Urban Styles

Urban Styles are movements in motion. Everything is constantly changing and the real inspiration is the music! The feeling is like a block party, having fun while experiencing visually and physically the different forms of expression that is going on in todays urban culture from the street to the clubs. So join the party and let loose the dance in you!
Constant motion, improvisation, continuity rhythm and harmony. The beat goes on, never final, never finished. That‘s the pulse and energy movement we call dance.

Included at all levels is a warm up and cool down in the creative process. To convey the energy and movement of dance from HipHop, Funk to Ragga and HouseDance.
All technical stuff is put into an easy-to-follow choreography for the beginner's level. As for the advanced level the combinations are physically and technically more challenging.


Contemporary Jazz
enjoyment, the creative process and working with others

The class begins with a contemporary warm up that consists of  excercises in various combined forms. These vary throughout the warm up  in order to acquire body placement make your tendons and muscles elastic and springy, develop your sense of balance which will be needed for correct execution of technique.
Later on a series of various Adagio and Allegro combinations are put together to develop movement phrases in the middle part of the class. Particpants will be required to do floor and airial work as well as traveling in space. The class ends with a choreography.
The main goal of the workshop is to work with and encourage the students to embrace the different movement possibilities of the body through nonverbal communication. I would like to give choices that are innovative, exciting, progressive and diverse in the bringing together of the rapidly expanding discipline called dance. The emphasis of the class is also on enjoyment, the creative process and working with others.



Russell Adamson
Russell Leon Adamson was born in Jamaica and moved to England with his family at the age of 10. He attained 3 city and guild certificates in electronics and engineering at Gloucester City College. His athletic abilities lead him to the Gloucester Youth Gymnastics team and amateur and thai boxing. He carries the black belt status in various Martial Art Techniques. With this physical background he was granted a 4-year scholarship at the London School of Contemporary Dance. At the same time he took classes in Classical Ballet at the Central School of Ballet in London.
He studied Ballet with Marian Lane and Laura Conners of the Royal Ballet School and Company (UK) and Jazz with Deirda Lowell and Wayne Babeist (Alvin Ailey Company), Daniela Lorenz (Matt Mattox Company), Charles Augins (USA) and also Claude Paul Henry (London) and Max Stone (New York).
He also studied Modern with Bill Louther (Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey Company), Carolyn Carson and Jorma Uotinen (Helsinki City Theatre, Finland), Viola Farber from the Merce Cunningham Company, Jane Dudley and Robert Cohan from the Martha Graham Company.

Russell Adamson is an innovative teacher, motivating his students to focus on their work, so they can do more than they expected. With his support many young dancers have chosen dance as their profession. He has also created many choreographies, which have gotten a lot of recognition in Finland and abroad.
During the last years he has worked as a performer for the National Ballet of Estonia, the Gala for the 6th International Baltic Ballet Festival (Riga, Lithuania) and for Marimekkos 50th birthday (2001 - 2004), amongst others. In addition he has worked with the Black Dance Festival in Vienna (2002 & 2003) and the Estonia Art and Culture Gala Night in Tallinn (2004).
As a choreographer he has created his own work including: "Spirit of the Landscape" (Finland, 2005), a solo and duett with Rodney Williams for the Black Dance Festival (Vienna, 2005), "Flow" a solo (London, 2006), "Terrain" (Finland, 2006), a choreography for the opera La Traviata (Finland, 2006), "Episodes" for the Rainbow Jazz Festival (2007, Estonia), a choreography for the Higher Ground Gospel Concert (Finland, 2007), The Live Orchestral Music and visual effects show at the Estonia Concert Hall (Tallinn, 2007), a Funk & HipHop choreography for the Urban Culture Tour (Helsinki, 2007) and lately a choreography for the jazz opera Manon with the world premiere (Estonia, Febuary 2008).
In 2009 Russell created four big productions, which have been shown in London, Tallinn and Vienna.