We are curating dance workshops at Nextfest! Workshops are free to Nextfest artists. All workshops will take place at the Ruth Carse Centre for Dance (11205 107 Ave).
May 28 + 30, 10:00-11:30am Ileanna Cheladyn
Ileanna and Diego like each other enough to make dance together. They met in dance school (Modus Operandi – Vancouver) and became fast friends over cocktails, existential crises, and dance moves. Since 2014, they have been supported through residencies at Boca Del Lupo (Vancouver), Stable (Montreal, QC), WhaltLab (Vancouver), Hop Bop Shop (Vancouver), Left of Main (Vancouver), Espacio Expectante (Monterrey, MX), Copper Moss (Tuwanek, BC), and Gold Saucer (Vancouver). Their work focuses on being present to the tasks at hand, attending to the audience/performer relationship, and proximity to produce tension in the body. With Katie Lowen in 2016 they co-founded Boom Box, an alternative performance space in a semi-truck trailer, which has expanded their creative practice to include mentorship, dramaturgy, technical directing, and producing, alongside writing and dance making. They begin work on a new creation in summer 2019.Our class is based in contact improvisation and somatic principles; both practices provide deep grounding in presence, feeling, and coordination. We will start where we are, and slowly build up a sweat to begin dancing on our own and together. We want to think about sharing our physical practice that is less about building technique and more about focusing on relationships to the ground, to gravity, to our bones and organs, to duration, and to one another. The class is built for you to push yourself as hard as you want physically, and will move through a variety of physical tones and qualities of our structures. There will be floor work, partner work, and spine work, but we are also interested in working with diverse movement practices that ask for other forms of attention or patterning.
May 31, 10:00-11:30am Nostos Collective
Nostos Collectives Dance Association, founded in 2014 by Jessica Lowe and Olivia Aubrecht, is a socially diverse and inclusive group of emerging contemporary dance artists who have graduated from various training programs and continue to challenge each other’s craft of choreography and performance. Through the assistance of Arts Nova Scotia, Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council the company has grown in the past five years in Halifax NS and Toronto, ON. Nostos Collectives embodies a movement aesthetic composed of raw physicality, floor work, partnering, and inventive use of bodies and space. In creation processes company artists collaborate with choreographer to achieve cohesive works often commenting on current socio-political issues, either through abstraction or narration. In summary, the Collective has worked with a multitude of local emerging artists from the Maritimes and Toronto, it has performed at multiple Fringe Festivals, Nocturne Art Festivals, has held multi-annual independent shows and community classes in both Halifax and Toronto.
We are excited to share our unique approach to movement and relevant contemporary forms.
Each class will be led through exploring different aspects of contemporary dance such as floor work, improvisation, partnering, phrase work, somatics, etc.
June 6, 10:00-11:30am Rachel Facchini
Rachel Facchini was born in Mississauga, Ontario and is a graduate of Ryerson University’s School of Performance with a BFA in Performance Dance. She is the co-artistic director of emerging company, Near&Far Projects that was founded in 2016. Rachel has choreographed and performed in Toronto, across the Greater Toronto Area and Berlin, Germany. She is excited and grateful to perform in the festival as well as share her philosophy during her workshop.
Rachel Facchini’s teaching practice employs a fusion of guided improvisation, somatic movement practices and fundamental technical exercises. She invites the workshop participants into a safe space for personal growth and exploration. Rachel will lead the participants through a constant flow of tasks, prompts and exercises, evolving from one physical state to another. Rachel approaches each workshop with an open mind and is receptive to the bodies in the space.