WEEK I
9.30 - 11.30
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FEELING DANCING
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Fascinated by how we can sense movement akin to how we sense touch, this workshop explores ways to transfer the tactile experience we get from the floor, touch and each other into dancing through space with memory and imagination. I will propose different tasks, prompts, metaphors and images to guide, layer and shape our experience of a dance. This is a dance class. You can expect to do some somatic exploration of movement ideas, repeated loops of short coordinations, partner-work, short choreographed dances and an eclectic playlist of tunes. I am deeply interested in the artful play and pleasure of dancing. These classes will weave from floor to standing and I hope to leave you glazed with sweat (but not exhausted), smiling and ready for the day!
11.45 - 13.45
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TOUCH MEMBRANES co-taught with Kira Kirsch
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In 2015 Kelly and Kira, gave a workshop entitled Touch Membranes that assembled a lot of their collaborative work in learning, teaching and creating alongside each other for a decade. This year, thanks to a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, Kelly and Kira have devoted time in-studio in Berlin, to continue labbing and generating somatically informated touch-based dance pedagogy. They are excited to offer a Touch Membranes (Remix) at this year’s Nomadic College.
The body is one’s personal harbour of sensation. The skin, encasing the body, is a sensitive and malleable interface with the world outside of ourselves. Via stimuli it helps us understand with evermore refinement our relationships between our own body and to all other life and objects outside of ourselves. This workshop is a preliminary partnering study. We will use touch and sensing to extend our understanding of our own anatomies to that of another. Anatomy and the principles of the Axis Syllabus will be referenced in guided explorations.
BIOGRAPHY
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Kelly is a Montreal based contemporary dance artist and teacher working in the field since 2001. Along with graduating from Les Ateliers de Danse Moderne de Montreal Kelly’s foundational training includes a 2 year apprenticeship in Brussels with mentor and originator of the Axis Syllabus, Frey Faust.​​ Kelly’s dance teaching career began in Europe upon certification in the Axis Syllabus in 2006. Her teaching brought her throughout east and west Europe and beyond before returning to Montreal in 2008 where she re-immersed in the local community. Although Kelly retired her AS certification in 2015 she continues to collaborate with AS teachers and continues teaching contemporary dance regularly. Locally and further abroad in Canada she teaches for organizations that provide continued training services to professional dancers including Studio 303, le RQD, Transformation Danse, L’Ártère (QC), The Toronto Love-In among other organizations. She is part-time faculty at UQAM and Concordia University’s Departments of Contemporary Dance and was a recent guest artist at the University of Calgary. As a performer Kelly has danced for several choreographers including Hanna Sybille Muller, Maria Kefirova, Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, Adam Kinner and Francesca Pedulla. Kelly is currently in creation processes for new works by Sarah-Eve Grant-Lefebvre, Compagnie Katie Ward and Erin Hill. As a choreographer Kelly is noted for her meticulously articulate work with Kira Kirsch including Species (2009) and Useless Creatures (2011), and more recently for her out-of-the-box performative pedagogies A Practice (2013) in collaboration with Adam Kinner and Be Still & Know Me (2017). Kelly’s commitment to the art of dancing has lead her into leadership roles in arts administration and event organization. She was co-director, alongside Kira Kirsch, of the North American Nomadic College from 2013-15. Kelly founded the Montreal Movement Educator's Forum in 2012 and is currently President of Studio 303‘s board of directors.