Taste & Smell is an approach to dance. Hip Hop & West African dance languages inform the way we energetically confront contemporary dance & theater. This is not a Hip Hop or West African dance class.

Hearing, sight, & touch are always present in dance training. Our class asks dancers to connect more actively to their taste and smell, using those senses as a literal and metaphorical reference point to engage with movement. Let’s activate all 5 senses to enlarge the experience of performance, to expand beyond practical execution of movement, to give nuance & idiosyncratic presence to each dancer. Let’s step outside the internal and into an externalized experience with rigor and curiosity. Let’s attack the warmup, technical exercises, and phrase work with hungry mouths and greedy nostrils:

• We’ll research how sensory awareness effects pedestrian & virtuosic movement
• We’ll investigate improvisational scores that build awareness of detail & creative decision making.
• We’ll sharpen our performance techniques & externalize our experience with our eyes, using an active focus to create a dialogue with our environment that invites the possibility of character & narrative.
• We’ll explore theatrical games that open new potential for expressivity.
• We’ll play with rhythm to understand its relationship to muscular tension and effort in the body.
• We’ll challenge the idea that dance should look and feel effortless
• We’ll create an empathetic space to tackle phrases with physical courage.

Class is sweaty. Everyone is welcome.