I teach a variety of different movement technique modalities as well as dance and live performance composition. I have just recently completed my Feldenkrais certification, as of June 2011, and find that what and how I teach is more and more influenced by this work and way of thinking. I also see clients privately for one-on-one Feldenkrais sessions - feel free to email me if this is of interest to you.
Beginning Adult Ballet
This ongoing class/lab is a fun, relaxed, but very serious exploration of ballet based on my understanding of the Corvino method,which I have been exploring for the last 30 years. In small classes with a relaxed learning atmosphere and personal attention, I work on the fundamentals of this classical technique, alignment, and the principles of movement, with an emphasis on clarity and ease, so that my students can experience the joy of movement as well as the satisfaction of understanding the principles governing it.7:30-9:00 pm Wednesdays
10:30-12 am Sundays
drop-in $14/class
at Danspace
473 Hudson St., Oakland
510 420 0920
Feldenkrais for Dancers and other Movers
The Feldenkrais Method is a wide ranging system for understanding how the human being functions and learns how to learn, using the body as its primary laboratory. This weekly drop-in class is an exploration of how bodies in motion and at rest work. Learn to truly experience - from the inside - how different parts of your body move and work together. Discover how very subtle changes can fundamentally alter and refine all the movements you do - from sitting at your desk, to carrying groceries, to double pirouettes, to standing on your head - and can increase awareness, release inefficient patterning, tension and pain, and increase flow. This is a wonderful opportunity for dancers working in any style to bring greater felt understanding of how their body is constructed, as well as greater ease and articulation, into the execution of their movements. However, this pathway of exploration is equally open to movers in all walks of life, including martial artists, athletes, armchair warriors and couch potatoes, as all of us are included in the set of those who have bodies and move them in the course of their everyday lives, and perhaps would like to find more ease or fluidity in how we navigate our way through our lives.Please wear loose and comfortable clothing
9:00-10:00am Wednesdays
drop-in $ 7-14 sliding scale
At Shawl Anderson Dance Center
Call 510 654 5921 or www.shawl-anderson.org for more info
Feldenkrais your Dancing
Nina Haft and Mary Armentrout team up to co-teach on-going intensive workshops exploring how the Feldenkrais Method can deconstruct and support contemporary dance technique. Nina Haft teaches contemporary technique drawing upon aspects of Limon and Release-based techniques, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and martial arts. Mary Armentrout is a Feldenkrais practitioner. The Feldenkrais Method is a wide ranging system for understanding how the human being functions and learns how to learn, using the body as its primary laboratory. Together Nina and Mary will interweave elements of Feldenkrais and dance technique in this workshop. Working with this fusion, we will discover how very subtle changes can fundamentally alter and refine all the movements we do -- and can increase awareness, release inefficient patterning, tension and pain, and increase flow. This is a wonderful opportunity for advanced dancers working in any style to bring greater felt understanding of how their body is constructed, as well as greater ease and articulation, into the execution of their movements.at Shawl Anderson Dance Center
Call 510 654 5921 or www.shawl-anderson.org for more info
in side out and up side down: a composition intensive
During this week-long intensive, we will explore:techniques for opening the body and letting its stories spill out - in words and other modalities
techniques for appropriating the "real" outside world to embody your inner world.
techniques for collaging different media together to most accurately embody your ideas.
We will start with the body, exploring many different ways to access its rich wealth of material(including some tools for the world of Feldenkrais), and move out into playing with its relationship to the outside world, building up different strategies for connecting (and disconnecting) the two. We will spend some time working with the idea of collage, creating different approaches to layering, so that moving between media becomes a fluid, easy option. We will incorporate any media that seems central to our ideas: movement, text, images (created through visual art media and video), objects, set elements, sites, and sounds, and learn how to combine them to create a seamless whole. We will use the beautiful industrial wasteland of the Sunshine Biscuit Factory as our giant site-specific laboratory. We will work all week and have an informal showing on Friday night at the space.
This is a workshop for dancers, choreographers, actors, theater makers, musicians, flimmakers, and any performance art makers interested in the interplay of media in live performance.
August 15- 19, 2011, 10:30 to 5:30
$150, nota/work study available
with an informal showing + potluck on the last night
At the Sunshine Biscuit Factory in Oakland
email if you are interested in details