Summer Dance Workshop 2012

July 9-27, 2012
Contemporary Technique Classes with:

Helanius Wilkins (Edgeworks Dance Theatre)
Doug Elkins (Doug Elkins Dance Company)
Amy Miller (GroundWorks Dance Theater)

Somatic Techniques:

Pilates w/ Lisa DeCato
Yoga w/ Erica Steinweg

Free weekly Studio Showings of guest artists works in progress for Summer Dance participants!

 

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SOMATIC TECHNIQUES
DAN 424/524 (1 credit)
Monday –Friday, 8:30 – 9:45 am
Study in the methods of somatic training and its
application to the moving body including Pilates Mat and Ball Work, an exercise-based system that aims to develop the body’s “center” to create a stable core for efficient and effective movement and Yoga, establishing principals for optimal alignment and balanced energetic action.
No previous dance experience required.

CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENT TECHNIQUES
DAN 473/573 (1 credit)
Monday– Friday, 10:00 – 11:30am
This technique class incorporates material from a variety of sources, ranging from release-based work connecting with the ground to an eclectic series of standing
contemporary sequences. Classes explore various elements including a weighted and grounded approach to moving, harnessing the body’s momentum and force, and
improvisational techniques.

WEEK ONE ( July 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13th): Class will deconstruct traditional approaches to technique and re-image body limitations to examine and explore the "joy" of daring dance and create an endless well of movement possibilities. Helanius Wilkin’s dance vocabulary fuses velocity, weight, and gymnastic principles with anatomical approaches to motion. Class will incorporate conditioning work for strength, mental training for clarity and articulation, and strong performance skills that emphasize intent and outcome.

Helanius J. Wilkins, a native of Lafayette, LA, is an award-winning choreographer, performance artist and instructor based in Washington, DC. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of EDGEWORKS Dance Theater - an all-male contemporary dance company of predominately African-American men based in Washington, DC. He was the recipient of the 2008 Pola Nirenska Award for Contemporary Achievement in Dance and a three-times finalist for the D.C. Mayor's Arts Awards. He also received the 2002 and 2006 John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Local Dance Commissioning Project. In addition to performing the works of several nationally recognized choreographers including Robert Moses, Earl Mosley, Joy Kellman, Troy Powell and Kevin Wynn, he performed with Present Tense Dance Company (Upstate NY) as well as with Maida Withers' Dance Construction Company (DC), and as a guest with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (MD). He has equally enjoyed creating, presenting and receiving commissions for choreography throughout the United States. To date, he has choreographed and directed over 60 works. In summer 2010, Wilkins made his DC theatre debut as the choreographer for Studio Theatre's wildly successful and critically acclaimed musical production, Passing Strange. This success was followed by the musical POP! in summer 2011, which received 9 Helen Hayes Awards nominations. Wilkins has toured internationally to Monaco, Scotland, Lithuania, and Switzerland. Foundations and funding organizations, including the New England Foundation for the Arts, Regional Commission, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts have supported Wilkins' work. Wilkins also teaches professional and pre-professional dancers, as well as students of various ages and levels of skill. He has served as an adjudicator and master teacher at ACDFA conferences in 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010, and 2012. A former Associate Artistic Director of the Dance Institute of Washington, Helanius J. Wilkins is currently on the faculty of Joy of Motion Dance Center and the Washington Ballet. In fall 2012, he will be guest artist in residence at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC); and he will be debuting his first evening-length solo dance theatre project.

WEEK TWO (July 16, 17, and 18th): A self-described ‘magpie’ who likes to make dances from all sorts of found material, Doug Elkins will conduct classes that pay homage to the great masters of modern, hip hop, martial arts, and ballet with a touch of Keaton and Chaplin veering towards Lenny Bruce. Fun and invigorating with the promise of good music, the session will go from warm-up to full out dancing. Please wear comfortable clothing and bring shoes/sneakers to dance in.

Doug Elkins is a 2012 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Creative Arts Fellow and a two-time New York Dance and Performance (BESSIE) Award-winning choreographer. He began his dance career as a B-Boy, touring the world with break dance groups New York Dance Express and Magnificent Force, among others. Doug is a recipient of significant choreographic commissions and awards from the NEA, National Performance Network, Jerome Foundation, Choo-San Goh & H. Robert Magee Foundation, Dance Magazine Foundation, Metropolitan Life/American Dance Festival, Hartford Foundation, Arts International, The Greenwall Foundation and The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. In 1994, Doug received a Brandeis University Creative Arts Medal, sharing the stage with author Philip Roth and photographer Nan Goldin. In 2006, he was honored in New York City by the Martha Hill Award for Career Achievement; in 2010, he was honored in Boston with an Elliot Norton Award for Choreography (for Doug Elkins & Friends’ Fräulein Maria, a loving deconstruction of The Sound of Music). Doug has taught and choreographed extensively in the US and Europe and has created original work for Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company, Flying Karamazov Brothers, MaggioDanza, Pennsylvania Ballet, Union Dance and CanDoCo of London, as well as a number of university dance companies and the renowned Mini & Maxi of Holland. His theater work includes collaborations with Joanne Akalaitis and Philip Glass, Robert Woodruff, Pavel Dubrusky, Annie Hamburger, Molly Smith, Craig Lucas, David Henry Hwang, Barbara Karger and Michael Preston (including Fräulein Maria), Anne Kauffman, and Arin Arbus. A graduate of SUNY/Purchase, he received his MFA in Dance from Hollins University/ADF in 2007. Until recently, he taught at The Beacon School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where his tenure is the subject of Where the Dance Is, a short film by Marta Renzi.

WEEK THREE (July 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27th): After warming up the body and mind through a series of phrases aimed at increasing one's awareness of the use of momentum, weight, dynamic choices and timing, Amy Miller will guide dancers through quicksilver floor work and expansive traveling exercises juxtaposed with highly nuanced gestural motifs.

Amy Miller is a New York-based dancer and choreographer. She is the artistic associate of Cleveland-based GroundWorks DanceTheater. A former member of the Ohio Ballet, she holds a BFA in dance and was awarded a 2010 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for her choreography. In 2012, her choreography has been seen at Triskelion Arts, Spoke the Hub, and Gibney Dance Center in NYC as well as in commissions from Cleveland State University and GroundWorks DanceTheater. Her ongoing collaboration with Oberlin College composer Peter Swendsen brought Running to Earth to GroundWorks last season and continued this spring with a premiere at NYC’s Scandinavia House, home to the American-Scandinavian Foundation. This fall, Miller will present an extended solo work entitled Trust the Future as Little as Possible at Spoke the Hub’s Space at Gowanus Arts in Brooklyn. Upcoming performing projects include Doug Varone’s Les Troyens at the Metropolitan Opera, Gibney Dance and in the work of Brian Carey Chung.

MIX AND MATCH
DAN 499/599 (1 credit)
Mix and Match is a grab bag of 15 classes– your choice– from among the three fabulous weeks of Summer Dance!

Registration is required and space is limited. To register or get more details, please email l.deering@csuohio.edu.

 Click here for upcoming Theatre Productions.

Past Dance Productions