Contemporary Jazz
Be spontaneous and daring!

In this contemporary jazz class Hagit introduces her unique style, blending elements of jazz with contemporary. It is a highly physical and energetic class, emphasising dynamics, timing, musicality, and abilities; as well as inviting participants to be spontaneous and daring in the types and quality of the movement vocabulary, challenging their virtuosity.
A hip class taught by Hagit in London on a regular basis, as well as in different dance festivals and centres in Europe and Israel.
The class has a set warm up, some improvisation tasks and it ends with exciting dance sequences introducing different combination of dance styles.

For the last 13 years Hagit has been developing this technique class, believing that dance should be learned in a positive, energetic, fast and ecstatic environment, where a celebration of movement in time and space can happen. The fun environment enables Hagit to push the students to their limits and build their identity as performers and dancers. Combining her skills and expertise as a dance movement therapist with her philosophical approaches to dance, performance and education, she encourages passionate, emotional and experimental approach to dancing.

In the beginners class the emphasis will be on the enjoyment of moving through simple yet challenging dance routines; shifting constantly from set material to improvisation, allowing each dancer to explore his/her own way of moving.

The advanced class will be more as a laboratory in which the students can put into practice all the contemporary and classical dance techniques they’ve learned and improve on them by adding their individual expression.



Hagit Yakira
Hagit is a choreographer, performer and a dance teacher based in London. She graduated from the Music and Dance Academy in Jerusalem, Israel and did her MA in European Theatre Dance at Laban Centre, London. She is also a qualified Dance Movement Therapist, and currently working on her PhD in Choreography at Laban Centre, researching the notion of choreographing autobiographies. She studied and danced in Paris, New York and Berlin and participated in workshops with leading choreographers around the world (to name only a few- Ohad Naharin, Yasmeen Godder, Milli Bitterli, Nigel Charnock, Rosalind Crisp, Rosemary Butcher).

Hagit is teaching technique classes at Laban and The Place, as well as working as a guest choreographer in both institutions for different projects and performances. She is leading the choreography course at Birkbeck University, and has been leading workshops internationally, teaching both the contemporary jazz class which she has been developing during the years, as well as creative work and choreography.
After years of performing and teaching, Hagit has been developing her own choreographic work. So far she has created several works, two of them were awarded: first prize for "Oh Baby" in the Kajaani Choreography Competition, Finland 2009, and second prize for "Somewhere between a self and an other" in the Burgos New York Choreography Competition (New Dance Trend Category), Spain 2007.

Hagit's choreographic work is supported by the Arts Council England, and commissioned by Laban Centre London, and she is touring in numerous festivals and dance platforms worldwide and she is now being commissioned to choreograph for different dance companies in Europe and Israel.