Gaga Workshop: Gaga/dancers classes + Ohad Naharin’s Repertoire sessions with Marija Slavec, a former Batsheva Young Ensemble dancer.
Gaga is the movement language developed by Ohad Naharin throughout many years, parallel to his work as a choreographer and the artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company. Gaga originated from Naharin’s need to communicate with his dancers and his curiosity in the ongoing research of movement.
Dance Days Chania Summer Workshop
Gaga classes are predicated on a deep listening to the body and to physical sensations. The instructions are deployed to increase awareness of and further amplify sensation, and rather than turning from one prompt to another, information is layered, building into a multisensory, physically challenging experience. While many instructions are imbued with rich imagery, the research of Gaga is fundamentally physical, insisting on a specific process of embodiment. Inside this shared research, the improvisational nature of the exploration enables each participant’s deeply personal connection with Gaga.
Gaga provides a framework for discovering and strengthening the body and adding flexibility, stamina, agility, and skills including coordination and efficiency while stimulating the senses and imagination. The classes offer a workout that investigates form, speed, and effort while traversing additional spectrums such as those between soft and thick textures, delicacy and explosive power, and understatement and exaggeration.
Participants awaken numb areas, increase their awareness of habits, and improve their efficiency of movement inside multilayered tasks, and they are encouraged to connect to pleasure inside moments of effort. The language of Gaga is in a continual process of evolution, and the classes vary and develop accordingly.
Gaga/dancers classes and repertoire sessions are open to professional dancers or advanced dance students ages 18+.
Marija Slavec – Gaga Workshop
These classes last for an hour and fifteen minutes and are taught by dancers who have worked closely with Ohad Naharin. Gaga/dancers classes are built on the same principles as Gaga/people classes but also employ the specific vocabulary and skills that are part and parcel of a dancer’s knowledge. The layering of familiar movements with Gaga tasks presents dancers with fresh challenges, and throughout the class, teachers prompt the dancers to visit more unfamiliar places and ways of moving as well. Gaga/dancers deepens dancers’ awareness of physical sensations, expands their palette of available movement options, enhances their ability to modulate their energy and engage their explosive power, and enriches their movement quality with a wide range of textures.
Repertoire class gives dancers an opportunity to learn excerpts of Ohad Naharin’s choreographic works and to apply their training in Gaga to the repertory.
