Class Locations

Various Locations, please see instructor's profile.

Registration

Class spaces are limited. Please register early by sending $25 non-refundable deposit (by cheque to Series 8:08) with your name, address, e-mail, phone number and the name of the workshop you would like to attend.

For more info please contact Series 8:08 ATC Program Manager Tracey Norman

Contact Info

T: 416 504 6429 ext.40
E:atc[at]series808.ca
Series 8:08
c/o Dance Umbrella of Ontario
490 Adelaide St. W #201
Toronto ON M5V 1T2

Series 8:08 gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Dance Umbrella of Ontario, our board, and our volunteers.

click for Important Information about Alternative Technique Classes

Download a PDF of all of Series 8:08's Alternative Technique Classes or view their descriptions below.

This workshop is open to pre-professional and professional dancers, artists from different backgrounds, and yoga practitioners.

Vijnana is a Sanskrit word which means “inquiring; understanding from within.” At its foundation are seven principles: relaxing the body, quieting the mind, focusing through intention, rooting, connecting, breathing and expanding. Through deep personal inquiry as well as through partner work, we will explore these principles . We will look at how applying these principles will enhance your daily practice, whatever this practice may be. Through sitting (meditation), we will move towards finding a relaxed body and allow the fluctuations of the mind to settle so intention can arise and become clear. Though pranayama (breath work), we will practice different breathing techniques.

Through the asana practice (poses), we will explore Tomas Myer’s myofascial meridians as well as the concept of biotensegrity, which, in essence, is the balance of tension and compression elements in the body. We will discover that, by channelling the rebound force through those meridians, we can plant deep roots, make connections through the whole body and allow the body to expand to its full capacity.

Originally from Sherbrooke, Quebec, Sylvain Brochu is a seasoned dance artist recognized as a compelling performer and master of interpretation. He has worked with more than 40 choreographers and, as a soloist, has a repertoire of uncommon eclecticism. His appearances as a dance performer are now selective and savoured with a deepened sense of thanksgiving. Sylvain was introduced to yoga as a child and then rediscovered it in the late ‘80s. In the last ten years, he has made it his practice.

An inspiring teacher and educator, Sylvain is also a compassionate Shiatsu practitioner, an enthusiastic builder, an avid gardener and a passionate singer.

After living in Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Quebec City, Sylvain has made his home on the beautiful Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, where he teaches contemporary dance and yoga and has a private Shiatsu practice.

Workshop open to dancers/movers who have contact improvisation and or dance improvisation experience.

Contact Improvisation will be the common ground to continue and deepen our skills to come into a physical and kinaesthetic dialogue with others. By awakening our physical and sensory awareness we will bring mind and body into a state of readiness and receptiveness for dancing in a playful and spontaneous way.
We will spend time working on various skills and exploring the underlying principles of Contact Improvisation, playing with physical forces such as gravity, levity, momentum and inertia.

In the second part of each day, we will work with different scores and structures for improvisation with a strong focus on developing a playful and subtle presence in our dancing; dancing in such a way as that we can expect to be in physical contact at any moment and at the same time we can keep an awareness of our own direction in improvising.

Benno Voorham is a dancer, actor, choreographer and teacher from Holland, living in Stockholm since 1995. Since he graduated from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam he has worked as a freelance dance artist throughout Europe, directing his own work as well as collaborating with others in both set and improvised pieces. His work has toured Eastern Europe, Costa Rica, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan and Scandinavia. In 1994, Benno won the Greek Dance Critic Price for the ‘Best performer of the year’ for his work in ‘What the girls talk about’ and since then he has been a regular performer with Konstantin Mihos’ Athens-based dance company, ‘Wrong Movement’. From 2005 until 2007 Benno performed in different productions at the Stockholms Stadsteatern (City Theatre of Stockholm).

He has won a distinctive reputation for his original brand of teaching and performing. Benno has taught extensively throughout Europe since 1986; primarily focussed on Improvisation and Contact Improvisation. In 1997 he founded the association LAVA-Dansproduktion with Sybrig Dokter.

Workshop open to professional dance artists, and dance students in their final two years of a professional dance training program.

What is the miracle of who we are? This masterclass is designed to encourage the dancer to rediscover the wisdom of the body. The class has been carefully constructed to re-inspire the dancer with the awe and curiosity that initiate movement. The work strives to increase openness for continued experimentation, exploration and understanding through movement.

The workshop is based on sensitising the dancer to the connection between thought, emotion, spirit and body. This is the natural kinetic process whereby our inner "landscape" translates into electrical impulses that move through our nervous system transmitting the message to the muscles and connective tissue as to how and with what quality to move.

Through the use of dance exercises, "games", imagery and guided movement motifs, the dancer is reawakened to the joy of movement. We work with the body's natural impulses towards health and the extraordinary possibilities of expression. The class is designed to be fun but is surprisingly challenging, requiring focus and taking the dancer through a full body warm-up.

The dancers are encouraged to "listen" to their bodies, their impulses, their inner conversations and emotions, and to use this information to expand their existing physical, artistic and creative capacities. In this class, dancers learn to hear and trust their inner landscape and imbue the shape, line and articulation of their movement with fuller meaning and beauty.

The motifs used through the workshop are designed to deepen the dancers’ performance capacities, their knowledge of the choreographic process and possibilities, and to reinforce and expand the imagery, focus and techniques that they use daily. The dancer learns to move towards health, fuller expression, creativity and the knowledge of how to share, give and be responsible to and for his/her own unique artistry as a "Human Dancer".

Margie Gillis
Internationally acclaimed modern dance artist Margie Gillis has been performing her solo dance concerts for over thirty-five years. As choreographer and performer of over a hundred original solo dance works, she has earned rave reviews throughout the world for her intimate, emotional and intelligent portrayals of the multiple facets of the human soul. Margie Gillis teaches masterclasses for dance students and professionals in various cities throughout the world, including New York where she has taught at the Juilliard School. Both the Quebec and Canadian governments named her an Honorary Cultural Ambassador. In 1988, she was the first modern dance artist to be appointed to the Order of Canada. In 2001, she received a Career Grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for her exceptional contribution to Quebec culture. In September 2008, Canada Council for the Arts announced that Margie Gillis had been selected by a peer assessment committee to receive the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts. Margie Gillis is an artist with social commitments. She has lent her voice to a number of organizations dedicated to the fight against AIDS. She has also been a spokesperson for OXFAM and for the Planned Parenthood Foundation. The Stella Adler Studio and Bill T. Jones honoured her relentless social commitments by awarding her the inaugural MAD Spirit Award in the fall of 2008. Her new creation, “Threads”, will premiere at the National Arts Centre in March 2010.

“My approach to dance and choreography is based on “listening” to the connection between thought, emotion, spirit and body. This is the natural kinetic process whereby our inner “landscape” translates into electrical impulses that transmit to the muscles the message as to how and with what quality to move.
-Margie Gillis

Workshop open only to professional dance artists, and dance students in their final two years of a professional dance training program.

We begin with the premise that movement and voice are indivisible and physical. We begin with impulse. Impulse sets energy in motion. Motion takes shape, direction, space. Structures develop. From there on, it’s a matter of paying attention with open mind and senses, and the creation/interpretation begins. All of this happens on the inside, the outside and between each one of us. Each of the two days is divided into 3 sessions, with the second day continuing the practice started on Day 1. The morning session includes a warm-up that is a series of very simple exercises to awaken awareness, isolation of body parts, coordination, and circulation. Then concepts of internal and external forms of impulse, energy and articulation will be explored through guided individual practice. The first afternoon session is an integrated movement and vocal technique class. Concepts explored in the morning will be applied to set exercises and combinations (with both movement and voice) presented in dance class format. The second afternoon session is for independent explorations of the day’s work. Participants will practice alone, and with witnesses, to experiment and begin to make the work personally relevant.

Maxine Heppner is a master teacher, mentor and guest artist of contemporary dance and interdisciplinary performance in Canada and internationally. She is known as a performer and creator of bold, large-scale performance works (“audacious”) and intimate chamber pieces (“reaching a new state of mind”). Her company, Across Oceans is dedicated to approaching art as a collaborative activity whose fundamental experience is a physical one. She teaches dance, integrated movement-voice technique, creative process, choreography and her “cycles series practice”. Her personal practice, evolving since the 1970’s, has developed from training in classical, modern and contemporary dance and theatre forms, Linklater vocal technique, contemporary and traditional arts of Southeast Asia, Action Theatre of Ruth Zaporah, and ongoing research into neurological patternings and modes of experience and memory with neurologist Tim Kennedy of the Neurological Institute of Montreal. This wide-range of experiences has led her to an approach that does not presume aesthetic preferences, but examines impulse, energy and the expressive natures of their many forms. www.acrossoceans.org

The workshop is aimed at actors/ dancers/ singers/ musicians/ artists with ability and a desire to move. This does not mean previous dance experience necessarily; just an interest to explore breath, song, text, or invented language from the perspective of the moving body.

A five-day performance workshop to explore the ways breath shapes our moving,
speaking, singing, sounding, and silence. This sensory and imaginative exploration
will allow the performer to filter elements of rhythm, anatomy, direction, force,
fluidity and energy through the fully engaged and breathing body. Breath is
movement and paying close attention to the fluid sensations of breath as it shapes
our body and our imagination can give life to intimate resting as well as full-blown
elation. We develop abilities to make choices as creators and performers through
working both individually and with partners and also through writing, talking and
witnessing each other. In this spirit of exploration, relationship, and involvement the
body develops its own clarity. Lin brings to the workshop the extensive experience gained from the twenty-year history she has sustained as a performer in her own dances, in the work of other independent directors/choreographers, and as well as in the work of Montreal's Carbone 14 dance-theatre company. The workshop is aimed at articulating
relationships and shaping the forms that emerge in sound and movement, so as to
bring vibration and resonance into the edges of these forms with softness and a
quality of listening that is often inherently dynamic and musical. The work
introduces a way to begin to clarify multiple directions and layered thinking giving a
sense of depth to the body and perspective to the room.

LIN SNELLING has toured the world extensively as performer with Carbone 14
(1989-2001). As a choreographer, performer and teacher, she continues to investigate,
perform and teach improvisation, both as a tool for creating choreographic material
and a way to keep performances alive and present. This has cultivated an
exploration into bodywork in relation to dance and the spoken, sung and written
word. An interest in multidisciplinary art and re-invention fuels her choreographies. Lin creates and collaborates with choreographers and directors throughout Canada and Europe, most recently in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus and the UK in her collaboration with Guy Cools, called “Repeating Distance.” Lin is presently teaching dance and improvisation to actors in the Drama Faculty at the University of Alberta, and working on “Room” a performance process including 11 artists of diverse disciplines.

This workshop is open to pre-professional and professional Dancers, Choreographers, Artists, Performers and Scholars.

Movement and the City is a two-day research creation in the city of Toronto where participants explore ways that the body moves and performs with the city. Activating our physical and kinesthetic awareness skills, this workshop explores urban space through embodied practices. It places the city of Toronto at the center of its focus as a studio to research the layers of infrastructure, phenomena, interaction and inhabitation that comprise its network of spaces. A physical practice (warming up the body, group improvisation activities and general body and spatial awareness techniques) will be established in the first part of the workshop in an interior space and will help to amplify the role of the body as a spatial and sensory tool. From there, we will go outside to explore the city and establish a series of improvisational scores that engage with the city's architecture through everyday movements and subtle gestures. We will approach space as something to be explored while also being conscious of the inherent and sometimes invisible rules of any given site. Throughout the workshop, we will be discussing approaches to site-oriented practices and ways that our moving with the city, as its residents and visitors, leave traces and ephemeral mappings.

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Sara Wookey is a choreographer and artist based in Los Angeles. From 1996-2006 she lived and worked in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and taught at the Amsterdam School for the Arts. Since relocating to the United States, her performances have been presented at Links Hall in Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, the Hammer Museum and REDCAT in Los Angeles. She has led workshops on moving and the city in cities such Edmonton, Montreal, and Zagreb. Sara's most recent work, "BEING PEDESTRIAN", is a public art project funded by the Art Program of the Community Redevelopment Agency and in collaboration with artist Sara Daleiden. She is a founding member of the Choreographers Working Group and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. For more information visit: www.sarawookey.com.

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Bianca Scliar Mancini is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. She studied dance and visual arts (sculpture and photography) in Brazil before completing her MFA in Public Art at the Bauhaus University in Germany. Her performance-based works make use of relational objects and explore how we constitute the city through movement. She is currently investigating expanded notions of choreography and examining how affect produces performative practices in urban spaces.

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Sara Wookey will be presenting her paper entitled: "Walking Los Angeles: From documentation to performance and back again" at PSi (Performance Studies International) in Toronto June 9-13. PSi 16 will focus on Performing Publics, a theme that acknowledges and draws upon Toronto's deep engagement with urban interventionist performance and activist art. www.psi16.com

 

Information on previous 8:08 Alternative Technique Classes

 

Last modified on 08/21/08
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