MOVE WITH BLiPSWiTCH
Every Thursday
10:00-11:30AM
East Side Performing Arts (ESPA)
979 Springdale, Suite 815. Austin, TX
$10 Pre-registration
We are proud to offer the most financially accessible year-round weekly contemporary dance class in Austin.
Photo: Matt Bradford (in studio rehearsal, Hyperbaton, 2024)
Class will begin with a follow along, improvisational exploration to warm up. We will investigate impulse and awareness to inform where we are and what we need to get where we want to go. This will happen in infinite ways and take on many forms in various relationships to gravity and each other. At some point, we will dabble in some arrangement of across the floor—sometimes games, sometimes partnering, sometimes free-form task-based improvisation, sometimes set choreographic ideas. Eventually we will make our way to center floor where we will focus on technique exercises inspired by various codified methods, or just learn a kick ass dance phrase—could be large and locomotive, could be small and gestural. Sometimes we will focus on floor work. Sometimes we will up-dance.
No matter what happens, it will be an hour and a half dance party seeking to inspire and challenge, set to a diverse soundscape. The ultimate goal is to enjoy ourselves, muddle through, get messy, figure shit out and sweat together in a supportive community of movers.
— Taught by co-director Alex Pruitt —
Guest Artist - Thursday, July 16
Bonnie Alonzo-Hansen
Photo: Lynn Lane
Bonnie Alonzo-Hansen is a Tejana dance artist and educator in Austin, Texas, who uses dance to celebrate and deconstruct identity in relation to social phenomena in performance. She is the co-founder and director of Geografía, a dance collective that centralizes social justice-driven dance work that uses embodied geographies as a point of departure. She currently serves as the Director of Dance at St. Stephen's Episcopal School, where she guides students in deepening the expressivity of their bodies through rigorous and compassionate training, and empowers them to use dance to connect with the social fabric of the world. Bonnie received her MFA in dance from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2018 and her BFA from Texas State University in 2011. She has performed and collaborated with ARCOS, Gesel Mason Performance Projects, Chamacos Dance Company, Lux Boreal Compañía de Danza, and Sharon Marroquín. Her written work has been published in the “Chiricú Journal of Latina/o Literatures, Arts and Cultures.”