The classroom should be an exciting place to learn; where the visceral joy of movement and creative inquiry intersect.

I teach with energy and inquiry; while creating an environment that embraces movement patterns investigating quality change and the attention to variances in effort.

In and out of the floor, ride, break, fall, rise, throw, thrash, own, embrace, and embody - only begin a journey into movement research, and the excitement dance can bring by propelling oneself through space with attention and intention.

I believe in preparing classes to engage three-dimensional learning strategies, not only to facilitate well rounded education, but to further create an inclusive learning platform where each student can find strength in their abilities.

Beginning Jazz Class: Breath, Vocalization, and Freedom

Current Schedule:

2019-20 Guest Choreographer, Young Dance, Minneapolis, MN

Level Three Modern (Ages: 11-14), Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Young Dance, Minneapolis, MN

Contemporary Technique Studies (Ages: 11-14), Saturdays, 10:00-11:15 a.m. Young Dance, Minneapolis, MN

Beginning/Intermediate Adult Jazz, Saturdays, 12:30-2:00 p.m. Zenon, Minneapolis, MN

Contemporary Modern (Grades 5-12), Wednesdays, 4:15-6:00 p.m. RVDA, Chaska, MN

Workshop Descriptions

  • Composition and Improvisation Class

    This class offers experience, application, and evaluation in making dances through the practice of embodied thinking. Participants will have the opportunity to find the functionality and connectivity of understanding their own personal sensory systems; and how structured embodiment exercises, can generate movement, stimulate inspiration, and creativity.  The creative exercises and games presented will have an additional benefit of challenging an individual’s physical movement patterns both in learning and performing. These shifts in physical perspectives can help in providing alternative viewpoints in watching, and experiencing dance. In this class, students will have an opportunity, through the process of embodied thinking, to work on current choreographic ideas, or ignite new ones. Students will come away from this class with generated movement material, and unique movement phrases of their own.

  • Raw, expressive, and musically driven. This class will offer a fused contemporary and vernacular approach to the jazz dance form. Serving as the basis for investigating dynamics in movement quality and performance, jazz will be the container to explore specificity of effort, energy, and stylistic expression. Dance phrases will place emphasis on the physical use of the body, allowing for exploration in dynamic intension. The class will begin with somatic exploration, stretching, and strengthening exercises. Followed by, focused investigation on rhythm and performative vibrancy within improvisation, locomotive patterns, and phrase work. Overall- physical experiences seek to encourage awareness to internal sensation, growth in technique, musicality, creativity, and self- expression.

  • This class will be a study of how certain fundamentals of modern dance technique such as alignment, balance, centering and momentum intersect with the experience of being embodied. Warm-up exercises will incorporate conditioning and somatic exploration. Guided improvisation will be used as a means of generating material and excavating content to feed our creative curiosity. We will utilize a variety of ways of learning how to learn movement.