns that involve breathing, speed and the release of energy throughout the body in order to activate the relationship between the centre and the joints, moving in and out of the ground more efficiently by maintaining a centered state.
There is a focus on the skeletal structure that will help improve the dancer’s physical perception and alertness. The class includes partnering work and movement phrases, which explore the primary laws of physics: cohesion and expansion.
When one is moving, the whole room is moving with one. The image of the body constantly spiraling, whether running dancing, walking dancing or standing dancing is the main practice during the whole class.
Working with spirals helps the dancers go into the floor and out of the floor with ease, and also helps the dancers to see themselves and the room from all sides. The spirals propel the class all over the room, both on the ground and upright.
*Impro_on_stage
Intensive practice and development of stage improvisation and spontaneous composition. David Zambrano coaches the participants based on his career-long experience as an improviser and as a mentor of performers devoted to improvisation.
Learning to use one’s life experience; being able to consciously and continuously shape one’s energy, integrating body and mind. Instantly becoming anything and anyone. Being fully present on stage, sensing the present moment, transforming the body to catch the right time and place. Finding other possible ways to physically manifest your creativity.
Opening one’s dancing to infinite possibilities, taking inspiration from within and from outside. Developing a performance from any starting point. Connecting to the whole room as the body spontaneously composes, dancing like a ball of fire.
Catching the right timing, physically manifesting your imagination, interconnecting constantly, shaping the space, allowing dance performances to emerge under any conditions. Realizing that there is always more creativity inside. Learning how to eloquently transmit with your body language.
The intensive deeply dives into these aspects, dedicating the first week to solos, second to duets, third to groups, and the fourth one to endless playfulness, as a strong group dynamic develops.
group dynamic develops.
Biography:
David Zambrano has been a monumental figure in the international dance community for more than 40 years, and his passion for cultural exchange continues to influence his work. Zambrano is an ambassador and liaison across many borders, bringing together artists from all over the planet for his projects. He has taught his own approach to dance in more than 75 countries and has performed at hundreds of venues across the world.
His pieces range from set choreography, structured improvisation, and pure improvisation. Born in Venezuela, Zambrano spent 15 years in New York, and now lives between Amsterdam and Brussels continuing to perform and teach worldwide.
His improvisation is committed to art as a cultural exchange developing the creative process in a world without borders. Zambrano sees improvisation as an art form and choreography as a vehicle to further develop his work in improvisation
Zambrano’s pursuits as an improviser, choreographer, and performer have been presented all over the world. Zambrano’s methods in improvisation are influenced by the training he teaches around the globe.
The most notable method is his Flying Low technique which examines the dancer’s relationship to the ground; and Passing Through group composition exercising the practice of infinity possibilities of moving together inside a defined time-space environment. These techniques are very sought after by festivals, dance companies and schools.
In 2018 he, together with his partner Mat Voorter, initiated Tictac Art Centre as an artistic home base.
Tools to create Improvised Dances
by Thomas Hauert
The workshop:
Hauert’s work is essentially based on the body’s movement possibilities. Thomas Hauert aims to open up and disrupt movement vocabulary and composition methods to propose an unprecedented choreographic language. Improvisation plays a key role in his artistic project. This experience has led him to develop specific teaching methods.
Tools for Dance Improvisation is intended to introduce or refresh some of the basic tools (exercises, practices, scores, games, concepts) of ZOO/Thomas Hauert’s work.
Every joint of our body has its range of movement and there are countless combinations possible. The body possesses a great practical knowledge that goes way beyond what the mind’s consciousness is able to process. Our mind can concentrate only on a few things at one time while our body is able to combine a great amount of information in an ever changing, fluid sense of orientation, that can serve as a sensor for potential movement: physical intuition, creativity that comes into existence by mainly physical circumstances, no conscious thought is necessarily formed in order to invent movement.
In a progressive series of improvisational tasks with one or more partners, exchanging information sensorially, in touch or at a distance, we will take advantage of this phenomenon to create forms, rhythms, movement qualities and trajectories far more complex and sophisticated than the ones our conscious mind could invent. We will be guided out of our habitual tracks and patterns will be distorted or overridden.
While we will practice to multiply and disconnect actions within our own individual body, another chapter of the work will be on connecting the movement of individuals in a group, the attempt to create one single organism out of a group of individual bodies. We’ll be tapping into the intelligence of the collective, swooping constantly between leading and following or doing both at the same time, taking the responsibility to initiate as well as the responsibility to play your part in the development of other people’s proposals or of unconsciously emerging structures, keeping an overview over the group composition while assuming your role within it.
Biography:
Having built a dancer career with a.o. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, David Zambrano and Pierre Droulers, Swiss Thomas Hauert initiated Cows in Space, a piece for five dancers which was consequently awarded at the Rencontres de Seine-Saint-Denis 1998. Since then, he and his company ZOO have created more than 20 performances.
In 2010, director Thierry De Mey also took Accords as a base to create the film La Valse, co-produced by European television channel Arte. In addition to his work for ZOO, Thomas was also commissioned to create Hà Mais (2002) with Mozambican dancers, as well as several pieces for the school P.A.R.T.S in Brussels. In 2010, he created a new work for the Zurich Ballet, Il Giornale della necropoli, in 2013 Pond Skaters for the Toronto Dance Theatre, in 2014 the piece Notturnino for the British company of disabled and non-disabled dancers Candoco Dance Company, in 2018 Flot for 24 dancers for CCN Ballet de Lorraine in Nancy and in 2021 Symphonie Nr.29 for the Ballet of the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich.
Presented all over the world, the work of Thomas and ZOO first develops from research on movement, with a particular interest in improvisation-based processes exploring the tension between freedom and constraint, individuals and the group, order and disorder, form and formlessness. Regularly invited to participate in improvisation events, he also has a deep interest in the relationship between dance and music. Thomas teaches regularly a.o. at P.A.R.T.S. and was Valeska-Gert-guest professor at the Freie Universität Berlin during the winter 2012-13. He was also invited to collaborate in The Forsythe Company’s “Motion Bank” project.
Thomas Hauert is the artistic director of the bachelor degree in contemporary dance that opened in 2021 at La Manufacture, Haute école des arts de la scène in Lausanne. Thomas Hauert is “artiste en compagnonnage” at Théâtre de Liège (2018-2022) and in residency at Théâtre Les Tanneurs.
Dynamics Rhythm & Texture
by Alleyne Dance
The workshop:
This is a physical Contemporary Class, which will involve strong, complex and technical sequences in and out of the floor, focusing on quality, initiation, performance and stamina. Each session will begin with a different aspect of movement study, focusing on the articulation of hands, isolations, spirals, breath and flying. Improvisation will also be explored as part of self development, stemming from a physical intention.
The desired outcomes for the workshop are to develop the dancers' creative mind, driven from passion, determination, strength, musicality and most importantly an intention and honesty in whatever choice they make during the session.
Biography:
Alleyne Dance (AD) is a UK based company with an international reach, founded in 2014 by award winning dancers and twin sisters Kristina and Sadé Alleyne. The choreographic aesthetic reflects the sisters diverse background in athleticism and dance training. Within their abstract contemporary construct, Alleyne Dance blend West African, Caribbean, Hip Hop, Kathak and Circus Skills, delivered as fast paced and dynamic movement. They infuse lyrical and fluid motion, layered with rhythm and textures in physically powerful, yet graceful performances.
Alleyne Dance strives for high quality and excellence as the Company delivers its three main objectives: performance, participation and development. In 2023, Alleyne Dance were winners of Black Female Icons of Lewisham with Brockley Max and The Mayor of London, and the Company also received the award for Best Independent Company at the National Dance Awards.
