DONNELL OAKLEY
I teach modern technique classes as part of the Guest Artist Program at Gibney Dance at 280 and 890 Broadway as well as the occasional class at Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn.
I have also taught master classes at the University of Michigan, West Chester University in PA, Middlebury College, the University of North Carolina @ Greensboro, Enloe High School and Arts Together in NC, Prescott College in AZ, Arizona State University, and
The Yard.
Class Description:
Class will begin by pouring
weight into the floor, finding a
dynamically energetic
relationship with the floor, and
acquiring simultaneous support
through space. The dancer's
self investigation will continue
through locomotor and
gestural improvisation as well
as reconfiguring more traditional and vertical styles of
preparing our bodies to move. Vesa Loikas
Class will be a layering process; finding our obvious physical support systems, noticing what influences our choices, and allowing everything to inform the moment as opposed to distracting us from it. We will be readying both mind and body to find a genuine awareness from moment to moment as well as permission to play within the given structure. The class will culminate with a movement phrase carving through space with momentum, inversions, slicing, bracing, counter-rotation, and gathering in to explode again. Above all, let’s enjoy what we love to do!
I’m interested in offering a class that fulfills the dancers’ need to abandon what he or she thinks their boundaries are with movement. I want to play and investigate various techniques with the dancers. I will create an authenticity to approaching movement in a class atmosphere where my plan may veer depending on how well the dancers are absorbing the material. I think that teaching holds a certain responsibility to keep questioning one’s approach and is a constant experiment to find a better explanation.