LACE Public Classes & Events

SATURDAY SCHOOL: 6 Saturdays from Noon–5:40pm

CLASSES ARE OPEN TO MOVERS OF ALL LEVELS AND BACKGROUND
If you do not consider yourself “a dancer,” please don’t let that stop you from attending!

All classes at LACE unless otherwise specified

 

Each Saturday is structured in four sessions:

12:00pm–12:45pm: Opening Session
1:00pm–2:20pm: Session 1
2:45pm–4:05pm: Session 2
4:2opm–5:40pm: Open Rehearsal for Meadow, led by taisha paggett, a movement choir to be performed at the end of the exhibition (more information below).

Course Catalogue

 

Subject: Dream Shapes

Facilitator: Heyward Bracey / Oct 31, 2:45pm-4:05pm

An exploration of socially and somatically inspired movement, woven from a fabric of personal and cultural sources. Dream Shapes will begin with body images drawn from various Butoh practices, witnessing and dialogue. We’ll then pull from our bodies’ personal memories and language, and support each other in expanding our awareness of them. In our practice we’ll look for the tension between “demonstrating” and “embodying” an experience.

 

Subject: Explorations in Contact Improvisation

Facilitator: Kloii Hummingbird Hollis / Nov 7th, 2:45pm-4:05pm

This workshop will explore the fundamentals of Contact Improvisation, a Western dance practice developed in 1972 through the work of Steve Paxton. We will look at how the form takes up Newton’s Laws of Motion as well as practices of healthy touch and community-building. Topics covered will be weight sharing, balance, lifting for beginners, sliding, rolling, falling, personal boundaries and play.

 

Subject: The Gaze / Silent Moving Sculpture

Facilitator: Maria Maea / Nov 21st, 2:45pm-4:05pm

Silently and through demonstration and explanation written on placards, this class will take up various eye contact exercises. The idea is to create a nonverbal, energetic space that will allow participants to reflect on the complicated experience of seeing and being seen.

 

Subject: Ghost Dance History and Other Banned Dances

Facilitator: Joy Angela Anderson & WXPT Company Members / Dec 5th, 2:45pm – 4:05pm 

Banned by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for fear of inciting an uprising, the Ghost Dance was a dance of revitalization and renewal that re-energized community and strengthened solidarity. In discussion and movement, this class will take up the Ghost Dance and also address other banned dances in history, including contemporary local public school policies which prohibit such acts of embodied gathering and solidarity amongst young people.

 

Subject: How I Move: An exploration in Identity, Poetry and Dance/Movement

Facilitator: Turay.Turay / Every Saturday except Nov 14th and 28th, 12:00pm – 12:45pm / Oct 24 | Oct 31 | Nov 7 | Nov 14 | Nov 21 | Dec 5

This interactive workshop examines, physically and theoretically, the idea of movement. Inspired by the work of Marc Bamuthi Joseph and his signature practice of integrating text and movement, “How I Move” begins with a poetry  exercise that leads into explorative dance and concludes with an open discussion. Together we will engage the ways our individual identities relate to the “dancer” identity. Who are you when you dance?

Suggested reading: Who Am I Where? by Rebecca Solnit

 

Subject: In Rhythmic Dialogue with Black Brilliance

Facilitator: Meena Murugesan / Oct 24th, 1:00pm – 2:20pm

This is a space to acknowledge, learn from, honor, and invoke Black radical thinkers and artists who have shaped me, and maybe you. We will read excerpts from a selection of Black radical creative thinkers and then create personal rhythms with our feet in conversation and in gratitude. Finally, we will accumulate our actions into a collective poly-rhythmic ritual.

 

Subject: Movement and Sequence

Facilitator: Kristianne Salcines / Oct 24th, 2:45pm – 4:05pm

The goal of this class is to find ways to be led by your body. The personal is political. How does YOUR body move? In what all ways can it move? Participants will be given structures through which to identify different forms of sequencing and intuitive movement pathways.

 

Subject: Open rehearsal for Meadow

Facilitator: taisha paggett / Every Saturday except Nov 28th, 4:20pm-5:40pm / Oct 24 | Oct 31 | Nov 7 | Nov 21 | Dec 5

This is a five-part class and open rehearsal for Meadow, a collective dance that is a movement choir that is the taking up of time, space and togetherness. The work will involve weight exchange, moving together in and out of unison and differing degrees of proximity. The work created here will be performed in the gallery/school on Saturday December 5th and Sunday December 6th, 7:30pm. All participants in the class are eligible to perform in this final work. (Additional mandatory evening tech rehearsals will take place in the week of November 29th-Dec 4 for those involved in the performance. Details to be announced in class.)

Outside of class we will read excerpts from The Undercommons, Fugitive Planning & Black Study (2013) by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten as an anchor to our collective movement.

 

Subject: Reflections on The Human Ferris Wheel

Facilitator: Rebecca Bruno / Dec 5th, 1:00pm – 2:20pm

Inspired by a personal experience within the collective company exercise called The Human Ferris Wheel, this class is as much an offering as it is a question about collective forms of action and difference. This designated time is an invitation to share space together and alone in silence, to imagine, retreat, draw, think, breath, write, observe and be within the walls of LACE.

 

Subject: ReMix: Shared Dance Practice

Facilitator: Devika Wickremesinghe / Nov 7th, 1:00pm -2:20pm

This class offers a way to create dance collectively, in a setting in which the roles of teacher and student change fluidly. A cumulative dance will be developed through the exchange of our stories. Time will be made for writing and speaking. We are the dance and we are our stories.

 

Subject: The Social Behavior of Chairs

Facilitator: Sebastian Peters-Lazaro / Nov 21st, 1:00pm – 2:20pm

Using chairs as a mutable interior architecture, we will create patterns and environments, and observe and discuss its effects on the space and how a group functions. How are we taught to fit into social structures by containing our physicality through the use of a chair? How do we sit differently in different situations? How are we taught to sit based on our different bodies? How are these experiences affirmed in everyday life?

 

Subject: Spell-Casting/Un-Casting & Dream Interpretation

Facilitator: Joy Angela Anderson and Charmaine Bee/ Oct 31, 1:00pm – 2:20pm

Informed by one of WXPT rehearsals in which company members offered individual interpretations of spell casting/un-casting, we will explore movement that co-creates ritual space to support, invoke and activate our individual and collective spells and dreams.

In this class we will ask:

  1. What might it look like to uncast what feels like a spell characterized as restrictive, oppressive, or that does not allow growth, expansion, consciousness and connection?
  2. What might it look like to cast spells? Individually and collectively to instigate change?
  3. How can we use our dream world as a space to activate our intentions?
  4. How can the energy of movement and collectivity activate our intentions?
  5. What is the embodiment of belief?

 

Subject: moving through the burden

Date: Tuesday December 1st, 2015, 12–1:30pm

Facilitator: Suné Woods / Sign up here

This workshop will engage excerpts from Greg Tate’s book, Everything But The Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture and Ta-Nehisi Coates book, Between the World and Me through both discussion and physical exercises of weight exchange—giving, sharing and holding the weight of other bodies.

 

Events and Workshops

Subject: Movement for Speculative Quantum Bodies

Screen Shot 2015-11-05 at 10.03.45 AM

Date: Sunday November  8th, 2015. 12pm – 3pm.
Facilitator: Anna Martine Whitehead / Sign up here

Anna Martine will lead participants through a movement and discussion-based exploration of blackness and speculative fiction. Beginning with a brief presentation on Quantum Mechanics, Speculative Fiction, and Queer and Trans Black Materiality, the workshop will extend into movement, guided meditation, and contemplative (or a-contemplative) exploration of anatomy. Together, we’ll begin working to figure out where our bodies begin and end, and what is beyond our corporeal limits. Participants should come prepared to move and engage; this workshop is about liberation.

 

Subject: Ditch Plains (2013) screening and conversation with Imani Kai Johnson, taisha paggett and Jaye Austin Williams

mwtZCtB0E-jl46c8OORVwSnPyFzEVT8ERCs51VgIP70

Date: Monday November 9th, 2015. 7pm.
Facilitator: Erin Christovale / Sign up here or walk in.

Shot in the East New York section of Brooklyn around the time of Hurricane Sandy, Ditch Plains (HDV, 29 mins) is a dystopian sci-fi street dance film by Loretta Fahrenholz, featuring members of Ringmasters Crew. Like avatars running the levels of an apocalyptic video game, Ringmasters Corey, Jay Donn and Marty McFly hallucinate the city and its networks as a space of terror, mutation and magic. “Flexing,” “bone breaking,” “pauzing” and “connecting” in nighttime streets, hotel hallways and a posh Park Avenue apartment, the dancers improvise dream-like scenes suggesting digital death-matches, stop-and-frisk situations and catastrophic man-machine interfaces. Meanwhile, documentary shots of Far Rockaway show the city’s attempt to manage disaster in real life.

Following the film we will engage in a conversation with scholar Imani Kai Johnson, artist taisha paggett and Jaye Austin Williams around narratives of Black resistance, the intention of Black bodies on screen, socioeconomic privilege in the height of the apocalypse, stop and frisk, and the history of flexing/bone breaking dance style that originated out of Brooklyn.

 

Artist’s Talk with Ashley Hunt, taisha paggett and Kim Zumpfe, moderated by curator, Robert Crouch

Date: Thursday November 12th, 2015, 7:00pm.

 

Movement Workshop and conversation with Ishmael Houston-Jones

p849985543-3

Date: Saturday November 14th, 2015, 1–4pm / Sign up here or walk in

After our weekly warm-up with Turay.Turay, dance artist and choreographer Ishmael Houston- Jones will lead a movement workshop and presentation on his own work from 1-4pm. (photo: Ian Douglas)

 

Public Lecture by the WXPT dance company, with the At Land’s Edge platform for visual research

Date: Tuesday, November 17th, 2015, 7:30-9:30pm / Walk-in

 

Subject: Third Space: A look at the DJ and Dancer Love Affair

12042759_10152955612646371_2584302722717870193_n

Date: Friday November 20th, 2015, 7:00pm.
Facilitator:  DJ Lynnee Denise / Sign up here

This performative lecture explores the relationship between improvisation, the polyrhythmic nature of the DJ blend, and house music as the vehicle through which dancers and djs exists in a movement romance.

 

Subject: Moving Through the Burden

Date: Tuesday December 1st, 2015, 12–1:30pm
Facilitator: Suné Woods / Sign up here

This workshop will engage excerpts from Greg Tate’s book, Everything But The Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture and Ta-Nehisi Coates book, Between the World and Me through both discussion and physical exercises of weight exchange—giving, sharing and holding the weight of other bodies.

 

Subject: the moment the movement

12108914_10156257770550595_2628485955484363649_n

Facilitator: NIC Kay
Date: Wednesday December 2nd, 2015, 7-9:30pm / sign up here

This year, 2015 has seen Black + Brown folks in the US and around the world publicly experiencing extreme violence and being forced to watch other black + brown folks/sprits/humans/bodies dragged, choked, broken, killed – in real life, on the news and for instant replay on the internet. These experiences have been highlighted by performative responses in politics + culture such as public debates, protests, songs + art. Think – The View, Black Live Matter Protest NYC, Kendrick Lamar (Alright) and Damon Davis’ lawn sculptures.
the moment the movement invites participants to engage collectively in oral, sonic + kinesthetic dialogue around the effects of systemic violence + oppression on the body + spirit. Particular emphasis on the ways trauma is held/stored in the body + the ways black / brown folks grow resistive movement practices for survival + therapy. We will discuss, we will listen, we move.

 

Closing Meadow Performance

Screen Shot 2015-11-25 at 8.35.42 AM
score-in-progress, developing performance for Meadow.

Date: Saturday December 5th, 2015 & Sunday, December 6th, 7:30pm

This is a five-part class and open rehearsal for Meadow, a collective dance that is a movement choir that is the taking up of time, space and togetherness. The work will involve weight exchange, moving together in and out of unison and differing degrees of proximity. The work created here will be performed in the gallery/school on Saturday December 5th and Sunday December 6th. All participants in the class are eligible to perform in this final work. (Additional mandatory evening tech rehearsals will take place in the week of November 29th-Dec 4 for those involved in the performance. Details to be announced in class.)

 

WXPT dance company with analog dissident

Date: Sunday, December 13th, 2015, 6:00 pm

at South of Sunset, hosted by VOLUME
1218 West Temple Street
Los Angeles CA 90026

As a starting point for discussion, presenting artists bring questions and ideas they are grappling with as they start or complete their work.

analog dissident invites queer/radical/feminist/politically inclined artists and curators to get together once a month to engage critically around work, outside of traditional art institutions, school, gallery openings and most importantly, outside of social media. We will bring our fleeting and digital interactions into a real time dialog in the analog world. Let’s discuss our work through our personal and collective experiences and our relationship to institutions, as well as issues of inclusion and exclusion, consensus, capitalism, security culture, immigration, citizenship, the environment, the art world. Let’s create a non-hierarchical space where we support each other, build relationships and possible collaboration opportunities. Where we exchange ideas and give mutual encouragement. Where we stay generous and open.