Dance: Teaching

Teaching forms a foundational part of my practice as a dance artist; though I often work with highly trained professionals (in dance and in other disciplines) in my choreographic and performance creation-work, in my teaching practice, I am committed to serving children and so-called non-dancers. I see this work as co-terminous with my performance and creation activities, a way of sharing with a broad public, including those for whom “dance” remains a strange, potentially frightening foreign territory, the deep insights that come from a life committed to rigorous training and exploration at the edge of performance and embodiment. Teaching “non-dancers” and children forces my dance practice to remain close-to-the-ground, committed to articulating esoteric ideas in accessible languages. As people learn the language of dance, their appetite for seeing more of it grows–in the long haul, this teaching work seeks to nourish the dance ecology as a whole, building future audiences with sufficient kinaesthetic intelligence to watch dance well, and to put dance concepts into motion in their own lives and thinking in ways that strengthen the web of life. The dance is in all of us.

For more on my teaching work, see: www.gullcrydance.com

Most of the classes I teach are not advertised, but occur when someone or a group invites me to teach. My rates are flexible but reflect the many years of teaching experience I bring to our time together. I do online teaching and in person in Victoria, B.C. or Salt Spring Island, B.C. Contact me and we can discuss if there is a fit.

I remain available for residencies in the public school system in B.C., through ArtStarts. I am taking bookings for the 2021-2022 school year for work in schools in Victoria, the Lower Mainland, and the Gulf Islands. Please be in touch early to book! https://artstarts.com/artist-profile/kristen-lewis

I also do in-school residencies through the Salt Spring Arts Council’s Artist-in-the-Class programme, here. https://ssartscouncil.com/aic/

Dance Improvisation for Everybody.

Wednesdays, 7:30-9pm Victoria B.C. @ St. Matthias Church. Resumes January 2022.

The ‘dance class’ introduces some of the conceptual and kinesthetic approaches to improvised movement I have developed over many years of practice/research in experimental dance; this includes an introduction to developmental movement patterns and embodied anatomy, rooted, in part, the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. I invite participants to build on these approaches to discover their own ever-evolving improvised movement languages.

Dance-Theory Lab. Dancer Edition. Dancing theory–exploring social theory through dance. Cohorts organized according to interest. Send me an email to express interest: klewisperformance@gmail.com.

This class is for anyone with a devoted practice of dance, which I construe very broadly as meaning anyone whose art-practice involves thinking-and-moving-and-training-with the kinaesthetic apparatus as primary. We will put key texts and concepts in dialogue with insights from embodied anatomy to explore ways of thinking/talking/dancing as an entangled, socio-natural continuum. Scores will be proposed and we will move with these, together. For those interested in working with me on future creation projects, this is a good chance to see how I work and how the work works with you.

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