Class Descriptions
GPAC 250 - Friday 10/10
9:00am-10:45am
“Puzzle Dance” with Anna Bauer and Jarius Carr
11:15am-1:00pm
“Physical and Vocal Viewpoints For Dancers” with John Cartwright
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm-4:45pm
“BIG EARTH ENERGY” with Yezi Williams
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
—
“Puzzle Dance” with Anna Bauer and Jarius Carr: This class sees group improvisation as a puzzle and each movement as one of the pieces. We believe intentional individual choices lead to interesting overall composition. Our research attempts to hone clarity within this decision-making by focusing on two actions: causing or reacting. Together, we will progress through a series of group exercises and games that provide options for initiation (causing) and encourage listening/responding authentically to the offerings of others (reacting). We will build the puzzle together, using our individual movements to create one big picture.
“Physical and Vocal Viewpoints For Dancers” with John Cartwright: This class will use the structure of Physical and Vocal Viewpoints, developed by Anne Bogart and Mary Overlie, as a method for practicing ensemble improvisation in performance. While this type of practice is often used in devising theatre works, I believe dancers benefit greatly from the central theme of Viewpoints: reaction and response over individual generative objectives. Goal for this class is to provide a space for dancers to try new improvisational performance techniques while building ensemble awareness.
“BIG EARTH ENERGY” with Yezi Williams: In this workshop we will play with the exploration of elements inspired by nature. Movers will flow through the space as we acknowledge the impact of elements as they stand alone in ones body and how they affect one another as they cross paths. rhythmic sounds and vocal freedom, we unearth our inner landscape in this nature-inspired improv workshop. Explore how elemental forces resonate within your body and interact as you move through space. Rekindle your creative spirit and love for nature in this playful exploration.if you are a creative explorer with a love for nature, this class is perfect for you!
GPAC 254 - Friday 10/10
9:00am-10:45am
“The Art of Holding: Exploring Self and Prop” with Moss
11:15am-1:00pm
“Collabrative Choreography” with Sheaff
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm-4:45pm
“Partnering and Play” with Evelyn Joy Hoelscher
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
“The Art of Holding: Exploring Self and Prop” with Moss: We will explore how to maintain a strong sense of self while engaging with props in movement. Through a series of improvisational exercises, participants will work with various objects to discover how to stay connected to their own body while being aware of and interacting with the prop. This practice is an excellent precursor to partner work and contact improvisation, helping dancers develop spatial awareness, timing, and the ability to listen deeply to their own physicality while sharing space with an object. A playful grounding experience that fosters creativity and presence.
“Collabrative Choreography” with Sheaff: For most of my dancing career, I had the immense privilege to create new work, which often began from an improvisational process. In this class, students can expect to warm up, learn basic weight-sharing partnering skills, experiment with improvisational tools collectively, and end by collaborating on making short new creations. This class will be physical, involve touch, and cultivate a sense of serious play.
“Partnering and Play” with Evelyn Joy Hoelscher: Contemporary Partnering & Play is an energetic, exploratory workshop designed for artists to move, connect, and experiment. We approach partnering through the lens of play—offering prompts, games, and technical tools to build your skillset and expand how you sense and support another body. Starting with guided connection and sensory awareness, we explore structured contact improv and dynamic partnering concepts. With a focus on body mechanics and efficient lifting, dancers learn to partner with ease—not force. Leave feeling stronger, more connected, and ready to fly. We breathe. We sweat. We partner. We play.
GPAC 258 - Friday 10/10
9:00am-10:45am
“Sightlessness” with Jacob Regan
11:15am-1:00pm
“Engaging Contact Improvisation and Critical Response Process: Playful Practice, Reflective Exchange” with Galvan and Nance
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm-4:45pm
“Impossible Dances” with Zena Bibler
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 10:00pm
—
“Sightlessness” with Jacob Regan: Sightlessness is a trust-building class structured around contact improvisation and the logic of the classic exercise of leading around a “blind” partner taken to its fullest conclusion. The four exercises are: The Classic – a sighted person leads, guides, or cues a sightless person by way of tactile input. Lead by Touch – swapping sights, the now sightless person is led by the now sighted person. Trust Through Touch – the sightless person leads, guides, or cues a sighted person by way of tactile input. Interpreting Impulse – swapping sights, the now sighted person is led by the now sightless person.
“Engaging Contact Improvisation and Critical Response Process: Playful Practice, Reflective Exchange” with Galvan and Nance: Process (CRP) as a tool for enhancing ethical communication and supporting agency in artistic exchange. Designed to reduce harmful power dynamics and temporarily suspend judgment, CRP invites deeper learning and shared meaning. Participants will engage in the four steps of CRP through the lens of Contact Improvisation, blending structured feedback with playful movement inquiry. By the end of the session, participants will gain a working knowledge of CRP principles and steps, along with ideas for creatively applying the method within improvisational and collaborative dance practices.
“Impossible Dances” with Zena Bibler: What happens when we know we will fail, but try anyway? How can attempting the impossible open up new pathways for play, presence, and partnership in improvised performance? In this workshop, we will use impossibility as creative fuel—exploring unachievable and paradoxical tasks as ways to unlock deeper imagination, presence, and responsiveness. Through moving and speaking scores, participants will engage in solo and group experiments, generating their own “impossible projects” as performance material. Activities will include both structured improvisation and open-ended devising with optional touch-based exercises. No specific movement training required; all will be invited (playfully) to move towards their edges.
GPAC 260 - Friday 10/10
9:00am-10:45am
“Together While Apart and Apart While Together” with Jordan Fuchs
11:15am-1:00pm
“Body Transgressions” with Iasabella Mireles Vik
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm-4:45pm
—
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 10:00pm
—
“Together While Apart and Apart While Together” with Jordan Fuchs: Using the action of tracing we will explore possibilities for extending the dance with our partner out into space, beyond the confines of our skin, developing qualities of lightness and becoming more permeable to impulse for redirection and into the air.
“Body Transgressions” with Iasabella Mireles Vik: Body Transgressions is an improvisational movement workshop focused on physical theater, instant composition, creating characters and building new movement textures. The workshop is focused on deconstructing our habits in movement by creating new pathways and structures through solo, partner and group research. By focusing on the anatomy of the body first and using every part of the body through improvisation, we move to the physiological aspects of the body and into complex thematics in performance. Body Transgression's intends to release our previous perceptions of movement to further expand our movement vocabulary.
GPAC Dance Theater- Friday 10/10
9:00am-10:45am
“Contacting: Finding the Wave” with Katrina Soricelli
11:15am-1:00pm
“Ease and Flow” with LOAM
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm-4:45pm
“All Bodies Speak” with Dewitt
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 10:00pm
Quiet Jam
“Contacting: Finding the Wave” with Katrina Soricelli: We dive into the dynamic, fluid world of Contact Improvisation, exploring the body's natural rhythms, gravity, and momentum in shared movement. This class invites movers of all levels to discover the "wave"—the felt sense of flow that arises when we tune into the body's internal currents and connect with others through touch, weight, and timing. Through guided exercises, and partnering work, participants will develop skills in listening, offering and receiving support, falling safely, and navigating the shifting balance between control and surrender. Emphasis will be placed on cultivating presence, attunement, and responsiveness, allowing the dance to emerge organically from moment-to-moment sensation. Whether you're new to Contact Improvisation or looking to deepen your practice, Finding the Wave offers a supportive space to move, connect, and be moved.
“Ease and Flow” with LOAM: In this class we seek to explore the ease of movement, we will dive deep into letting go of positions our body is used to holding, and finding comfort and freedom in letting go of control. Using concepts such as releasing tension in the body and allowing motions of continual falling be our aim, we will push further and further into how the body can move and create moments when we allow it to let go.
“All Bodies Speak” with Dewitt: DanceAbility is an improvisational dance class for all people, in any combination of people. We use the language of dance to explore how all bodies speak in a space focused on eliminating isolation.
Co-taught with somatic movement practitioners trained in the DanceAbility method, class will begin in an opening circle to create a safe container, warm up to attend to sensation, relationship, time and design, and several improvisational exercises to lead us ultimately toward open dancing. Class concludes back in closing circle for short dialogue amongst participants. This class is for all levels, all bodies, all people!
Barefoot Ballroom- Friday 10/10
9:00am-10:45am
“Gravity, Timing, and Imagination” with Paul Singh
11:15am-1:00pm
“The Seen Body: Choreographies of Attention” with Kravitz
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm-4:45pm
“Continuous Seeking: The Work is Never Done” with Paul Singh
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 10:00pm
JAM
“Gravity, Timing, and Imagination” with Paul Singh: This class explores how gravity, momentum, and imagination can expand the possibilities of partnering. We will focus on taking risks with jumps, lifts, and tosses, and on discovering how to meet those moments with care—learning to decelerate together so that soft, supported landings can occur. A central question will be how to create equity in partnership: how to offer your partner a soft landing so they can in turn become the strong foundation for you to pour your weight onto immediately after. We will examine acceleration, deceleration, and everything in between, while practicing how to stay legible enough in our choices that our partners can always find us. We will also explore committing and de-committing, testing how quickly and fully we can shift our decisions in real time.
Alongside the physical training, we will open up the imaginative field of contact: What if this could happen? What if an arm became a ledge, a leg became a metal detector, a back became a surfboard? By tapping into imagined scenarios, we enliven the present moment and expand the range of what feels possible inside movement and touch.
The class begins with foundational Contact Improvisation practices, emphasizing comfort, trust, and safety as we share weight at low, middle, and high levels—first on the floor, then seated, and eventually standing. From that groundwork, we will layer in the inquiries above, allowing precision and play to coexist. The aim is to cultivate a partnering practice that is both technically rigorous and creatively alive.
“The Seen Body: Choreographies of Attention” with Kravitz: Let’s explore what it means to be seen—by ourselves, by others, and by the space we inhabit. Through guided improvisational scores, we’ll investigate how the body communicates presence and how attention itself becomes a form of choreography: how we direct it, receive it, and move through it. Folks will play with the dynamics of witnessing and being witnessed, asking: How do we shape ourselves when we know we’re being watched? How does attention alter intention? By tuning into both internal and external perception, we’ll uncover new ways of moving, noticing, and being noticed.
“Continuous Seeking: The Work is Never Done” with Paul Singh: This class is an exploration of continuity—how movement flows without pause, and how discoveries arise when we allow visceral response to be the primary driver, with awareness and reflection acting as guides along the way. Our work begins in solo practice, giving time to warm up the body and tune into personal sensation and rhythm. From there, we investigate how these solo bodies meet one another, first by building contact skills and then by expanding into larger, shared movement scores.
The class emphasizes how we support each other—not only through physical touch, but also through intention, eye contact, and presence. We will explore how connections vary in speed and intensity, paying attention to the subtle shifts between moments and the “gradient of importance” that arises as relationships form, change, and dissolve.
Rather than treating big, flashy movements as the ultimate goal, we will focus on what happens in the spaces between them. The transitional elements—those often-overlooked bridges—are where the richest discoveries occur. By attending to transitions as sites of depth and play, we eventually uncover the truth that all movement is, at its core, transition.
The aim is to cultivate stamina, presence, and curiosity in continuous dancing, while also developing a more nuanced understanding of how bodies remain in dialogue. This class invites us to stay in the work, to never consider it finished, and to embrace the practice of moving as an ongoing process of inquiry.
GPAC 250 - Saturday 10/11
9:00am - 10:45am
—
11:15am - 1:00pm
“Real Time: Strategies for Dance Improvisation as Performance” with Ryan and Rushing
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm - 4:45pm
“Hot Mess Improvisation” with Meg Dodini
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 8:30pm
—
8:30pm - 10:30pm
Quiet Jam
“Real Time: Strategies for Dance Improvisation as Performance” with Ryan and Rushing: Real Time offers strategies that embolden clarity in choice making, deep listening and collective creation when applied to improvisation as performance. Improvisers will engage their three-dimensional body and listening strategies as they embody space, relationship, body attitude, intuition and somatic inquiry within improvisational scores to be performed in real time with an audience.
Intended for intermediate and advanced dancers, choreographers, physical theater makers and curious somatic movement enthusiasts who seek a heightened improvisation practice and generative tools of engagement for real time performance.
“Hot Mess Improvisation” with Meg Dodini: Hot Mess is an improvisational class in becoming the worst dancer possible. Built on the idea that clarity often emerges through polarity, we explore chaos, failure, and “bad” dancing to reexamine our ideas of beauty. This class celebrates the creative potential in losing control and welcomes destabilization as a tool for discovery. Through absurd, often impossible movement and vocal prompts, dancers are challenged to release perfection and embrace unpredictability. Hot Mess is a practice in being lost—joyfully, fearfully, and fully—freeing the instinctive body and inviting growth through discomfort, curiosity, and the mess of honest expression. Note*: This improvisational pedagogy was founded by a mentor of mine, Alex Ketley, of The Foundry, and I have trained and taught in it.
GPAC 254 - Saturday 10/11
9:00am - 10:45am
—
11:15am - 1:00pm
“Surfaces as Partners” with Rai Barnard
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm - 4:45pm
“The Mover, The Witness, and The Dance Between” with Christie Bondade
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 8:30pm
—
8:30pm - 10:30pm
—
“Surfaces as Partners” with Rai Barnard: Energy is never created nor destroyed. When we dance, our energy transfers, not just within our bodies, but between the surfaces we contact and back to us! Combining somatic dance and contemporary floorwork technique, we’ll examine how inanimate surfaces can be our active partners.
We will begin with visualization exercises to grasp how our momentum flows between our bodies and the floor, the air, the walls, and more. From there, we will explore support, resistance, softening, and rebounding with a variety of surfaces. Together, we’ll discover a never-ending flow of energy between our bodies and the space we inhabit.
“The Mover, The Witness, and The Dance Between” with Christie Bondade: This workshop will utilize the practice of Authentic Movement (AM), a process of self-discovery and a form of Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT), to explore spontaneous dance-making, embodied expression, and interpersonal connection. In this self-directed form, movers listen inwardly and allow movement to arise from inner impulses, bridging the conscious and unconscious. Witnesses offer receptive, nonjudgmental attention, responding when invited to. Together, mover and witness cultivate heightened awareness, respect, and empathy. We will expand this exploration through group spontaneous dance-making, extending the role of witnessing into the larger collective. Through guided exploration, we will practice both moving and witnessing to deepen our connection to ourselves and to others in movement. While not a therapy session, resources for AM & DMT are available for those interested.
GPAC 258 - Saturday 10/11
9:00am - 10:45am
—
11:15am - 1:00pm
“Soft Arrivals” with Brandon Gonzalez
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm - 4:45pm
“Fascia Flow: The Listening Web” with Vincent Hardy
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 8:30pm
—
8:30pm - 10:30pm
—
“Soft Arrivals” with Brandon Gonzalez: This workshop will explore Contact Improvisation, not only as a physical practice, but one that is emergent, creative, and rooted in presence. By embracing authentic expression and deep listening, we’ll aim to move without expectation, attuning to ourselves and to our partners. The potential for creativity arises not from pre-planning, but from staying open to what the moment offers. Contact exercises, compositional explorations, and eyes-closed work will be introduced as forms of arrival and as meditations in the present moment.
“Fascia Flow: The Listening Web” with Vincent Hardy: This class introduces a fascia-informed approach to Contact Improvisation. Participants will explore the fascial system as an intelligent web for sensing, responding, and moving in dynamic relationship. Through solo, partner, and group improvisations, we’ll explore softness, elasticity, and spiral mapping—tuning into internal and external pathways of tension, release, and flow. We’ll also examine how fascia mediates electromagnetic awareness and shared momentum in duet and group form. Key themes: Fascia, listening, spiral movement, proprioception, soft contact.
GPAC 260 - Saturday 10/11
9:00am - 10:45am
—
11:15am - 1:00pm
“Dancing in the Dark” with Dominique M. Fontenot
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm - 4:45pm
“Embodied Ecology: Dancing with the more-than-human” with Patricia L. Solorzano
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 8:30pm
—
8:30pm - 10:30pm
—
“Dancing in the Dark” with Dominique M. Fonte: Improvisational Team Synchronization, Improv Team Sync, or ITS is a style of group dance improvisation. ITS is performed by a group of dancers consisting of one of more leaders and followers. The dance relies on a shared vocabulary of movements, each initiated by the leader using a distinct cue movement. After the cue, a short choreographed movement sequence, or combo, is performed by the group. The leader chooses the combo based on their interpretation of the music, which is often done spontaneously during the performance. The result is a dance that appears choreographed, but is in fact structured improvisation.
“Embodied Ecology: Dancing with the more-than-human” with Patricia L. Solorzano: Through a practice of moving with and learning with, we will tap into the ecology of our bodies and our shared environment. In this laboratory we will engage in mindful listening and observation walks, followed by an outdoor, site-responsive movement practice. We will work through a series of guided improvisational explorations designed to awaken the movers' senses and open up possibilities for deeper awareness between human and more-than-human bodies and landscapes –especially of places where the ‘natural’ and the ‘urban’ rub against one another. Finally, we will record and share our embodied learning experiences through memory mapping, drawing, and writing.
GPAC Dance Theater - Saturday 10/11
9:00am-10:45am
—
11:15am-1:00pm
TECH
1:00pm - 3:00pm
3:00pm-4:45pm
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 8:30pm
PERFORMANCE
8:30pm - 10:30pm
—
Barefoot Ballroom- Saturday 10/11
9:00am - 10:45am
Morning Jam
11:15am - 1:00pm
“Findings: Solos, Duets, and the Spaces Between” with Paul Singh
1:00pm - 3:00pm
BREAK
3:00pm - 4:45pm
AVID
4:45pm - 7:00pm
BREAK
7:00pm - 8:30pm
—
8:30pm - 10:30pm
Closing Circle and Jam
“Findings: Solos, Duets, and the Spaces Between” with Paul Singh: This class investigates the layered relationship between solos, duets, and group dynamics, using a research method I’ve been cultivating called The 10’s. We begin by awakening the solo body—its ambition, agency, and curiosity—so that each dancer can generate material rooted in their own impulses. These solos are not created in isolation, but with the awareness that they are always permeable, always on the verge of being met by another.
From there, we explore how solos intersect: how one dancer’s pathway collides with, brushes against, or intertwines with another’s. We’ll practice the skills of arriving, leaving, and arriving again—tuning into how connections can shift across a wide spectrum. At times, that meeting might be as subtle as an exchange of eye contact across the room or a soft graze of the limbs. At other times, it may build into the full weight of two centers leaning into each other with trust and commitment.
The class will guide us in noticing not just the clarity of the solo or the strength of the duet, but the architectures that form in the spaces between: the shifting geometries of bodies in proximity, the invisible threads of attention, and the larger structures created when multiple solos and duets ripple through the same environment. Together, we will consider how these architectures shape the group field and how the group, in turn, influences each individual’s dancing.
This class asks us to stay curious about what emerges at every scale—from the intimate solo, to the responsive duet, to the collective organism of the room—so that we can better understand how our dancing continually moves between independence, connection, and community.
AVID: Join AVID member Tamin Totzke in a physical practice of presence—exploring gradients of touch, energetic connection, and an expansive sense of relating across space and time. Drawing from Contact Improvisation, Lincoln and Totzke will share tools developed through their long-standing collaboration in pursuit of dynamic and satisfying solo, partnered, and group improvisation. Together, we will tune our capacity to stay with—honoring individual impulses while holding the container of the duet. We will deepen our choice-making with care for the whole, navigating the tension between autonomy and connection.