This approach focuses on physical and emotional investigations that open our ability to listen to our mythic inner world and the environment.  The body is an instrument that can be fine-tuned in order to access one's voice as an artist and sensitize our kinesthetic perceptions. Participants explore ways to enter states of transformative action through breathing, directives, awareness and clear impulse.  This comprehensive training includes floor work, partnering, self-acupressure and challenging movement sequences that help us to know ourselves and at the same time challenge those perspectives, creating pathways towards unexplored potential.

Flamenco dance is a highly-expressive dance form originally from Spain. The dance is characterized by hand clapping, percussive footwork, and intricate hand, arm and body movements.  In this course, we draw from this vast tradition as well as discover further possibilities as a contemporary, experimental  language. We will explore emotional and physical states of an interpreter as well as different approaches to bringing your voice to the stage.

This class will be taught in collaboration with Mirah Moriarty.  See description.

This class dives into the sacred dances of the Orixá of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, and other traditional dances from Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti. Through these forms, the body becomes a site to transform the memories and history that has shaped who we are and who we are destined to become. There are several layers of re-memory at stake: personal/individual, experiential, the meta-narrative of the collective re-embodiment as well as the former incarnations that exist within the cellular repositories. The body, therefore, becomes an intermediary site for reimagining the future. 

This training based on alert states of awareness developed in improvisational structures. It is a method through which the mind merges with the body, allowing us to detonate our perceptions in responses to the immediate needs of the here and now.  Through taxation, the body generates the necessary impulses that allows us to survive situations of corporal complexity in space and time.  Actions are taken in relation to the situation, generating high levels of responsiveness, thus achieving virtuosity without creating excess tension. 

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"The animal does not hesitate or act gratuitously, it only moves when there is a need that ignites the impulse towards action." -STANISLAVSKI 

Ook'ot International Dance Festival welcomes Sophie Becker as the official videographer for January 2020. She will document the first festival as an experienced dance-on-film visual storyteller. SOPHIE BECKER is a film editor, videographer, and actor based in Oakland. Originally from San Francisco, Sophie received her BA from Oberlin College where she began her training media arts. She holds the Communications and Creative Content Associate position at Destiny Arts Center where she supports the center's visual storytelling, and is a frequent collaborator of YAK Films.  Her work has been supported by The Julie Taymor Arts & Culture Abroad Award, and CA$H, and grants program of Theatre Bay Area.  Her short dance film Light in Hand, created collaboratively with Destiny Arts Center youth, won placement in the 2018 SF Tiny Dance Film Festival.