2024 Summer Intensive
Intensives offer students a steady and deep learning of Brown’s body of work through both current and former company dancers. Classes focus on technique, repertory, and specifically engaging with Brown’s rich archive of multidisciplinary work to uncover new creative outlets and help students accomplish individual creative goals. Each Intensive offers students tools to deepen their knowledge of technical principles, compositional structure, forms, improvisation and performance. This is achieved through classes, video showings, written materials and end-of-week showings.
WHEN:
Week 1: JUNE 17 – JUNE 21, 2024
Week 2: JUNE 24 – 28, 2024
10:00AM-4:00PM
WHERE:
New York Center for Creativity & Dance
287 East 10th Street, NYC
INSTRUCTORS:
Week 1: Lisa Kraus and Vicky Shick
Week 2: Lance Gries
WHAT:
Week 1 Class Description:
These morning and afternoon sessions will be taught alternately by Lisa Kraus and Vicky Shick. With our individual but complementary approaches we will begin the day by readying our bodies and minds for inhabiting Trisha Brown's movement, her processes and certain emblematic themes. This will lead us into patient, detailed learning and absorbing some of Brown's choreography, mostly from the voluptuous vocabulary in her "Unstable Molecular Cycle."
Lisa Kraus will draw from Glacial Decoy and Opal Loop. Through the vehicle of these works we'll consider the decades-long artistic interchange and differences in movement qualities between Brown and Steve Paxton, her colleague in Judson, Grand Union and beyond. Paxton taught contact improvisation to many of the dancers in Brown's early company, enabling the partnering strategies that developed in Brown's dances.
Vicky Shick will teach excerpts from Line Up (1976) and Son of Gone Fishin’ (SOGF) (1981). Line Up is one of Brown's earliest pieces constructed from memorized improvisations, an underlying mode continuing on from the late 70's. We will work with that form as a basis for composing. In addition to SOGF vocabulary, we will look at Solo Olos (1976), a dance within Line Up that is a precursor to Brown's later more sensuous style.
With both teachers, we will deepen our familiarity with the physical choreographies so that we can delve into creative work with related structures, improvisations, and concepts. We look forward to the unexpected explorations and play which pop up in our time together.
Week 2 Class Description:
The morning class will prepare us to enter Trisha’s vocabulary physically and intellectually. Each day will have a specific focus on a part of our functional anatomy. Through shared "hands on" experiences and guided individual and group movement practices, we will go deeply into sensing and using new awareness to learn and integrate phrase material. Harmonizing with Week 1's survey of works from the "Unstable Molecular Cycle", we will hone in on the movement within Son of Gone Fishin’ (1981) and research the principals at work within this complex, shimmering, piece.
The afternoon will be focused on exploring and creating sections of duet, trio and small group compositions using Trisha’s unique “building” process, combining improvisation with the setting of material in real time. There will be space for reflection, inquiry and discussion into our individual experiences of the somatic principles and their application to Trisha’s movement philosophy.
SCHEDULE:
10:00AM-12:00PM: Technique Class
12:00PM-1:00PM: Lunch
1:00PM-4:00PM: Repertory
FEES:
Single Week Registration
Early Bird Discount available through May 24: $315 + $11 PayPal processing fee
Regular Rate: $350 + $13 PayPal processing fee
Weeks I & II Registration
Early Bird Discount available through May 24: $630 + $22 PayPal processing fee
Regular Rate: $700 + $25 PayPal processing fee
Student Discount
$200 + $7 PayPal processing fee
Please email Cecily Campbell at c.campbell@trishabrowncompany.org to reserve a student rate.
Work Study
One work study position will be available each week.
Please contact Cecily Campbell at c.campbell@trishabrowncompany.org if you are interested.
MEET THE INSTRUCTORS:
Lisa Kraus’ dancing life began at square dances called by her father and in classes taught by Jane Dudley, an early Graham dancer. She graduated from Bennington College where she studied with seminal post-modern dance figures and took part in the early development of contact improvisation with Steve Paxton. While based in New York (1977-1989), she performed in the Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC), creating roles in several now-iconic works, and choreographed and performed as an independent and for her own company. Her pieces, often incorporating video and text, were made in concert with visual, musical and movement collaborators. With support from funders including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, dances she made over a 30-year span were presented by many venues in New York, around the U.S., and internationally. As a teacher with a somatic approach to movement, she held faculty positions at New York University, Naropa University and the European Dance Development Center in the Netherlands (1991-2000). She has restaged Trisha Brown works for Paris Opera Ballet, Petronio Co, the Venice Biennale and, for TBDC. Her work with Paris Opera was captured in the film In the Steps of Trisha Brown, which won the Jury Prize at the 2017 International Festival of Films on Art of Montréal. Working with the Opera catalyzed her writing of essays and dance criticism which, since 2003, has appeared in print and online publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance Research Journal, Contact Quarterly, and her own weblogs. She was a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Dance Criticism and in 2011 co-founded thINKingDANCE, an online dance journal and dance writers’ training scheme. In 2015 she was Keynote Speaker for the Dance Critic’s Association Conference and in 2017 served as critic-in-residence at the Asia Pacific Dance Festival. As a presenter at Bryn Mawr College (2006-2018), she developed extended projects and special programming with Cambodia’s Khmer Arts Ensemble, John Jasperse, John Kelly, Meredith Monk, Rennie Harris Puremovement, Susan Rethorst and Ralph Lemon. Trisha Brown: In the New Body (2015-6) was a yearlong festival including a partnership with Pennsylvania Ballet, and ear-whispered: works by Tania El Khoury (2018) was the first major platform dedicated to this Lebanese “live artist.” Ms. Kraus lives in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia and has been studying Soul Line Dance with a number of teachers there, in Mt. Airy and West Oak Lane for over five years, taking part in myriad classes and parties.
Vicky Shick has been involved in the NYC Dance Community for over four decades. From 1980 -1986, she was a member of the Trisha Brown Company and since then has staged several of Brown’s choreographies. She has been making dances since the late eighties, collaborating with many performers, artists, and sound designers. In addition to performing with other choreographers, Shick has created student pieces at several universities, most recently at Yale and The New School. In the NYC area, she teaches at Movement Research, for the Trisha Brown Company, and for 15 years at Hunter College. Shick has taught internationally including in her hometown, Budapest. She was a two-time Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a DiP grantee at Gibney Dance Center, a two-time Bessie recipient, a grant recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellow.
Lance Gries is an independent dancer/choreographer and teacher. After dancing with Trisha Brown from 1985 - 1992, he has presented choreography in New York City and internationally. His work has been recognized with numerous awards and fellowships, including a Bessie Award and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship. In 1994, he became a founding teacher at P.A.R.T.S., the international school for contemporary dance in Brussels, Belgium and has taught workshops around the world. He is also currently a practicing Life Coach and maintains a retreat space on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.