Jan 31/Feb 2/4: Olivia and Diego
Class Description:
Embodied Dimensions / In these socially distanced classes, we will be sharing improvisational tools developed in proximity to the practice of Contact improvisation at EDAM Dance. Aside from Contact, Olivia and Diego borrow from somatic movement approaches as further means of development for their improvisational practice.
These classes look to tune our senses and attention in order to facilitate our curiosity and give us creative ground to stand on. Class will begin with a guided warm-up that attunes our attention to sensation, gravity, and the subtle modulations of tone in our body.
Developmental movement principles such as yielding, head-tail connection, and push patterns will facilitate pathways that move us in and out of the floor with ease and efficiency. We will travel through space using “scores of limitation,” to create opportunities that liberate habitual patterning and enrich the possibilities of our dancing.
Olivia Shaffer and Diego Romero share a long history of practicing together and have decided to join forces as teachers in order to provide a wider spectrum of knowledge for students and each other. What these two share is an interest in interpreting Contact's formal, practical aspects as doorways into a kind of self understanding housed in embodiment, the flux of experience, and ecstatic temporality.
Olivia has a background in improvisation framed in Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals, Pilates, Feldenkrais, among others. Diego’s background is in Existential philosophy and Phenomenology. Together, these two offer an approach to Contact that interacts with a milieu of embodied practices as well as a philosophical framework from which they attempt to ground them.
*Olivia Shaffer will teach on Jan. 31 & Feb. 4. Diego Romero will teach on Feb. 2.