4th annual WEST COAST WINTER DANCE INTENSIVE

4th annual WEST COAST WINTER DANCE INTENSIVE A 7-day intensive workshop with Cathie Caraker and Scott Wells Body-Mind Centering®, Contact Improvisation and Performance Research Experiential, Technical, Somatic and Acrobatic for experienced dancers and contactors. December 13 - 19, 2010 10:30-4:30 daily, with evening events tba Cost: $325 (early reg) until nov 15; $400 thereafter Pre-registration ($75 deposit) is required. Please make check payable to Scott Wells. Mail to: 1805 Divisadero, SF CA 94115 Questions? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. BMC MOVEMENT LABORATORY with Cathie Caraker Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) is an embodiment practice, a forum for experiential research into the body's innate states of movement and mind. As we investigate our body systems through movement and touch, we discover the architectural clarity of the bones, the 3-dimensional support of the organs, the deliciously kinetic fluids, the vitality of the muscles, the specificity of the nerves and the potent energy of the endocrine glands. Developmental movement patterns and reflexes help us to balance our tone and move with greater efficiency, grace and freedom. This work will form the ground for perceptual tuning, movement research and juicy improvisations. Solo practice, Authentic Movement and Contact Improvisation will be some of our tools in this laboratory. CONTACT IMPROVISATION with Scott Wells In the afternoons, building on the rich BMC work, we will take to the air. With antennae awareness charged by our nervous systems, the power of our blood and muscles and the lightness and ease we find in our bones, we will practice flying, catching, landing, fluid acrobatics and deft maneuvers. In the acrobatics each dancer will work at their own level while building group safety and trust, with the goal that everyone will do something new. We will also practice ensemble "performance jamming". This atmosphere has more intention and group focus than a jam but is less stringent than a formal performance. My main work is as a choreographer and I rigorously investigate partnering and acrobatic movement ideas. This allows me to bring unique movement vocabulary and training to my workshops. CATHIE CARAKER (www.caraker.com) is an independent dance artist who has been committed to the processes of movement research, improvisation and performance for over 25 years. She teaches, choreographs and performs her solo work and collaborations at dance programs, festivals and theaters internationally. She was on the faculty of the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam from 1994 - 2006, where she refined her approach to applying the Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) work to dance education and choreographic process. A certified BMC Practitioner since 1990, she also holds an MFA in Dance from Bennington College. Her writings on BMC as a somatic approach to dance education have been published in the Belgian dance journal Nouvelles de Danse. She currently lives in San Francisco, where in 2009 she was an Artist-in-Residence at CounterPULSE. SCOTT WELLS (www.scottwellsdance.com) discovered the pleasure of Contact Improvisation in 1981 shortly after becoming obsessed with the struggles of modern dance. He stuck with both and currently directs a company in San Francisco. Scott has trained extensively in contemporary dance and the Alexander technique and holds an MFA in Dance. In 2005 Scott received an Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Choreography and was selected by Dance Magazine as "One of 25 to Watch in 2005". This year he is teaching in Graz,Transylvania, Romania, Amsterdam, Budapest, Croatia and Germany. "Wells has become, over the last fifteen years, the Paul Taylor of Contact Improvisation - that is, the first to make dances in this idiom that are deeply musical, somehow "normal," imaginative, witty, often hilarious, sometimes fierce, but always respectful enough of the concerns of the general public so that the audience in Peoria would feel they had something at heart in common. In Wells' case, perhaps as in Taylor's, it's rooted in a profound need to reconcile deep oppositions, softened and lightened by a Zen attitude towards the impossibility of it. For Wells, it looks to me (and I follow Wells as some movie-goers followed Kieslowski) like these oppositions are between art and athleticism, the masculine and the feminine, the almost disembodied breath of music and the deeply muscular nature of movement, and the aggressive and the passive modes of being." --Paul Parrish, Dance View Times Video info: SW&D 1 minute trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h1-LQ0Dufo