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Everyone’s a Dancer
Don't tell me you're not a dancer - everyone is a dancer! This inclusive and creative course is a fun and physical introduction to contemporary dance, including a daily dance class followed by explorations in choreography.
Contemporary dance encourages natural, spontaneous movement and personal interpretation. It focuses on self-expression, awareness of space and body movement, use of body weight, the efficiency of muscle use and safe body alignment.
Sarah’s classes bring together imaginative and anatomical information, thinking inside and outside the body as well as choreographic explorations, looking at ways of thinking about movement and space.
Dancers are guided through their experience with support and encouragement to try new ways of moving, thinking and expressing themselves.
The course will be fun and physical, creative, and thought-provoking as we work toward a short group choreography.
Enrol-
Half day mornings - Monday to Friday - 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
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Suitable for ages 18 to adult
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Beginner, Everyone
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Course Info
This course is suitable for people with little to no dance experience and those with other kinds of movement training.
Contemporary dance is not restricted to any one style of movement or music. It can be danced by anyone and everyone, with each dancer finding their own dance vocabulary and expression. It encourages natural, spontaneous movement and personal interpretation.
Together we’ll sweat, think, feel, explore and have plenty of fun.
This course is suitable for people with little to no dance experience and those with other kinds of movement training.
Please bring the following on your first day of class:
- Comfortable clothes you can move in
- Socks
- Runners
- Notebook
- Pens
You will start each day with a dance class to warm up and learn skills and techniques. We will be practical and treat ourselves well, dance with the bodies we have and find possibilities we never knew we had.
With a gradual warm-up of body and mind, this class will give you new tools and plenty of preparation in the lead-up to some expansive phrase material.
You will then move into choreographic explorations, looking at ways of thinking about movement and space. Dancers are guided through their experience with support and encouragement to try new ways of moving, thinking and expressing themselves.
We will draw from the history of contemporary dance and various physical and creative practices, including improvisation, simple partner work, original movement invention, and composition.
You will have the opportunity to contribute thoughts, ideas and choreography devised through tasks, exercises and experiments in movement, individually and as a group, building towards a short piece.
This course doesn’t just engage your coordination, strength, flexibility, rhythm and memory. You’ll also build confidence, resilience, creative thinking and collaborative skills.
Photo credits:
- Casey Horsfield
- Keelan O’Hirir
- Diana Domonkos
Happy Camper Reviews
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Course Tutor
Sarah Aiken
SARAH AIKEN is a Melbourne-based teacher and choreographer from Bellingen NSW, whose work investigates assemblage, scale and the self, looking at the roles of audience, performer, subject and object and connecting tangibly with audiences to consider performance as a site for empathy & exchange.
Her works incorporate object, video, technology, sound and light to create theatrical experiences that explore complex ideas with generosity and humour.
Sarah is co-director of Deep Soulful Sweats, working with Rebecca Jensen to create work that engages rigorously with participation, waste and a reckless formalism, recycling content to consider materiality and how we come together. Their works invite the audience into the work, shifting the hierarchy of performance and creating a cathartic, exhilarating and deeply communal experience.
Sarah has presented work nationally and internationally, including Dance Massive, Arts Centre Melbourne, Castlemaine State Festival, Dancehouse (Housemate Resident XIV), The Substation/LGI, Keir Choreographic Awards (finalist 2014 & 2016), VCA, Brisbane Festival, PICA, Ian Potter Museum, Immigration Museum, Les Plateaux de la Briqueterie (Paris), and Dancemakers Toronto. In 2022 she premiered her new work, Make Your Life Count, at Arts House.
An Australia Council artist in resident at HIAP, Helsinki 2022 and a recipient of the Creators Fund and Performance Space Micro-fellowship, Sarah has an expanded choreographic practice and is developing new works for stage, screen and exhibition contexts.
