The Group Motion Workshop is a non stop guided process of dance/movement improvisation with live music. Based on structures and scores created and developed by Brigitta Herrmann and Manfred Fischbeck, the Workshop combines highly refined structures of improvisation, movement meditations, and contact dance. It is an outgrowth of their work with the Group Motion Dance Company originated in 1971. It is being conducted regularly every friday night in Philadelphia for over fifty years and has toured to festivals, dance centers, colleges and schools in the US and other countries all over the world. This tradition is now being implemented and carried on by Berlin based teachers Jennifer Mann and Heidi Weiss. An ensemble of musicians supports this interactive space with live improvised acoustic and electronic music.
This course will examine various methods of formatting and creation of a jazz dance class. The primary focus will be on pedagogic approaches, music mapping as well as creating technical exercises and movement phrasing geared toward teaching beginning to intermediate level dance students. The seminar will involve a presentation of informative teaching techniques and collaboratively working as a group to explore personal stylistic choices of the jazz dance genre.
Alessandra Tirendi presents popular highlights of her dance classes for children from 6 to 10 years: Warm-ups, coordination exercises, choreographies for younger and older children, improvisation ideas in combination with a picture book ("The Queen of Colour") and games that can be used at the end of the class. Alessandra teaches technical exercise elements of contemporary dance, room-filling improvisations and playful elements that awaken the children's joy and imagination.
