Join Ate9 Artistic Director and Choreographer Danielle Agami for a Gaga masterclass at TU Dance Center. Gaga is a new way of gaining knowledge and self-awareness through your body, providing a framework for discovering and strengthening your body and adding flexibility, stamina, and agility while stimulating the senses and imagination. Gaga raises awareness of physical weaknesses, awakens numb areas, exposes physical fixations, and offers pathways for their elimination. The research improves instinctive movement and connects conscious and unconscious movement, and it allows for an experience of freedom and pleasure in a simple way. It is experienced in a pleasant space, comfortable clothes, accompanied by music, and with each person with him/herself and others.
Danielle Agami’s Gaga class is one session, no pauses or exercises, of a continuity of instructions with one on top of the other. Each instruction does not cancel the previous one but is added to it, layer upon layer. Therefore, it is important not to stop in the middle of the session. If participants get tired or want to work at another pace, they can always lower the volume, work 30% or 20%, float, or rest, but they are encouraged not to lose sensations that were already awakened. Attempt to not return to the state the body was in before the class started. It is important that everyone take the instructions gently into their bodies while being aware to its sensations, abilities, and limitations. It is encouraged to go to places where the pleasure in movement is awakened and not to places of pain and to maintain the connection to pleasure especially during effort (effort is different than pain). During the session, speaking is not allowed unless participants are instructed to use their voice or words. If participants have any questions, you are welcome to bring them up at the end of the session.
Wednesday, February 6, 10:30am-12:00pm
Cost: $14.00; cash, check (made payable to TU Dance) or debit/credit card at TU Dance Center. Class cards are accepted.
There is no late entry for the class. Please arrive on time.
Presented in association with Northrop, University of Minnesota and Walker Art Center in conjunction with the Ate9 performance on February 7 at Northrop.
Danielle Agami (Ate9 Artistic Director and Choreographer) was born in Israel in 1984 where she studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and was a member of the Batsheva Dance Company. Between 2007 and 2009, Agami served as the Artistic Director of Batsheva Dancers Create, and functioned as the company’s rehearsal director from 2008-2010. After 8 years with Batsheva, Agami moved to New York to serve as the Senior Manager of Gaga U.S.A. In 2012, Agami relocated to Seattle where she founded Ate9- an undertaking that has fully realized her artistic voice as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Danielle was the grand prize winner of the 2013 & 2014 Annual Choreography Festival at the McCallum Theatre and one of Dance Magazine’s Top 25 to watch in 2015. In 2016, she was recognized with the Princess Grace Award for Choreography and created a new work, Pick a Chair, with Visceral Dance in Chicago. Agami has made over 8 fully produced works with Ate9 since its inception, including the innovative new work calling glenn with live music by Wilco percussionist Glenn Kotche. Agami was also named as the 2018 recipient of the Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship for Women Choreographers. During the fellowship she developed “Framed”, a solo performance, and researched a new Ballet class inspired by her years of experience with Gaga Movement Language.
Photo by Cheryl Mann