Re/Training

• We ask you to consider these session experiments in translating the embodied knowledge of practice we hold as artists to the practice of allyship and working toward social justice.
  
• To examine and and begin the work of unlearning the systems of white supremacy we have inherited through our (westernized/classical) dance training. To question how those oppressive systems may show up in us outside of dance practices. To not use dance as an escape or reprieve from the outside world, but as the thing that can help us process and grow.
• To co-create a community of resource-sharing, collective learning, accountability, and informed action.Physical Practice sessions will continue to be an open floor for resource sharing and action items with whatever temporary community assembles. We will then transition into discussion groups dedicated to learning and processing collectively. We welcome anyone to bring forward materials or resources that we can read/watch/listen to as a group and discuss how we can be translating what we learn into action. We consider this an open and collectively led forum. If you’d like to propose materials or topics or activities, please reach out to us at a@arcosdance.com. Also, please feel empoweredto attend and receive and contribute in other ways.
  
• All donations received will be donated to an organization supporting the movement. We invite the community assembled to decide which organization(s), and perhaps part of our dialogue moving forward can be devoted to researching the many established local, regional, and national organizations committed to racial justice who are in greatest need at this time. ARCOS will match the total donations received at the end of the month. The best way to donate is our Venmo (@ARCOSdance) and second best is PayPal because it takes a fee. 
  
• Our embodiment must be part of this movement if we are going to sustain it for the duration of time needed to enact lasting change. This is true for allies, too. However, any clarity gained from deeper embodiment must translate to concrete action in some way, especially in these days, when every moment is critical to achieving sustained change. We must hold each other accountable to that action.

For all these sessions, you will receive a Zoom link, but you are NOT LINKED TO YOUR SCREEN! Sessions will largely be facilitated aurally, you will not need to see the image at all times. Check out our GUIDELINES FOR VIRTUALITY to help set yourself up for optimal embodiment.

(Venmo @ARCOSdance or PayPal)
ARCOS offers these Physical Practice Sessions by donation. Our instructors and collaborators are paid from other funding sources; your donation will not effect their compensation. You will find donation options when you register.

This class will be an exploration of anatomy and the subconscious mind through movement. The conscious mind can obstruct physical practice and limit the body’s capability. This class will soften the mind into a flowing state of openness and look deeply at the possibilities of experiential anatomy. Moving through improvisation into making, this class is a container for finding new approaches to rigor, effort, and creation.

Preparation: A space where you can take one step in all directions and feel safe moving your limbs.

This facilitated movement research session is designed to connect us to the pleasure of building a new, personal body technique. Through continuous movement, we will re/train our physicality through/as metaphor to flex our imaginative capacity for moving in the world. We will focus on repurposing our physical space, on filtering without escaping, to ground us firmly in the present moment. Structures and trajectories will be nonlinear, fluid, and highly personal. You are welcome to incorporate your physical and emotional surroundings into your exploration.

Preparation: Whatever space you are inspired to move in that day. You should be able to hear the facilitator, but it is not necessary to watch the video feed.

All Feldenkrais® lessons focus our attention on the process of learning itself and on our personal relationship to learning, rather than correcting or controlling anything. In these more rarely taught lessons we will attend to our ourselves in ways that may be surprising, confounding, strange, paradoxical. We can use these lessons as inputs/disruptors to inform our work as artists in many different intersecting realms including but not limited to orientation, imagination, voice, unconscious patterns, etc.

Preparation: A place that is warm and comfortable to lie down so that you can attend to small differences in your movements, thoughts, emotions, and general approach to yourself.

The GYROTONIC® Method is a 360º movement system focusing on internal traction to strengthen the body at its longest. GK combines principles of dance, yoga, Tai-Chi, and swimming to organize and activate the energetic body as the primary source of movement. In these sessions, we will explore a range of GK Level 1 and 2 material and directly apply key concepts in guided movement explorations.

Preparation: A chair or stool (preferably a height that allows your knees to be lower than your hips when sitting), yoga mat (or large bath towel), and a towel or t-shirt for assists. You should find enough room to lie down and extend all your limbs without bumping into anything.

Wednesday, June 17
1–2pm CT (2–3pm ET)
(following RARE MIXTAPE Feldenkrais®; ATM®)

Catherine Cabeen is an artist and teacher based in NYC. She is a former dancer with the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and Richard Move’s MoveOpolis!, among others. She directed Hyphen, an interdisciplinary performance group from 2009-2019. Cabeen is currently an Associate Professor of Dance at Marymount Manhattan College (MMC). In her time at MMC, Cabeen has created three new courses for the college; one that looks at gender representation in 20th century dance history, one that celebrates and explores American dance history through the lens of race/racism/anti-racism, and one that focuses on the somatic experience of participating in Social Justice Movements. Cabeen has been an active member of the college’s Action Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, since its inception in 2017. In addition to teaching at MMC’s main upper East Side campus, Cabeen teaches at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison for women, through MMC’s prison education program.

Offered by Practice Progress lead facilitators, Kai Hazelwood and Sarah Ashkin, this embodied anti-racism / anti-blackness learning session is geared toward action and accountability through the praxis of trust. This workshop is open to all and is purposefully designed to invite in those benefiting from white privilege into authentic solidarity practice. Using contact improvisation, journalling, and small group discussions this workshop leads participants through anti-racist  practice which invites white dance professionals into the work of discomfort and commitment.  

Tuesday, June 23
10–11:15am CT (9–10:15am MT)
(replacing Class + Coffee Digital)

Rulan offers the session as an opening to ancient idea of movement, sound and rhythm, as central to rituals for transformation, while embracing the cyberspace as a realm of intercultural exchange and collaboration that paves the way to embodiment of imagined realm of liberation. This offering just after solstice will bring an opportunity for us to meet as modern people of this time, and diverse places, to consider our responsibility as artists to make the movements that reflect the issues of our time, and the ways of being that transcend time. 

Rulan Tangen is an internationally accomplished dance artist, choreographer, and director with over three decades of experience in multiple movement genres. She is the Founding Artistic Director and Choreographer of Dancing Earth, noted in Dance Magazine as “One of the Top 25 To Watch,” and winner of the National Dance Project Production and Touring Grant, as well as the National Museum of American Indian’s Expressive Arts award. She is a recipient of the Costo Medal for Education, Research and Service by UC Riverside’s Chair of Native Affairs, and an honoree of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation for their first dance Fellowship for Artistic Innovation. As a performer and choreographer, she has worked in ballet, modern dance, circus, TV, film, theater, opera and Native contemporary productions in the USA, Canada, France, Norway, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.

Her work explores movement as an evolving language of intertribalism rooted in diverse indigenous cosmologies, in functional ritual for transformation and healing, animating decolonization process, integrating concurrent universes of ancient futurities in the moment of now, expressing energetic connection with all relations—human and beyond. With Dancing Earth, she has passionately cultivated successive generations of Indigenous contemporary performing artists and embodies her belief in dance as purposeful center of continuance of life. She is recipient of a 2018 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist award and is grateful for all that roots her, supporting pathways to uncover, for the dreaming and doing of Dancing Earth: moving, shaking, and stomping the world into renewals.