We are interested in dancing and participating in a ballet that feels fresh and alive in these times.
We’ve replaced the piano of the classical class with drum machines and synthesizers as we go forward in the structures of both forms to find our ballet, one as refreshing as cold water.
In ballet’s physicality is access to lightness, levity, expansive and collective qualities. Many of the story ballets are filled with fairies, sorceresses, witches and spirits. What can be found in the lines of the body in all its various extensions, in the circling and beckoning of the arms in the port de bras, in ballet's turns and jumps all the while listening to the spirit of our bodies? How is this magnified when we dance together as a corps de ballet?
We work on learning to trust in our ears, our muscle memory, and our histories. Focus is on active listening: to the music, to the self, and to the others. Electronic music, like ballet, works with steps and sequence(r)s: one produces movement and the other produces tonality. In this workshop we will pay special attention to glissades (gliding) and reversé (upset, reversed).
"Since the powers to be affected and to affect, to be moved and to move, a capacity which is indestructible, exhausted only with death, is constitutive of the body, there is an immanent politics residing in it: the capacity to transform itself, others and change the world" – Silvia Federici In Praise of the Dancing Body
Elizabeth WardMarcos „AC/Boy“ Rondon
