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Making Performance
on Socio-Political Questions

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Dance and Democracy:
Movement Improvisation and Liberation Pedagogies

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Laboratorio Sedimento:
ensayos de cuerpo, memoria y futuro (Sediment Laboratory: Studies in Movement, Memory and Future)

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Crear con el horizonte (Creating on the Horizon)

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Active Looking:
The Body in Dialogue with Art

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Dance and Dialogue:
Human Contact and Democracy

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CI Intermediate Skills (June 23)

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“The best course I have taken in my entire life.
I do not say that lightly”

–anonymous student evaluation

Loreto Ares, Miguel “Melo” Quintana, Joan Taipo-San, Eryn Rosenthal, and José Luís Cano Blanco in Tú Aquí, a chapter of The Doors Project. Doorframe design by Bea Velasco; construction at La Nave Trapecio,
La Tabacalera Cultural Center, Madrid. Additional thanks to: Cristhian Salazar, Cecilia Ruiloba, José Jerónimo,
Natalia Sánchez-Ton i Normand, and Jesús Escobar. Photo by Cecilia Ruiloba.

Making Performance

on Socio-Political Questions

Part humanities seminar and part interdisciplinary creation workshop, this experimental, hybrid course brought together Yale University Theater Studies students with non-performance majors, and was hailed as “transformative,” an “absolute must take,” and “the best course I have taken in my entire life. I do not say that lightly.” It culminated in original student performances. For more info: Making Performances on Socio-Political Questions

I taught a previous iteration at the University of Michigan, where I first developed the class as the inaugural Artist in Residence for Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives described below. At U-M, the hybrid seminar brought together a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate students from different schools within U-M (the Arts & Ideas in the Humanities Program with PhD students in Sociology, graduate students in Social Work, the Global Theatre and Ethnic Studies Minor, the Acting Program and Dance Minor, and the School of Art & Design’s MFA program). The course was accompanied by a public film series, which culminated in original student performances.

I was honored by the U-M Provost’s Office for my diversity and inclusion-based work described below, which culminated in this class. I gave an address to U-M President Schlissel and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Leads of each unit in the university, and curated the performance of one of my students.

PRESS:

RC Visiting Artist and Student Present

at Convening of Campus DEI Leaders

2017-18 King-Chávez-Parks

Visiting Professor and Inaugural

Artist in Residence for

Dialogue-Building, Diversity

and Inclusion Initiatives

As an artist in residence, I developed various pilot programs that ask what the body can bring to larger discussions of diversity, empowerment, and inclusion. This experimental, arts-based programming included professional development trainings, interdisciplinary workshops, and a working group.

The residency, a first at U-M, was sponsored by over 12 departments, and draws upon my ongoing research on the connections between a dance form known as Contact Improvisation and democratic activism in South Africa, Spain, and the US. The residency included specialized pilot programs in the music department, the Trotter Multicultural Center, and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT), in addition to professional development trainings and other programming.

The residency culminated in the interdisciplinary seminar Personal, Present and Immediate*: Making Performance on Socio-Political Questions (see links and more info above). I also designed and choreographed Root Vegetables, a community-based diversity and resilience initiative in the U-M dance department which reframed approaches to diversity in dance studies through a focus on groundedness, growth, and expanding definitions of beauty. The work comes out of reflection on larger questions of institutional and departmental culture, and ways of productively shifting micro-environments toward being more inclusive and welcoming for people from diverse backgrounds.

WORKSHOPS + COURSES

I teach workshops and master classes in the US, South Africa, and Europe in both Spanish and English. I also teach semester long classes and intensive workshops in Site Dance as Social Practice, Composition, Performance-Making, Contemporary Dance, and Contact Improvisation at the university level, and am an active member of international Contact Improvisation teacher exchange networks.

CORPORATE:

I facilitate and design professional development trainings and team-building in university, nonprofit and corporate settings, often around themes of innovation and creativity, diversity and inclusion. I also build curriculum for activists, artists, engineers and medical professionals. I delight in programming that is fun and creative, and that scaffolds and deepens inherent team-building skills and innovation. I am invested in the arts as doorway to expand the imagination: the connections we are able to see and create, and our understanding of the possible.

BROADENING AWARENESS AND AUDIENCE FOR CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE:

I am also deeply invested in broadening awareness and audience for contemporary performance. In my outreach, engagement and performance work, I love integrating elements of dance, poetry, visual art and performance with other fields of knowledge. I often bring intentionally diverse groups of people together at different stages of the creation and reflection process, and I collaborate with communities and organizations to create fun games and resonant participatory structures. Throughout my performance and engagement work, I concoct experiences that instigate both listening and dialogue, curiosity and connection among seemingly unrelated fields of experience.

CONTACT:

Please feel free to contact me about teaching, consulting, specific trainings, or speaking engagements. I look forward to hearing from you and learning about your organization.

Hallie Aldrich and Eryn Rosenthal (Photo by David Papas, www.papas.com)

Investigative choreographer | social practice artist

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“The best course I have taken in my entire life. I do not say that lightly”