WEEK A: Monday, July 29 – Friday, August 2, 2024
Swing, Spin, Orbit on Dance Trapeze (All Levels)
1:00-2:30 PM. Week A. Dairy Gordon Gamm.
Ages 15+ or with instructor approval. $190.
Prerequisites: Suitable for beginner to professional artists. We will be doing a lot of hanging, and so participants must feel comfortable hanging from the bar and / or ropes for at least 20 seconds. Participants must also be able to invert repeatedly and get on an apparatus without assistance. It would benefit participants to come with bar-conditioned hands!
This class is all about moving through space! We’ll focus on technique for swinging, spinning, and orbiting (i.e., coning) on the dance trapeze. We’ll emphasize how you can use your body functionally to control the direction of your swing and how powerful it is, keep your spin centered (or to let it go), make your orbits fluid and dynamic, etc. We’ll explore planes of motion in our bodies and with the equipment. We’ll investigate gravity and momentum. We’ll use all the space available to us, including on the bar, in the ropes, between the floor and the bar, and all throughout the room. It’s also going to be loads of fun!
Experiential Movement on Dance Trapeze (Intermediate to Professional)
3:00-4:30 PM. Week A. Dairy Gordan Gamm.
Ages: 15+ or with instructor permission. $190.
Prerequisites: Intended for intermediate to professional artists who already have a practice on the dance trapeze or other horizontal apparatus. Some vertical experience and familiarity with basic vertical wraps and hangs are helpful, but not necessary. Participants must be able to invert from a bent-arm hang without assistance and be on the apparatus for up to two minutes. Participants should come with a desire to challenge movement paradigms.
The dance trapeze is a canvas for experiential exploration. In this workshop, we will move in response to sensation. We will use a choreographed sequence on the dance trapeze as a launching point. We will then layer Laban- and Butoh-influenced exercises to sensitize ourselves to our own bodies and to the space around us. We’ll explore improvisations and collaborative activities designed to help you articulate experiences, emotions, and perspectives. We’ll explore how changes in movement quality, positioning, and timing can be employed to unearth meaning and content. We’ll place aesthetics and the performative to the side in order to connect with and listen to our instinctual bodies: intuitive, genuine, and unapologetic.
Megan Cattau found her primary movement form, the dance trapeze, at Canopy Studio in 2002 training under Susan Murphy, who remains a deep inspiration. Since then, she has performed, choreographed, directed, and taught extensively in the US and abroad, working principally under the project Flight Collaborative. Her performance and teaching homes have included Canopy Studio in Athens, GA; Circus Warehouse in NYC; and Frequent Flyers. She also founded the aerial dance program at Durham School for Ballet and the Performing Arts in Durham, NC. She has performed as a core member of Constellation Moving Company and is an apprentice with NYC-based butoh company Ren Gyo Soh. Megan is also a disturbance ecologist, and is particularly interested in art-science integration. She is currently Boise-based, working as an Assistant Professor of Human-Environment Systems. She is honored to teach and perform at ADF.
