Archive: Workshops, Intensives, Master Classes, and Open Houses

Ballet Co.Laboratory is holding Summer Placement classes on Friday, February 17 to help students determine which intensive program is the best fit for them.

Join us on Friday, February 17 from 5:00-7:00pm at the BCL studios.

Two classes will be offered, for ages 10-14 and 15-22, during this time.
It is free to attend.
Students will receive their placement in approximately a week.

Learn more about our summer programs or sign up for the placement class: https://bit.ly/BCLSummer23

Join us on Monday, February 20, for a day of classes featuring a variety of fun styles! Spend your day off from school exploring new styles of dance with your friends! Classes include Family Dance, Creative Movement, plus a full-day or half-day Variety Camp.

Family Dance
Join us for a morning of dancing together. Children and caregivers will get a special start to their day, exploring movement and stories in a fun environment. Taught by family dance extraordinaire Julia Davidson. 
Ages 1–6 with Caregiver
9:15–10:00am
$15

Creative Movement
Your little one can explore the possibilities of movement with a focus on storytelling. From a personal experience to the depths of their imaginations, children will spend time expressing the stories that reside in their bodies and minds. In this fun-filled class led by Denise Gagner, children develop large and fine motor skills, rhythm, and listening skills as they go on their creative adventures.
Ages 4–7
10:00am–12:00pm
$25

Variety Dance Camp
Send your dancers to us for the whole day, or just the afternoon! In this camp, dancers will experience a variety of styles. Dance genres include Improvisation with Blake Nellis, Capoeira with Guerrerio, Modern with Kathleen, Afro-Latin with Belle Alvarez, Choreography with Judee Shui Xian, and more! 
Ages 7–13 and 14–18
Full day: 9:30am–4:30pm – $110
Half day: 12:00–4:30pm – $70

Register

Posture Matters
Change Your Posture, Change Your Mood!
An 8-week Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement Series with Sarah Baumert
Beginning March 1, 2023

Everyone’s posture, or how they “use” themselves, isn’t always optimal, with the help of the Feldenkrais method, your postural habits can improve to make everyday movements more enjoyable and easy. Your posture, or, how you navigate being upright with gravity, profoundly affects not only your physical comfort, but your overall health and emotions too.

With awareness, specificity, and practice, we will free the muscles of the neck, shoulders, spine, and face. As one moves towards more freedom in the neck, lower back, and jaw, one also moves towards a more easy, elegant, and upright posture. Our aim is not a perfect posture, but a place of less tension and conflict in the body where our posture is fluid, not rigid.

Available to take via livestream on Zoom or using the self-paced recordings.

Classes begin March 1, 2023
Sundays, 4:00-5:00pm CT
Wednesdays, 6:30-7:30pm CT

$175 for the 8-week series.
Pay-as-able available for this series.
For full scholarship, please inquire directly with Sarah.

Threads invites students ages 12-16 to apply for our 12-week pre-professional dance training program, NexGen> Youth Dance Project (YDP).

NexGen> YDP uses a holistic approach to training future dance artists. The program enables youth to enhance technical skills, explore creativity and manage stress and trauma in a safe, supportive environment. Students will receive 6 hours per week of high – level training and education from professionals in dance and health care professionals in the areas of ballet technique, modern dance technique, dance/movement therapy, and nutrition.

Sensation and Imagination:
A six-week Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement series

Co-taught by Krista Langberg and Jeffrey Wells on Zoom
Begins January 31 or February 2

This series starts with a question: What can I sense of myself? Followed by another: What can I imagine of myself? Visualize, pretend, rehearse. Feel your way. Slowly. Simply. Come back and feel your way again, anew. Through honing and merging your abilities to perceive what’s there and create what isn’t, you’ll begin to explore the expanding possibilities of moving your structure into action and your ideas to fruition.

Tuesday mornings, 10:00-11:15am
or
Thursday nights, 7:00-8:15pm

Registration
Register for Tuesdays, 10:00-11:15am CDT, January 31-March 7
Register for Thursdays, 7:00-8:15pm CDT, February 2-March 9

Once you’ve registered you will receive confirmation and reminder emails to the address you provided with the Zoom link for class as well as more class info, including instructions for payment. On the day and time of your class, click the link in your confirmation or reminder email to join.

Open to all levels and abilities. Email kristalangberg@gmail.com with any questions.

Hannah Pierce offers a great workshop series for new and continuing jazz dancers who love to move! Students will learn fundamental techniques and choreography while expanding their knowledge of rhythm and movement.

This class is a great foundation for any young dancer, age 7-10 years old. All levels of experience are welcome!

Youth Jazz Workshop – Sundays, 12:00-12:45pm
February 5
February 12

Single class drop-in: $15

In-person only; limited space available. Drop-ins welcome.

Moving Practice is a weekly class series for professional dancers. Classes prioritize rigor, diversity of contemporary aesthetics, variety of class content, and commitment.

Leila Awadallah teaches Moving Practice in February:
Tuesdays, 10:00-11:30am

Professional-level dancers of all styles are welcome.
Pre-register here.

Suggested $17 per class; however, there is a pay-as-able option on all classes – we would rather you join us than not be able to attend due to financial limitations.

Class description: Body Watani (watani, homeland in Arabic) is 1) an improvisational movement practice and 2) a space for experimental Arabic-rooted dance research developed by Leila Awadallah in collaboration with Noelle Awadallah.

The improvisation time is a container with soft edges, where participants are called into movement research through reflective prompts and somatic / collective tasks that guide practitioners into exploring the terrain of their personal ‘body watani’. The work is currently guided with particular intentions around relationships to land and water, ancestral contemplations, bodily archives, and communal weavings.

Movement materials inspired from Arabic dance forms such as Dabke, Baladi, and Raqs Sharqi invite participants to engage in the rhythmicalities of traditional / experimental / current Arabic music. This part of the Body Watani practice conjures physicality rooted in an offering of contemporary dance that locates within contexts of cultural, social, and political content of Palestine, Lebanon, and the greater SWANA region.

Join us on Monday, February 20, for a day of classes featuring a variety of fun styles! Spend your day off from school exploring new styles of dance with your friends! Classes include Family Dance, Creative Movement, plus a full-day or half-day Variety Camp.

Family Dance
Join us for a morning of dancing together. Children and caregivers will get a special start to their day, exploring movement and stories in a fun environment. Taught by family dance extraordinaire Julia Davidson.
Ages 1–6 with a Caregiver
9:15–10:00am
$15

Creative Movement
Your little one can explore the possibilities of movement with a focus on storytelling. From a personal experience to the depths of their imaginations, children will spend time expressing the stories that reside in their bodies and minds. In this fun-filled class led by Denise Gagner, children develop large and fine motor skills, rhythm, and listening skills as they go on their creative adventures.
Ages 4–7
10:00am–12:00pm
$25

Variety Dance Camp
Send your dancers to us for the whole day, or just the afternoon! In this camp, dancers will experience a variety of styles. Dance genres include Improvisation with Blake Nellis, Capoeira with Guerrerio, Modern with Kathleen, Afro-Latin with Belle Alvarez, Choreography with Judee Shui Xian, and more!
Ages 7–13 and 14–18
Full day, 9:30am–4:30pm – $110
Half day, 12:00–4:30pm – $70

Register

Hannah Pierce offers a great 4-week workshop series for new and continuing jazz dancers who love to move! Students will learn fundamental techniques and choreography while expanding their knowledge of rhythm and movement.

This class is a great foundation for any young dancer, age 7-10 years old. All levels of experience are welcome!

Youth Jazz Workshop – Sundays, 12:00-12:45pm
January 29
February 5
February 12

Full 4-week enrollment: $55
Single class drop-in: $15

In-person only; limited space available. Drop-ins welcome.

Moving Practice is a weekly class series for professional dancers. Classes prioritize rigor, diversity of contemporary aesthetics, variety of class content, and commitment.

Benny Olk teaches Moving Practice in January:
Tuesdays, 10:00-11:30am

Professional-level dancers of all styles are welcome.
Pre-register here.

Suggested $17 per class; however, there is a pay-as-able option on all classes – we would rather you join us than not be able to attend due to financial limitations.

Class description: This class will offer an introduction to Cunningham technique, emphasizing rhythmic, directional, and physical clarity in order to organize movements with efficiency and at the same time making room for discovery. The class begins with exercises for the torso, then moves to legwork, then across the floor, and finally into jumping. Each class will contain something everyone can do and something no one can do. “The only way to do it is to do it,” as Cunningham himself said.