The 7:00pm time slot on Wednesdays is home to the Trisha Brown Dance Company.

Trisha Brown Dance Company Weekly Wednesday Series

Wednesdays
7:00 - 9:00pm

Core principles of Trisha’s work - whether aesthetic, compositional, or kinetic - are taught via the creative and physical practices of past and current Company members. Each teacher offers a unique focus and range of personal experience related to their understanding of Trisha’s choreographic sensibility, with the goal of empowering students in their artistic pursuits.

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May 22
Eva Karczag (TBDC dancer 1979-1985)

Trisha Brown’s dances ask for freely moving legs that are at the same time, strong and articulate. In this class we will investigate legs, from feet to hip joints, observing details and function with precise attention within improvisation and through hands-on work. In order to appreciate how freeing our legs affects the agility of our dancing, at the end of class, time will be given to improvise and/or, if desired, play with set material. This could include Trisha Brown repertory, if already known.

Eva Karczag is an independent dance artist. For the past four decades has practiced, taught, and advocated explorative methods of dance making. She danced with Trisha Brown Dance Company (1979-85), creating original roles in Opal Loop, Son of Gone Fishin’ and Set and Reset. Has a Master of Fine Arts degree (Dance Research Fellow) from Bennington College, VT, and is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique. Her performance work and her teaching are informed by dance improvisation and mindful body practices that engender trust in the body’s innate capacity for ease and efficiency and create integrated openness and buoyant suppleness, characteristic of Trisha Brown’s fluid, easeful style of dancing. Performs solo and collaborative work internationally. Recent performances include Red Thread, a long-term collaborative performance project with Lisa Kraus and Vicky Shick; and Promenade, a series of improvised durational performance/installations with visual artist Chris Crickmay and composer Sylvia Hallett.

May 29
Vicky Shick (TBDC dancer 1980-1986)

Vicky Shick has been involved with the New York dance community since the late 70’s as performer, dancer and choreographer. During her time with the Trisha Brown Company, she received a “Bessie” for performance. Shick also has had the privilege of working with many choreographers and colleagues. She has shown her dances for the last twenty-five years and received a “Bessie” for collaborative dances with visual artist Barbara Kilpatrick. Shick regularly teaches at Movement Research, Hunter College, for the Trisha Brown Company and abroad, including her hometown, Budapest. She was a 2006 Foundation for Contemporary Art grant recipient and a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.

June 5
Keith Thompson (TBDC Dancer 1992-2001)

Integration Through Movement Technique: This class is geared towards movement principles that deal with the human body’s design. Warm-up exercises will draw on elements of basic alignment and structural soundness and direct the student toward flexibility, fluidity and power. We will explore and apply these methods to movement phrases involving multiple pathways, quick changing rhythmic patterns, and dynamic shifts of energy. Emphasis in the class will be put on technique exercises leading into a rigorous research that guides the student towards a new integration of mind and body. We will also be learning phrase material from Trisha Brown’s repertory. In addition to focusing on the structural detail and clarity of the movement, we will investigate Trisha’s unique vocabulary and style.

Keith A. Thompson, Choreographer, teacher, dancer, completed his MFA Research Fellowship in Dance from Bennington College in 2003, danced internationally for the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 1992-2001, served as Trisha’s Rehearsal Assistant from 1998-2001 continues to perform with the Bebe Miller Company and currently with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange; has taught master classes and workshops in Contemporary Technique globally including master company teacher for Sasha Waltz & Dancers (Berlin), the International Dance Festival (Kyoto, Sapporo, Tokyo Japan), Tanzwerkstatt Europa Festival (Munich), Berlin, Paris, Montpellier France and the Korea Dance Festival (Seoul, Korea); faculty at the Florida Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, has served on several university faculties, served on artistic panels such as DTW’s Fresh Tracks and adjudicator for American College Dance Festival Association, since ’05; he has his own company, ‘danceTactics performance group’, his choreography has been featured at Harvard University, in the American Dance Festival Faculty Concert, Montpellier International Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop Guest Artist Series 2006 (New York, NY); Dance Boom Festival at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, Dixon Place NYC, ICOM at DNA, American Dance Guild Festival, the 15th Anniversary Dancenow New York Festival and the 2011 Aging in America Conference.

June 12
Todd Stone (TBDC dancer 1998-2010)

In class, we will work towards a powerful fusion of mind and body that is the essence of dance. We will work with concrete ideas of thought and physical action, towards a new wholeness in dancing. Starting from our core, warm-up will address structural alignment of the skeleton, joint articulation, the use of weight, oppositional forces in the body, and clarity of movement. Paying attention to detail, conscience and sub-conscience movement and the use of momentum, we will continue to explore our relationship to the internal and external concepts of space. Todd movement vocabulary has been influenced by his current work with Trisha Brown Dance Company and his studies of the Alexander Technique, Janet Panetta, Body-Mind Centering, Improvisation and Tai Chi.

Todd Lawrence Stone was a member of Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC) from 1998-2010. Working with Trisha, Todd participated in creating his role in ten repertory pieces for her company, the last piece being Pygmalion, which debuted in Aix-en- Provence, France in 2010. Todd has taught both independently and for TBDC around the world, most recently at the Bienal Internacional de Danca do Ceara in Fortaleza Brazil, at Centre Nationale Danse in Paris, France, and at Music in Motion Dance Company in Virginia. His teaching style is based on principles he has learned working with Trisha as well as his study of the Alexander Technique and Tai Chi. In 2007 Todd created a production company which creates salon- type performances and workshops for artists to explore, share, and present their work to their peers as well as other patrons. The Salon has presented work in New York, Berlin and Korea. He is currently a Guest Professor at the Purchase College from which he graduated with a BFA in Dance in 1995.

June 19
Leah Morrison (TBDC dancer 2005-Present)

In our warm-up, we will utilize developmental movement patterns to reconnect to our bodies’ inherent instincts, order, agility and ease. We will explore the elements of weight shifting as influenced by Tai Chi. We will study and explore Trisha Brown’s movement vocabulary from the inside, using the body’s logic to connect to this multi-directional, jointed, slippery, playful movement style.

Leah Morrison has been a member of Trisha Brown Dance Company since 2005. She is from St. Louis, Missouri and graduated from SUNY Purchase. In 2008, Leah was selected as a Princess Grace Honorarium Recipient and received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for her performance of Brown’s If You Couldn’t See Me. Leah’s dance practice is influenced by her studies of the Alexander technique, Body-Mind Centering, Tai Chi, and biodynamic craniosacral therapy.

June 26
Lisa Kraus (TBDC dancer 1977-1982)

Lisa Kraus studied at the Graham and Cunningham Schools and with James Waring before attending Bennington College where Judith Dunn and Steve Paxton were her teachers. She created a role in Trisha Brown’s Duetude (1976) in Boston, then danced with the Company from 1977-1982. Lisa originated roles in Glacial Decoy, Opal Loop, and Son of Gone Fishin‘ as well as appearing in the television and film projects Making Dances and Beyond the Mainstream. In 2003, she was Rehearsal Director for the Paris Opera Ballet’s production of Glacial Decoy, first teaching the work and then returning to coach in 2004. In 2012 she co-taught Line Up for performances in the Venice Biennale. Her own work has been presented in the US, Europe and Australia and awarded Choreographer’s Fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Independence Foundation. She was on the faculty of the European Dance Development Center in the Netherlands for a decade and has also served as adjunct faculty member at Swarthmore College, Temple University, and New York University, as well as guest teaching at numerous schools and arts centers inter/nationally. Lisa has written extensively on dance for publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer and Dance Magazine, and co-founded thINKingDANCE, an online dance journal. Her most recent production - Red Thread - was a collaboration with former TBDC colleagues Eva Karczag and Vicky Shick.