Join Thern Anderson & Mary Easter in a workshop designed for adults Ages 55+ that combines dance and writing. Movement will be explored in concert with writing exercises to create a history or explore some aspect of your life, be it real or imagined. Students will expand their range of motion through practicing set choreography and creating movement phrases, gaining knowledge of how the human body moves with the understanding that each body holds its own unique history. Students will hone their observation and listening skills to support fellow artists.

*Chairs will be available for support and wheelchairs are encouraged to participate!

April 16 – June 11 | Mondays 2:00-3:30pm
Episcopal Homes-Coventry Chapel, 1840 University Ave. W Saint Paul, MN 55104
(Culminating event on June 11 at TU Dance Center)

Please contact TU Dance to register: kaitin.kbenedict@tudance.org

Limited spaces available. This workshop is free.

Thern Anderson is a dance educator with a wealth of experience teaching children, adults, professional dancers and community groups. Thern brings somatic movement principles and improvisational skills to her teaching of modern dance techniques. In teaching dance to beginning adults, her philosophy is that anyone can dance and find pleasure in movement. Classes include the study of body and spatial awareness,  rhythm and phrasing, ensemble dancing, and injury prevention.  Students learn through modern dance phrases as well as improvisational structures.

Mary Moore Easter’s first poetry collection, The Body of the World, is forthcoming from MadHad Press in 2018. The manuscript is also a finalist for the Prairie Schooner Bok Prize in 2017.  A Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Easter is published in POETRY, The New York Times, Seattle Review, Water Stone, Calyx, Pluck!, Persimmon Tree, Fjord’s Review, The Little Patuxent Review and the 2015 anthology Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota. She holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and an M.A. from Goddard. Born in Petersburg, Virginia to parents on the faculty of then-segregated Virginia State College, she was as immersed in their artistic and intellectual interests as she was in limitations segregation imposed on her black world. She re-rooted as faculty at Minnesota’s Carleton College where she was founder and director of the Dance Program.

This activity is supported by a grant from Aroha Philanthropies Seeding Vitality Arts Initiative and in partnership with Episcopal Homes.

This advanced level dance master class taught by Leslie Parker with live music is a rigorous physical exploration of the intersections between thought and movement, the real and the representational, the past and the present, freestyle and improvisation, flow and disruption. In this class, the exploration of presence as multiple embodied states that generate empathetic choices in making dances and dance performance is informed by the African Diaspora in both a historical and contemporary moment.

This class emphasizes athleticism, grounded movement and polyrhythmic phrases that include floorwork with moments for risk-taking, to reflect, and to respond through improvisation. The objective is to push physical boundaries while focusing on breath, gravity, rhythm and musicality.  We will challenge norms that inhabits the body, space, promote greater awareness in impulses, and apply intersectionality to “unpack” our internal and external input so that a new kind of expression may emerge.

Friday, April 20 | 5:15-6:45 pm | TU Dance Center

Class Fee: $14

Leslie Parker is a dance artist/maker, improviser, performer and educator with an archive of embodied memories from 34 years of studying, researching, teaching and performing dances from sacred and secular practices of the African Diaspora. Informally, her training is credited to a fierce community of activists, organizers, dancers and artists who emphasized the significance of community and strives to restore its vibrancy. She has danced with national and international artists in Germany, Virginia, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and New York. She is the recipient of the 2017 New York Dance and Performance Award Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer. Parker is motivated to make spaces for dance that are wildly creative, inquisitive, and experimental in their exploration of themes related to spirituality, racial identity and social justice. To read more, visit leslieparkerdance.com

This masterclass is provided by Brownbody in partnership with TU Dance.