To Register for Summer Wave visit www.iridianarts.com and scroll downy to Summer Wave!
Workshop Descriptions
Contemporary Dance Technique (9-11AM) NUGENT
Morning technique class, will offer participants exercises and phrase work designed to facilitate motivating the body through space with ease, power, spontaneity, and articulation. Active attention is paid to analyzing functional anatomy as a means of developing one’s understanding of possibilities for motion and articulation. We will investigate how thought affects the quality and effectiveness of movement. Practical exercises will expand kinetic intelligence and awareness of our partnership with gravity, space, architecture and other dancing bodies. Previous dance and/or physical theater experience recommended.
Writing for Performance (11:30 - 12:30PM) GRISE
Grise’s writing workshop explores how memory, images, emotion and history live in the body. Practice includes techniques to help find, write and embody a character’s voice, mannerisms, rituals and story. No acting or performance experience is necessary. and the class is open to artists of all experiences and disciplines. Dress comfortably. Bring several pens/pencils and a new journal.
Creative Processing (1-3PM) NUGENT/GRISE
With a combination of practical tools, conceptual discourse, and guided play, Nugent and Grise join forces in creative processing. Our intension is to guide participants on a journey into making, showing and discussing “their” work. Particular focus will be placed on recognizing the intrinsic values and possible collaborations between the moving body and text. However, participants may choose to develop an entirely physical piece or one which attends primarily to the use of spoken/written word. At the conclusion of the four days, Nugent and Grise will offer a window into their newest collaborative project Migrations. Participants will also be invited to share their developing works in a public studio showing. Bring your ideas, note books, pencils and curiosity!
Bios
Virginia Grise is a member of The Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab, a recipient of the Princess Grace Award in Theatre Directing and The Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellowship. Her plays include: Making Myth; Cuerpo Descubierto; rasgos asiaticos; a farm for meme; and blu. blu was a recipient of the Yale Drama Series Award and was published by Yale University Press. Her other published work includes The Panza Monologues (University of Texas Press) and an edited volume of Zapatista communiqués entitled Conversations with Don Durito (Autonomedia Press). She holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Stephanie Nugent, is a choreographer, improviser, performer and educator making dance theater in Los Angeles. Artistic Director of Nugent Dance, her creative work is rooted in collaborations with artists and scholars addressing social issues surrounding empathy and nonviolence. She collaborates across genres of performance, visual art, design, linguistics and religious studies, and has been commissioned by Companies including The Ririe Woodbury Dance Company, The Commune of Padova Italy, Conder Dance, Dada Dance, Sushi Visual and Performance Art, Santa Barbara Dance Theater and The Wooden floor among others. As a performer Nugent has toured internationally for more than twenty years, performing works by artists including Doug Varone, Keith Johnson, Victoria Marks, Laura Dean, John Malashock, Phyllis Lambhut, Shapiro and Smith, Della Davidson and others. She is an active improviser co-hosting a weekly jam at ARC Pasadena, newly renamed the Eastside LAB Jam. Ms. Nugent performs frequently with fellow improvisers Shel Wagner Rasch and Jones Welsh. A passionate educator, she was an Associate Professor of Dance at UC Santa Barbara 2001 -2007. Since 2007, she has been on full-time faculty in the School of Dance at CalArts, where she teaches contemporary technique, composition and improvisation.