Texas Dance Improvisation Festival 2020
2020 Classes Offered
Ritual-iD: Tortoise Knows My Name
Facilitator: Tawanda Chabikwa (University of Texas at El Paso)
Dance can be used in service of transformation, contemplation, and healing. Dance is practice that cultivates self-knowledge. There is wisdom within our bodily capacity for sensation and this wisdom is unleashed when we are active, present, and engaged in/through rhythm and breath. This workshop centers three principles: Intention, Awareness, and Intimacy. We will explore through improvisation the existential and aesthetic work of dance; what dance does. How does movement move us into new cognitive directions and new relationships to ourselves and others? How does it transform our memory, senses, and self-concepts into resources for personal growth and healing? What new aesthetic possibilities emerge for us as dancers when we give ourselves over in processes of shared vulnerability while traversing our personal internal geographies? What does it mean to allow your heart to dance? Our encounter will draw from a combination of improvisational methods that include mhande rhythmic structures from the Karanga peoples of Zimbabwe, divine choreographies of Braziliancandomblé, fundamentals of physical theater technique, along with the inflections of various marital arts and meditative practices. The workshop is an opportunity to shed “all the things we have cemented to out identities” and discover anew the deep structure of embodied knowledges available to us always.
*Ritual-iD is a dance pedagogy, composition and improvisation method that is in ongoing development by Tawanda Chabikwa. The method focusses on cultivating positive relationships between self-concept and soma-sensory information in movers. This ritual-inspired process is modeled upon concentric understanding of relationship/relationality that extend infinitely in in both inward and outward directions.
Biography
Tawanda Chabikwa is an interdisciplinary artist-scholar who’s work revolves around Black and Africana dance practices, practice-based research, and creative collaboration. Current research and creative practice investigates choreographic practices of transnational African artists, contemporary African theatrical dance, Africana religions/spiritualities and philosophy, decolonial pedagogies, embodied research methodologies. He holds a B.A. in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic, an M.F.A. in Dance from Southern Methodist University, and works with storytelling, performance art, and visual art (most recent exhibition was at the William H. Thomas Gallery in Columbus, Ohio 2017), and creative writing (first novel Baobabs in Heaven published in 2010). Tawanda holds a doctorate in Africana Studies from the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University and was recently a lecturer in the Global Arts Studies Program at University of California, Merced. Tawanda’s interdisciplinary scholarly and creative endeavors have led to collaborative encounters, including think-tank initiatives, educational practice, performances exhibitions, and presentations in Zimbabwe, France, Mozambique, many parts of the United States and more.
Style: Improv/Dance Theatre
Facilitator: Valeria Y. Gonzalez (University of Texas at El Paso)
Valeria's workshops and contemporary classes cultivate a safe space for exploration, breakthroughs, intimacy, community and risks. Her class is focused on exploring new movement dynamics of the body while acknowledging the psyche of each dancer to find freedom in the uncomfortable. Her movement focuses strongly on intention, sensations and individual input. This class will provide the dancers with a variety of improvisational methods inspired by contemporary dance and acting techniques through a structure of task oriented exercises, movement research, movement phrase material, and an open discussion.
"My teaching philosophy stems from my passion for dance and human connection. I aimto connect with the student, and give them space to explore their bodies through movement. My work is process oriented, and it starts from building a student-teacher relationship, in which the student can feel completely safe to make mistakes, and learn from them. My classes allow the student to question, and to be curious about their anatomies. I always ask the dancers: how do you relate to the world as an artist? I aim to create not only dancers with correct technique, but artists who recognize their own voice and authentic self..."
Biography
Valeria Y. Gonzalez is a Mexican-American artistic director, choreographer, teacher, dancer, performance artist, and producer. In 2018, she graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with an MFA in Dance with a concentration in Performance and Pedagogy. During her education at NYU, she had the opportunity to teach Ballet, Improvisation and Dance Composition for the Future Dance and Dancemakers program. She was also graciously selected to be one of the five choreographers chosen to create a long piece for the Masters Performance Workshop concert at NYU. As a performer, Valeria has created her own solos and also has performed works by MADBOOTS DANCE, Pamela Pietro, Eric Miles, David Pressault, Rayco Cano, and Gioconda Barbuto. Additionally, she completed two certificate dance programs from Ballet Divertimento in Montreal and The Alvin Ailey Schoolin NYC. In between those gaps, she attended several dance intensives such as: GAGA in Tel Aviv and New York, B12, Movement Invention Project, SBDNY Module, Gallim Dance, Vim Vigor, Pirouetteando, and Alvin Ailey School. Valeria's unique views and inquiries in gender equality, freedom of expression, sexism, and diversity led her to found her now NY based dance theater company: VALLETO. VALLETO has become an emerging dance theater company - highly sought out.
“My work investigates love and relationships bridging the divide between the intimate and the universal. I make work to break the rules. My work represents the heart and soul of a woman.”-Valeria González
VALLETO has performed five evening-length seasons both in New York and Brooklyn. And furthermore, the company received a commission by HERE Theater, and 60 hours residency by SMUSH Gallery. And has been selected for to perform in different theater-program opportunities such as Triskelion Arts “Split Bill” program.
In addition to her education in dance, Valeria also graduated with a BFA in Communication Arts and TV Production in 2015. During that time, she created dance short-films, led several visual art projects with the platform inside-out project and worked for prominent media outlets such as Time Out Magazine (E-Commerce Manager) and at NBC New York (Social Media assistant & Assignment Desk Intern). In 2014 she was hired as a full-time Production Assistant where she worked along with the executive producers, anchors, photographers, assignment desk editors and reporters.
Valeria is currently teaching at University of Texas El Paso at the Dance and Theater Department, and continues to create work, and teach workshops all around the globe.
Refuge and Resource
Facilitator: Ray Eliot Schwartz
Refuge and Resource is a TDIF session designed for shared personal practice. We will attend to interior impulse while inviting gentle consciousness of others in common time - connected through distance. We will combine improvised movement exploration and interoception - applying imaginative practice, intuition, kinesthesia, and awareness to celebrate movement as a site of sanctuary and resilience.
Suggestions for space:
Ideally a minimum 12x12 moving space with high reach capacity, barring that enough room to lie down, spin in a circle, move around the space a bit, invert yourself, and change levels. If that's not possible then minimally the ability to sit, stand, circle, lie down, and roll from side to side ... and a little imagination to adapt what we do that might not fit your space!
Biography
Ray Eliot Schwartz, (he/him/ours) is a dancer, teacher, administrator and arts activist. He attended high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, received his BFA in Dance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University and his MFA in Dance from University of Texas-Austin. He is the founder of Performática: Foro Internacional de Danza Contemporánea y Artes del Movimiento and a consultant and teaching artist for ArcDanz International Dance Workshop. Ray co-founded four contemporary dance projects in the southern U.S.: Sheep Army, The Zen Monkey Project, Steve’s House Dance Collective and THEM. He has been a guest artist for diverse populations in the U.S., South East Asia, Turkey, South America, and Mexico. He has served on the faculty of the American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, MELT, the ZMP Summer Dance Intensive, the Colorado College Summer Dance Festival and SFADI, among others. He is on the board of ISMETA (International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association) and an RSME whose somatic studies include certifications in Body-Mind Centering® and the Feldenkrais Method®. Additional studies include Zero-Balancing®, Gross Anatomy, Cranio-Sacral Therapy, and Traditional Thai Massage. He is a research associate at the Center for Mind Body Movement and a published scholar who writes in Spanish and English about the interface of somatic movement education and contemporary dance practice. He served as Academic Coordinator of the Dance Program of the University of the Americas-Puebla in México from 2008-2018.
