When
Where
PRACTICES – WEEK 3
ALTERNATIVA > GUT Motives
Monday – Friday
January 20-24, 2020
10:00am- 12:00pm
GUT Motives is a contemporary dance class and ongoing research by ALTERNATIVA investigating corporeality from internal impulse to external expression. Exploring states and acts of motion through a hybrid of traditional, contemporary and alternative forms in order to utilize embodiment and motion as means of perception, intuition and action. Deepening awareness and understanding of the body by working with energy, touch, somatic improvisation, technical modalities and three-dimensional choreography. The class is an intimate, animated arena for physical and creative exploration, deeply informed by live, original music, and encouraging sensate virtuosity, kinetic efficiency, interactive intelligence and performance-level dancing. Motivated by interpretations of GUT, including good, general unified theory, viscera, center of gravity, courage, instinct, intuition and vulnerability.
ALTERNATIVA, directed by dancer Kathleen Hermesdorf with musician Albert Mathias, is an apparatus for deeply integrated contemporary dance and music via collaboration, creation, improvisation, performance, production, curation and education. Active in San Francisco since 1998, the organization supports the creative work of the directors, known for radical dance classes, performance projects and musical endeavors delving into the corporeality and ineffability of human conditions, behaviors and other curiosities. Activities, including an annual FRESH Festival, ongoing classes and workshops in the Bay Area, residencies at universities, festivals and studios worldwide and PORCH/Ponderosa in Germany, engage an extensive population of artists, audiences and participants. ALTERNATIVA is fiscally sponsored by Dancers’ Group and has received support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, William + Flora Hewlett Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Dancers’ Group’s Matching Grant and CA$H Grant, CHIME/MJDC, the San Francisco Arts Commission and The Suitcase Fund. www.la-alternativa.us | www.freshfestival.org
Kathleen Hermesdorf is an international dance artist, educator and producer based in San Francisco. She directs ALTERNATIVA, with musician Albert Mathias. Hermesdorf has been dancing in the Bay Area since 1991 and teaches, performs, improvises, creates and curates around the world. Her work has been presented in the Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Dakar, amongst other locations, in commission for universities, companies and independent dancers, and in collaboration with art partners worldwide. She was a member of Bebe Miller Company, Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and co-director of Hermesdorf & Wells Dance Company with Scott Wells and Collusion with Stephanie Maher. She is the co-director of PORCH summer school at Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen, Germany and WILD [West Cork Contemporary Dance Festival] in Ballydehob, Ireland. Hermesdorf brings over 20 years of experience from the field, studio and stage to her work and holds a BFA and an MFA in Dance Performance + Pedagogy.
Albert Mathias is a multi-disciplinary musician based in San Francisco since 1991. He creates and performs composition and sound design for dance, theater, film, video and audio mediums, and is the music director of ALTERNATIVA, with director/dancer Kathleen Hermesdorf. He was a member of Bebe Miller Company and Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann, and has created original sound scores for myriad dance companies. In 2000, he was nominated for an IZZIE Award with ALTERNATIVA and received a BESSIE Award in 2006 with Bebe Miller Company. Mathias has produced 15 records of original music and collaborated in numerous bands, most notably LiveHuman, an internationally acclaimed improvisation-based trio with DJ Quest and bassist Andrew Kushin. Mathias attended California Institute of the Arts, training in tabla, voice and accompaniment, and has had the honor of private study with Pandit Swapan Chauduri, Sri Ravi Bellare and Tony Williams. His eclectic sounds can be found on I-Tunes, Bandcamp and CD Baby.
REGISTER TODAY AT FRESHFESTIVAL.ORG/PRACTICES
Sara Shelton Mann >Embodiment
Monday – Friday
January 20-24, 2020
1:15pm- 12:00pm
EMBODIMENT
5 days/5 topics/5 ways of bringing your essence into the creative magic of movement and writing rigor, play, tears and joy – a birthright – landing on our feet – landing.
Sara Shelton Mann has been a choreographer, performer, and teacher since 1967. She was a protégé of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis in New York City before moving to Canada where she met Andrew Harwood and fell in love with contact improvisation. In 1979 she moved to San Francisco and founded Mixed Bag Productions, for which she has continuously served as artistic director. One of its early manifestations was the company Contraband, launched as a performance group and research ground combining the principles of contact, systems of the body and spiritual practice into a unified system of research. Among her awards are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 6 Isadora Duncan Awards, Djerassi Artist in Residence Awards, Headlands Center for the Arts Residency 2016, Lifetime Achievement Bay Guardian Award, 10 Women Who Made a Difference, Bay Guardian “Goldie” Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2016) and special achievement award “erasing time”: celebrating 30 years a radical dance legend, ( Sara Shelton Mann with David Szlasa and Norman Rutherford) Her Movement Alchemy training is an ongoing teaching project and is influenced by certifications and studies in the metaphysical and healing traditions. Sara’s performance work is a platform for collaboration and research in consciousness. www.sarasheltonmann.org
REGISTER TODAY AT FRESHFESTIVAL.ORG/PRACTICES
Tara Brandel > I know it in my bones. Deep dancing for Queer women and non-binary people.
Monday – Friday
January 20-24, 2020
1:15pm- 12:00pm
I know it in my bones. Deep dancing for Queer women and non-binary people.
Taking all of what we know from Contact Improv, and from our queer and/or non-binary selves. We dance. Fierce, soft and tender. Listening from our bones. We dance. Big, deep, and tender. What comes out of stillness? What lies in our marrow? How do our bodies come together? And what lies beneath?
Tara Brandel is a queer Contacter and Contemporary dancer and choreographer from Ireland. She trained in Contact Improv with Steve Paxton when she was 15, and Contact has been her core passion for 35+ years. Contact informs her queerness. Her queerness informs her Contact. She runs an Integrated Dance company Croí Glan Integrated Dance www.croiglan.com and has taught Contact at WCIIF, SFADI, ORJC in Toronto, Ponderosa, and Tanzfabrik, as well as in Melbourne, Cairo and Barcelona. She loves to do Contact in deserts, and her latest craze is mixing Contact with pole dancing. Tara holds a Masters in Interdisciplinary Performance from UCDavis, where she was awarded the Della Davidson Award for her new show Circus in 2019, the Mondavi Fellowship, and the Women’s Research Center Fellowship. Circus has toured to San Francisco International Arts Festival, Seattle International Dance Festival, Cork Midsummer Festival and Dublin Fringe Festival and will be CSUEBF in February 2020. www.tarabrandel.com
REGISTER TODAY AT FRESHFESTIVAL.ORG/PRACTICES