IGNITE/Under Spring

For the Corn and Flowers, Dance and Percussion

2010-05-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

For the Corn and Flowers

Sunday, May 16, 2010 6:00pm - 8:00pm

The Anabolic Monument, California State Park

Tatsuya Nakatani Percussion

Oguri Dance

Roxanne Steinberg Dance

Admission free

The Anabolic Monument is an artwork by Lauren Bon, tended to by the Metabolic Studio in collaboration with the State Park of California in Los Angeles. It is made of the remains of Notacornfield, the Metabolic Sculpture, 2005-2006, that transformed the 32-acre brownfield at the historic center of dowtown Los Angeles into a green field for one agricultural cycle. It is currently in the fifth year of being tended to by the Metabolic Studio. The corn in the Anabolic is being grown for the final season of the Metabolic Studio's stewardship of the Anabolic Monument.

Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) is originally from Osaka, Japan. He has performed in 80 cities in 7 countries and collaborated with 163 artists worldwide. In the past 10 years he has released nearly 50 recordings on CD.He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drumset, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, organic music that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised/ experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.

Roxanne Steinberg’s choreography and dance has been seen worldwide with composers and musicians Yas Kaz, Paul Chavez, Kenta Nagai, Tatsuya Nakatani, Leon Mobley, Myra Melford & Alex Cline and dancers Min Tanaka and Amagatsu of Sankai Juku. A founder of Body Weather Laboratory in L.A. (1987), she has performed with Oguri since 1990 and was presented in Flower of the Season, a performance series she now co-directs. She has choreographed for Body Vox in Portland, and artist Lauren Bon’s Notacornfield, the Metabolic Scultpure, 2005-2006, that transformed the 32-acre brownfield at the historic center of dowtown LA into a green field for one agricutlural cycle. Working at the Metabolic Studio and on Strawberry Flag in Los Angeles, dance is her language to coordinate space and community. Grants: Annenberg Foundation, Department of Cultural Affairs Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Durfee Foundation, artist-in-residence Electric Lodge, Venice.

Oguri, an internationally acclaimed dancer/choreographer and a resident of Southern California since 1990, conducts Body Weather Laboratory a forum for investigating the body and dance (founded by Min Tanaka in Japan, 1978). In Japan, he studied fine art with Genpei Akasegawa and dance with Tatsumi Hijikata before working extensively with Min Tanaka farming, performing and presenting solo work in Tokyo. Since moving to the USA, he has taught and performed worldwide. The 2005 documentary film Height of Sky by director Morleigh Steinberg follows his 4-year project, an exploration of the California deserts in search of a dance between the human body and the borderline. He is an artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice, California. Oguri has received support from the California Arts Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, The Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Arts Partners Program, The Getty Center, the Irvine Fellowship in Dance, the 2005 Irvine Dance: Creation to Performance grant. He serves on the Chora Council of the Metabolic Studio. The Metabolic Studio is comprised of Chora and Farmlab.

2009-11-17T21:59:00.000-08:00

December 5, 12, 11-1pm: Sheetal Gandhi
Sheetal is interested in movement that is gestural, expressive and musically complex. She draws on her inspirations including kathak dance, vocal percussion, popping and waving, modern dance, classic jazz, Michael Jackson, West African dance, Pilates, Yoga and Bharatanatyam mudras. This two-part course will use the complex, precise rhythms of the North Indian classical dance form Kathak, as a springboard into exploring the musician-dancer body. Choreographically, we will explore the possibilities within the drum and dance language, using our voices and dance to create highly specific movement sequences and soundscapes. All levels and techniques welcome. The class should warm you up, cool you down, and keep you groovin’ in between!

Sheetal Gandhi is interested in creating a space that brings the many sides of her personality together: dramatic, wry, Indian, American, dancer, percussionist, abstract, chameleon, precise, impulsive, singer and storyteller. She draws on her strengths and professional successes from the subway platform to the Broadway stage to create work that blurs cultural and disciplinary boundaries, promoting intercultural understanding through artistic excellence. In 1993, Sheetal’s passion for rhythm led her to Ghana, West Africa where she spent a year studying and performing the traditional music and dances of the region. Sheetal grew up folk dancing within her own culture and in 1995 moved to India for six months to further study the North Indian classical dance form Kathak. As a percussionist, she plays the calabash, or dried gourd, and the West African xylophone. Sheetal worked as a creator and performer in Cirque du Soleil’sDralion, and toured with the international cast from 1999-2001. Her New York credits include: leading role in the Broadway production of Bombay Dreams, Stephen Schwartz’s Children of Eden at the Paper Mill Playhouse, and the revival of Hair. Gandhi was Co-Artistic Director of the modern dance company California Contemporary Dancers in San Francisco from 2001-2004 and holds an MFA in Dance/Choreography from UCLA’s Dept. of World Arts and Cultures. Most recently she has been touring her multi-disciplinary one-woman show, Bahu-Beti-Biwi (Daughter-in-law, Daughter, Wife), with recent performances in Los Angeles at the REDCAT NOW Festival and in New York with the National Asian American Theater Festival. For more info. visit www.sheetalgandhi.com <http://www.sheetalgandhi.com/>

2009-11-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

November 7, 14, 21, 11AM - 1PM Neil Greenberg
Each class/workshop will draw from three possible arenas:
* Working with information from some of the somatic approaches I’ve studied, considering body systems in addition to, and in conjunction with, the prevalent skeletal/muscular model. Could be called a bodywork approach to movement training. Warming up will be one goal, here. Call this the “technique” focus.
* Directed improvisation, using some of the ideas from my recent “Really Queer Dance With Harps” as a springboard, and also working with ideas from my current project: I’ve been questioning the notion that speech metaphors—for example, “what is this dance saying?”—can accurately describe dance experiences. I’m instead interested in exploring the “isness” of the performance moment.
* Working with set material drawn from my choreography, learning and playing with “phrase-work.” Sort of a mini repertory focus. (This probably a lower priority for me at present.)
I still feel quite new to L.A., and hope to continue making work here. I see these workshops as an opportunity to continue to meet and get to know artists from the L.A. dance community, and to bring to the table some of the ideas with which I’ve been working.
Feel free to email me with any questions: neilg@ucr.edu

Neil Greenberg moved to L.A. from N.Y.C. in fall 2007 to join the dance faculty of UC Riverside. He has been making dances since 1979, and is known especially for his 1994 work, Not-About-AIDS-Dance, which employs his signature use of projected supertitles as an alternative text to the onstage dance action, and a door into the “meanings” of viewing dance. His work also reflects the influence of innovative somatic approaches to movement, such as Klein Technique, which he’s studied extensively with Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein, and Body-Mind Centering, which he’s studied with RoseAnne Spradlin. His most recent work, Really Queer Dance With Harps, continues his investigation into the nature of meaning-making. RQDWH premiered at Dance Theater Workshop in NY in June 2008, and was presented at REDCAT in LA in April 2009. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA NYFA & the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, two “Bessies,” a Time Out Audience Award, and grants from the National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production Fund and NYSCA. He has created two commissions for Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project. A former dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1979-1986), he has been on the dance faculty of Purchase College and Sarah Lawrence College, and served as dance curator at The Kitchen from 1995-1999. For more information: http://www.neilgreenberg.org/

2009-10-23T16:55:00.001-07:00

October 31st, 11am-1pm Hana van der Kolk

This is Dancing...
is a contemporary dance technique class open to all levels of dance experience. Class begins with a slow warm up drawing from yoga, mindfulness meditation, the Alexander Technique, Body Mind Centering, and various dance traditions. With a focus on cultivating kinesthetic awareness and heightening mental presence we then move between guided improvisations and simple and repetative set material that draws from jazz, Hip Hop, modern dance, and West African movement vocabularies. Class might finish with a simple movement phrase set to music (think Cyndi Lauper, Janet Jackson, Animal Collective, Justin Timberlake, NIna Simone) and/or scores for practicing improvised choreography. From start to finish we will move, sweat, play, and dance together in a collective space of exploration and positivity. This is Dancing draws inspiration from the work of Deborah Hay, Simone Forti, d. Sabela Grimes, Germaine Acogny, Merce Cunningham, and many others.

Hana van der Kolk is a choreographer based in Los Angeles. Her projects combine elements of conceptual practice with the techniques of postmodern theater and choreography and take place in a wide range of sites, including the stage, studios and galleries, in writing, on film, and in outdoor, public spaces. She is highly influenced by choreographer Deborah Hay whose solos she has been learning and adapting since 2000. The adaptations as well as Hana's own work have been presented throughout the U.S. and Europe. Hana has collaborated with Carolina San Juan, Layard Thompson, Jesse Johnson, Robby Herbst, My Barbarian, Jesse Aron Green and many others. As a performer she has appeared in the work of Taisha Paggett, Rebecca Pappas, Cid Pearlman, Dan Froot/Dan Hurlin and others. Hana has taught dance and yoga in public parks, private back yards, studios, retreat centers, universities, and high schools throughout the country, and is a regular guest teacher at the School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam. In 2008 Hana founded Genesis Project, Los Angeles, a forum for dialogue about interdisciplinary, body-based artistic practice and a month-long, process-based artists’ residency. For more please visit www.genesisprojectla.org <http://www.genesisprojectla.org/> and www.hanavanderkolk.com <http://www.hanavanderkolk.com/> .

2009-10-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

Oct. 17, 24: Kevin Williamson

Int./Adv. Contemporary Techniques & Creative Composition Class

We start class by getting down and dirty with our bad selves. Improvisational work based on spinal awareness, tailbone initiation, plane possibility, and release technique spiral us across the floor. Then we hit the center adagio to weave smoothly between Yoga/Alexander technique, and into moving inversions to fire up the core, lubricate the joints, and stretch major and minor muscles groups. By transferring from twisting asanas into released joint articulation we will strengthen our ideas of balance and falling. Shifting from our feet to our hands and all the surface area in between we will explore gravity as a tool in moving swifter and more efficiently while widening our perspective on our own movement potential. Then through complex, athletic phrase work we will create movement that is simultaneously functional in capacity and dynamic in expression. Each class ends with an improvisation that utilizes that day’s work to expand on our skill in creating without pre-conceived thought – the key to visceral, enlightening experiences in improvisation. We will then flashback this process to retain the spontaneous movement into muscle and mind memory heightening our knowledge on how to compose structured improvisation and dance. Contact Kevin for more info: 310.430.5384 kevin@kdubdance.org www.kdubdance.org

Kevin Williamson, professional dancer and choreographer, began training and performing commercially at the age of ten. He went on to UCLA to complete a BA in World Arts and Cultures. Since he has performed for David Gordon, Julie Taymor, Angelin Preljocaj, Sebastian Prantl, Ryan Heffington, Stephan Koplowitz, Maria Gillespie, and Kate Hutter in New York City, Vienna, and Los Angeles. Kevin is a founding company member of LACDC, and member of Oni Dance, site-specific touring ensemble TaskForceProject, and performs for the LA Opera. He has been nominated for several Lester Horton Awards for performance excellence, and in 2007, the LA Times named him “a major artist” for his performance at the Ford Amphitheatre in Unearthing Sleeping Beasts. As a choreographer, Kevin has created works for the LA Contemporary Dance Co., Los Angeles Movement Arts, Fringe Festival Scotland, Highways Festival of Student work, Freud Theatre, and Miami's Winter Music Conference. In October of 2009 Highways presents the debut concert of his dance theatre company KDUB DANCE. Kevin is currently the director of dance at Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, and recently completed a Dance Educator’s Fellowship awarded to him by Bates Dance Festival.

2009-09-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

September 26, October 3, 10

Saturdays, 11 - 1

Roxanne Steinberg

Introduction to Body Weather Laboratory
Body Weather Laboratory is a research forum open to anyone interested in investigating the body within different environments. Just like the weather, our bodies are constantly changing and our relationship to the environment is in a state of interactive flux. Through a thorough reexamination of the body and movement, the training supports work in various practices and disciplines by developing presence and deeper connectivity to the world around us. It consists of: M.B. -  Rigorous mind/body, muscle/bone training, Rhythmical and dynamic, it develops coordination and endurance.   Manipulations -  A series of specific stretching and relaxation exercises concerned with breathing and alignment. The work is done in couples, exchanging passive and active roles.   Laboratory Explorations - designed to sharpen focus and extend the scope of awareness through the body. The work encompasses sensitivity training, discovery of movement from images and working with partners to deepen investigation and develop understanding. Roxanne Steinberg discovered Body Weather Laboratory at Bennington College while training in dance and improvisation and went on to study in Paris, New York and Japan. She began teaching Body Weather in L.A. in 1988 and has worked and performed with Oguri since 1990. Roxanne’s choreography and dance has been presented worldwide with composers and musicians Yas Kaz, Paul Chavez, Kenta Nagai, Tatsuya Nakatani, Leon Mobley, Myra Melford & Alex Cline and dancers Min Tanaka and Amagatsu of Sankai Juku. She was presented in Flower of the Season, a performance series and mentorship program she now co-directs at the Electric Lodge in Venice. She received a Durfee Arts grant, 2006 for her piece at Dance Conversations at the Flea in New York where she has presented her work each year since. Her performance with Oguri in a major production, Caddy! Caddy! Caddy! William Faulkner Dance Project premiered at the REDCAT and will be performed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, November 2009. Working at the Metabolic Studio in Los Angeles, dance is her language to coordinate space and community. She is an artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice where she continues to teach Body Weather Laboratory.

2009-09-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

DANCEbank fall/winter series

September 5, 12, 19: Cheng-Chieh Yu
Motion in Stillness; Stillness in Motion

This class will explore a Tai-Chi/BaGuaZhang influenced post-modern dance technique. The class will start with a series of Tai-Chi/BaGuaZhang derived movement exercises focusing at once on both centering, and opening up channels of energy. “When it moves, it divides; when it rests, it reunites.” Next we will work on weight shifting as the movement of complimentary opposites, Yin & Yang, exploring momentum from fall-and-response, to build phrasing. This process leads us to concentrate on developing choreographic efficiency in phrasing and rhythm.

Cheng-Chieh Yu is a choreographer of dance theater works that explore Asian Diaspora issues, which challenge notions of an Asian and Asian-American profile, crisscrossing issues such as gender ascription, social-political perspectives, cultural hybridity. Yu’s bold kinetics and provocative imagery are built from a dynamic corporeal postmodern dance technique, fused with the martial arts of Tai Chi Chuan and Ba Gua Zhang. Cheng-Chieh began her performance career touring with the acclai med Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan. After relocating to New York City from 1989 to 2001, Cheng-Chieh toured internationally performing in the companies of The Solomons Co. Dance, Jose Limon Dance Co., Bebe Miller Dance Co. and as a gue st artist for the Ralph Lemon Dance Project. Her choreography has been produced by numerous venues in NYC and Los Angeles as well as internationally in China, Singapore, Israel, and Taiwan. Choreographic commissions include from the Chinese Information and Cultural Center, Movement Research, Danspace at St. Mark’s Church in NYC, the Beijing Modern Dance Company in China and Sun-Shier Dance Theatre of Taiwan. She is currently an Associate Professor of Performance/Choreography at UCLA.

2009-07-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

COMING IN AUGUST!

DANCEbank Summer Workshops

Saturday & Sunday, 11am-1:30pm

$15 single class/$25 both days

August 1 & 2 - Simone Forti

August 8 & 9 - Taisha Paggett

August 15 & 16 - Mira Kingsley

August 22 & 23 - Sabela Grimes

August 28 & 29 - Anna B. Scott

August 1 & 2 - Simone Forti

A Weave of Moving, Speaking & Writing

We respond to our environment, both immediate, and broad and complex. Our bodies change tone, experience and act on kinesthetic impulses, while our minds wander and focus. The structures of body, of language, of feeling, interact. That’s what we will explore.

Simone Forti is a dancer and writer in her seventies, enjoying maturity while urgently exploring new strategies.

August 8 & 9 - Taisha Paggett, Everything bodies

This movement class will begin with floor and standing exercises based on connecting breath with movement, joint articulation, and tapping into both internal and external focus and awareness. Phrase work will be pulled from a current choreography project “everything,” which plays with the task of physicalizing multiple sensations in a single moment.

We approach movement with an inquiring, non-judgmental mind, with the goal of finding new sensations of awareness in our individual physicality.

Taisha Paggett is a Los Angeles based dance artist and co-founder of the dance journal project, itch. Her work and collaborations for the stage, gallery, and public sphere have been presented and supported by several venues throughout California as well as in Chicago, New York City and Utrecht, The Netherlands. She has worked extensively in the projects of Victoria Marks and David Rousseve, and is a member of the audio action collective, Ultra-Red. She holds an MFA from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures.

2009-07-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

DANCEbank presents guest artist, Ralf Jaroschinski
Saturday & Sunday, July 11 & 12th, 11am-2pm
$17 single class, $30 both days.

Ralf Jaroschinski was born in Southern Germany and grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He received classical and modern dance training in Germany and then studied contemporary dance techniques in New York City. That’s where he discovered contact improvisation (CI) about fourteen years ago – mainly in Daniel Lepkoff’s and Alito Alessi’s classes among others. He currently works as a dance teacher and choreographer mainly in Europe and the Americas. He enjoys using CI in his creations and teaching it since about eight years.

In the beginning of the class, we’ll focus on our center and awareness: We will look for the true internal source and the authentic external expression of our own dance. We will then investigate attentively the texture of our connection with our partner(s) through listening to their and again our actions and reactions in the ongoing dance. During this, we will be able to fully enjoy participating in the dance, because our and our partners' contributions to it will be generous and full-hearted, since they are at all times nurtured from within and therefore inexhaustible. And so, finally, we will feel union and satisfaction while dancing with our partner(s), because we’ll not only be experiencing the freedom of space and the excitement of momentum in the dynamic dance, but also the heightened support we get from dancing in communication with our center and other persons’ centers as well.

For more information please visit:
www.ralfjaroschinski.de <http://www.ralfjaroschinski.de>

2009-07-11T22:32:00.000-07:00

DANCEbank Summer session Arianne Hoffmann Saturdays 11am-1pm, June 6, 13, 20, $12
The class will, after a loosening warm-up, move into structured improvisations. We will play with a various scores while conceiving of them as metaphors for socio-political issues. In that sense, we will be theorizing (in) space by the means of our bodies moving. But let’s not get too heady here. We will move in relationship to each other, and find out more about how we can structure improvising. This class is open to anyone willing to move and explore!

Arianne Hoffmann is a German born choreographer, currently in her second year of the M.F.A. program at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures, where she has had the pleasure to study with Simone Forti, Susan Foster, and Victoria Marks. She creates scored improvisations that function as socio-political metaphors and are based on the physical body as a means and focus of expression.

Her work has been shown around Los Angeles, most recently at Highways Performance Space, the Unknown Theater, and at Anatomy Riot. She has performed in and produced events with the performance art group Rent-a-friend and at TanzTangente in Berlin/Germany. As a performer, she recently worked with Rachael Lincoln, Krenly Guzman, and Kristen Smiarowski.

She is the producer of AN EARFUL OF DANCE, a series of podcast conversations on dance, partially funded by the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), and co-producer of Anatomy Riot. She has received the Forti Family Scholarship for Artistic Achievement twice.

2009-05-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

DANCEbank Spring session - Michael Sakamoto

Saturdays 11am-1pm, May 16, May 23, May 30 - $12

Mind/Body/Time: A Workshop in Contemplative Movement and Character Development
Utilizing pedagogical and participatory techniques rooted in Butoh, postmodern dance, and improvisational performance, this movement-based performance workshop addresses socialized habits and tendencies in our daily mental and behavioral patterns and modes of being. Participants are led through gestural and image-based exercises designed to decipher, interpret, and literally “break” thought, language, and action, empowering our mind/body instruments via semi-improvised structures that perform vulnerable, “dis-abled” versions of ourselves through a process of cyclical self-destruction and reintegration.
Michael Sakamoto is an interdisciplinary dance, theater, and performance artist whose works have been performed in Thailand, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the USA. He is the recipient of numerous local and international awards and grants, including from the Japan Foundation, Arts International, Meet the Composer, California Community Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, and many others. His performances idiosyncratically blend intercultural themes, postmodern pastiche, and the visceral presence of butoh and physical theater in order to challenge audience expectations and reflect on the relationship of self with others and humanity with the world around us. His latest full-length work, "Vestiges of Creation," will premiere November 20-21, 2009 at UCLA World Arts and Cultures. For more info: <http://www.michaelsakamoto.com>

Old-Time Social

2009-04-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

Metabolic Studio hosts the entire day Saturday, May 17th. Starting at 2pm, workshops for fiddle, banjo, and square dance calling are followed by a square-dance featuring the live music of bands K. Boogie and the Brownbaggers (LA) and Pearson’s Pork Pies (Bay Area) with calling by Susan Michaels and Amy Hofer. The evening begins at 6:30 with a kids’ dance and a cakewalk with the big square dance commencing at 8pm. All

Saturday events at Farmlab and are free.

2009-04-30T14:20:00.001-07:00

2009-04-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

2009-04-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

DANCEbank Spring session

Saturdays 11am-1pm, April 25, May 2, May 9

Esther Baker-Tarpaga
Esther’s movement class draws from her most recent explorations in West African Dance and Improvisation. The class will consist of a rhythmic and spinal oriented warm up drawing from West African movement, modern dance, and yoga, short combinations across the floor with the accompaniment of live drumming, and guided improvisations in group, solo, and duet forms. It is an open level class and will have live drumming and music.

Esther M. Baker-Tarpaga, choreographer and dancer, has a B.A. from Bowdoin College in French and Anthropology and an M.A. in Dance and M.F.A. in Choreography from UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures Dept. She is co-founder and co-director of Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project, a transnational company that intertwines West African dance and postmodern dance with live music to create physically powerful dance theatre. Recent works in 2008 include Los Angeles premieres of Dar Es Salaam at Celebrate Dance Alex Theatre, Sira Kan/On the Road at the REDCAT NOW Festival, and Disorder Inside Order at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre. In 2007 Esther was invited as a cultural Envoy to teach contemporary dance and to choreograph a new piece for Djoliba National Ballet in Conakry, Guinea. From 2000-2005 she collaborated with Senegal-based dancers, musicians, and rappers on several projects and implemented and led UCLA’s first summer study abroad program in Senegal at Germaine Acogny’s Ecole de Sables. She is the recipient of a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, a Durfee, and UCIRA grant and is currently dancing in David Rousseve/REALITY new work Saudade.. She has recently taught courses and choreographed work with students at Marlborough High School, Rio Hondo College, Cypress College, and is a HeArt Project artist in residence for continuation high schools in Los Angeles. www.btdanceproject.com

2009-04-10T22:58:00.000-07:00

Descent Performance Laboratory and Metabolic Studio present
BUTOH Workshop with Katsura Kan
Saturday, April 18 1:30-5:30 pm
$35 advance registration; $45 on-site registration
To register, please send an email including your name, phone number and email address to: rosemary@descentperformance.org

This workshop is a unique opportunity to study closely with a Master Butoh artist during this 50th anniversary year of the dance form. Katsura Kan will lead workshop participants through preparatory exercises that lead into more advanced work in what he calls “Butoh Notation,” drawing from both from the writing of butoh co-founder Hijikata Tatsumi and from Katsura Kan’s own efforts to develop “Beckett Butoh.” The workshop is appropriate for dancers and non-dancers alike; no previous butoh experience necessary.

Katsura Kan is a native of Kyoto, Japan, and is a Master Butoh artist from the ranks of Japan's first generation of Butoh. He performed with the seminal Butoh troupe, Byakkosha (1979-1981) and is a celebrated solo artist and collaborative performer as well as a choreographer. Katsura Kan's work as a performer, a choreographer, a researcher, and a teacher is unique in that he combines Butoh and the uniquely Japanese qualities of this dance form as a gateway to explore dance and performing arts from other cultures. Not only is Kan known for his interest in diversity in the performing arts, but he engages social-historical realities in his work. For example, Kan was an artist in residency in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2005 and 2006. He has worked in Warszaw, Russia, Paris and Spain and has also expanded his Japanese and European background to West Africa and Thailand, working with children in both places.

Please join us for this unique opportunity to participate in the evolution of a truly unique and global art form. - Descent Performance Laboratory

www.descentperformance.org

2009-04-10T22:56:00.002-07:00

DANCEbank Guest Artist Series
April 11 - Paige Martin
Paige Martin has been a member of Neil Greenberg's company since 1996 and received a 'Bessie' award for her dancing in Neil's 'this is what happened'. She has worked extensively with RoseAnne Spradlin as well as a varied assortment of others including Scotty Heron, Juliette Mapp, Sally Silvers, and Sarah Michelson. Her performance works have been presented at The Kitchen, Danspace Project at St. Marks Church, PS 122, Dixon Place, The Knitting Factory, MR at the Judson Church, and Movement Research's various festivals.

Class will consist of movement fundamentals, some developmental, some skeletal, a little Zero Balancing and Body Mind Centering that will hopefully allow for some new information for all. Then we can play with phrases from either dated, genre-specific, or 'natural'movement styles, depending on what we need and how we feel as a group.

2009-04-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

Body Weather Laboratory LA & Farmlab Metabolic Studio present
Body/Landscape 5-day dance workshop
with Frank van de Ven Body Weather Amsterdam
and Oguri Body Weather Los Angeles

Sunday, April 12~Thursday, April 16. 9:00am-3:00pm
$200 Full participation required
bwlusa@yahoo.com

Body/Landscape: The workshop proposes strategies to
confront our bodies with the multiplicity, unpredictability,
directness and autonomy of the natural environment.
The aim is to explore and develop consciousness of the
body itself being an ever evolving landscape within a
greater surrounding landscape.

BWL Workshop The basic training and point of departure for this
workshop, Body Weather, is a comprehensive training and performance practice that investigates the intersections of bodies and their environments. Bodies are not conceived as fixed entities, but just like the weather, constantly changing through an infinite and complex system of processes occurring in- and outside of these bodies

Farmlab Public Salon
"Corpus Criticus: Bodies on Words - Words on Bodies"
Frank van de Ven & Victoria Looseleaf
Friday, April 17, 2009 Noon. Free Admission

Considering the art of improvisation as danced by Frank van de Ven, arts journalist and critic Victoria Looseleaf opens a dialogue with both performer and audience, demystifying the genre in real time. In today's environment where criticism is losing currency, we explore the conversation between the moving body - the unspoken - and that which needs to be said.

Metabolic Studio [Farmlab+Chora+AMI]
1745 North Spring Street,. Los Angeles CA 90012
Metabolic Studio:323-226-1158

2009-03-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

Saturday Mornings March 21 & 28 11am-1pm $12
Farmlab/Metabolic Studio 1745 N. Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Shel Wagner Rasch FLIGHT SCHOOL (Contact Improv Style)
for people who like to move

Come play with flying.....Each class will begin with a warm up intended to free minds and muscles while exploring our connection to the ground. Then we'll move into the fundamentals of giving and supporting weight and the cues and timing that lead to take off, looking at safe and effective techniques for both supporting a rider and riding a supporter. And finally, using curiosity as our motivation, we will explore the physics of "force" and "momentum" as tools to keep the dance flowing into and up from the ground and into and down from the air.

Contact Improv is one of my favorite things to do and I thoroughly enjoy sharing my take on it with other people. I've been exploring, teaching, and performing contact improv in public and in private spaces, with friends and with strangers for over 25 years and it still intrigues me. Alot.

My teaching style is deeply informed by Anatomy, Physics, the Alexander Technique, Somatic Experiencing, and a life-long fascination with the stories our bodies have to tell. My goal in teaching CI is to create opportunities for movement education, self discovery, and conscious contact. To this end, I seek to foster a class atmosphere in which safety, embodiment, fun, and a sense of wonder are highlighted.

If you have any questions about the class you can reach me at: shel@shelwagnerrasch.com

12th ANNUAL Mujeres de Maiz LIVE ART SHOW

2009-03-03T11:17:00.000-08:00

Sunday, March 8th, 2009 6-10pm at Metabolic Studio (Farmlab)

1745 North Spring St. L.A. CA 90012

$10-$15 (sliding scale) k-12 students $5 w/ID

12th annual Mujeres de Maiz Intercultural, Intergenerational, Interdisciplinary LIVE ART SHOW

Celebrating International Wombyn's Day & Wombyn's Herstory Month with art, music, film, dance, poetry, theatre, performance, vendors.

Performing Artists include: Briseyda Zarate, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan, Danza Azteca Ketzalitzil, Faith Santilla, Gloria Alvarez, Happy Frejo, In Lak Ech, Jackie Lopez, Josefina lopez, Kristy Lomax (DJ), La Santa Cecilla, Las Krudas, Las Ramonas, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Maya Jupiter, Medusa, Mujeres en Resistencia, Reina Prado, Samia & Nia, Skim, Space Intruders, MC's: D'Lo, Raquel Salinas & Gutierrez

Food by South Central Farmers colelctive: SOL ( Seasonal, Organic, Local)

DANCEbank Rae Shao-Lan Blum

2009-02-18T16:33:00.000-08:00

f i e l d : a movement workshop in the territory and mind-set of space
field (feeld), (n.) a body of open ground. (v.) to deal with, to put out.

Saturday Mornings Feb. 21, 28 & March 7 at 11am-1pm $12
Farmlab/Metabolic Studio 1745 N. Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012

This workshop is focused on heightening awareness of space from the inside out. Through a layered practice of guided somatic explorations, semi-structured scores and writing practice, we will tune our instruments of perception, presence, responsiveness and spontaneity in the art of improvisation. Basic cranio-sacral concepts, anatomy and breath work will be introduced and integrated as a grounding reference in sensing and tracking. We will dance the big, we will dance the intricate, we will move the big-small space.

Rae Shao-Lan Blum is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, body worker and student practitioner/assistant teacher of Visionary Craniosacral Work. In addition to her formal training in modern dance, she has been improvising for over fifteen years. Rae developed her aesthetics and skills in the influence of many great teachers- KJ Holmes, Janis Brenner and Simone Forti to name a few. She also acknowledges influential teachers in the realms of life potentiating practices: Mary Abrams and Susan Harper (Continuum Movement), Christine Price (Gestalt Awareness Practice), and Hugh & Giorgia Milne (Visionary Craniosacral Work). Rae is a 2008 "Mentee" recipient of CHIME together with "Mentor," Simone Forti. www.raeshaolanblum.blogspot.com

four - music and dance improvisation

2009-01-30T15:10:00.000-08:00

Tatsuya Nakatani (Percussion)

Michel Doneda (Saxophone)
Kaoru Watanabe (Flute) and Oguri (Dance)
Monday, February 16 & Tuesday, 17 2009 8:00pm

Metabolic Studio
1745 North Spring Street, Los Angeles CA 90012

Admission: $15 Children, under 16 free
Information: Metabolic Studio 323-226-1158
http://www.lightningshadow.com

Body Weather Laboratory and the Metabolic Studio are pleased to announce the return of Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) and Oguri (dance) with four Music and Dance Improvisations. This year’s show also features internationally acclaimed musicians form Japan and France Kaoru Watanabe (flute) and Michel Doneda (saxophone).

DANCEbank Hana van der Kolk

2009-01-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

January 31, Feb 7, 14th 11am-1pm

at Metabolic Studio / Farmlab

1745 North Spring Street, #4
LA, CA 90012
www.farmlab.org

Jan 31, Feb 7, 14 - Hana van der Kolk

Hana's classes are open to all (no dance experience necessary) and combine a slow, centering warm up influenced by BodyMind Centering, Alexander Technique, Yoga, and Release Technique, with a fun, sweaty, simple and big-moving section inspired by Hip Hop, Jazz, and modern dance. The class ends with some improvising that focuses on questions of consciousness that aim to expand physical and mental possibilities.

Hana van der Kolk is a Los Angeles-based artist whose choreographic projects combine elements of conceptual practice with the techniques of postmodern choreography and take place in a wide range of sites, including the stage, studios and galleries, in writing, on film, and in outdoor, public spaces. She is highly influenced by her longtime engagement with the work of choreographer Deborah Hay, whose solos she has been learning and adapting since 2000. Hanarecently collaborated on projects with Jesse Aron Green, My Barbarian, Robby Herbst, Adam Overton, Emily Mast, and Carolina San Juan. You can learn more about her May 2007 site-specific performance/participatory event at www.interimuses.org , and about the intensive practice-based, inter-disciplinary artist's residency that she directs at www.genesisprojectla.org . Hana holds an MFA in choreography from UCLA.

free & abundant street parking!
enter around the back of the building, through the garden, under the bridge
if you've never been to Farmlab, it can be a little confusing the first time, so here's a map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1745+N+Spring,+90012&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=addr

DANCEbank Mira Kingsley January 10, 17, 24

2009-01-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

DANCEbank Winter/Spring session starts up this Saturday, January 10th

Saturdays 11am-1pm, $12
January 10, 17, 24 - Mira Kingsley (11am-1pm)

at Metabolic Studio / Farmlab
1745 North Spring Street, #4
LA, CA 90012
www.farmlab.org

Four Infinite Bodies
This is a dance/theater improvisation workshop. We will dance and we will speak. Or some might say, we will make movements and sounds. Sometimes we will do both at the same time and we will all be working together even if it appears we are occasionally working on solos. During the whole shebang we will voraciously question what it all means and why we are doing it in the first place. These 3 winter workshops emerge from a deep consideration of the four bodies of the Buddha. In ancient Tibetan Buddhist philosophy the body of the Buddha manifests itself in four miraculous ways; impossibly abstract, mythical, "realistic," and something like… all at once. We challenge the limitlessness of our imaginations and the infinite potential of our being to transform as we take on entering these four extraordinary forms. Special attention will be placed on the personal process of forging meaning movement to movement in the present moment and the development of that meaning while the future rushes past. The goal is always to discover CLARITY, RESONANCE, FREEDOM and JOY in the artistic process. This workshop is open to art makers of all disciplines.

Mira Kingsley is dedicated to the collaborative creation of original experimental interdisciplinary works for live performance with a focus on the integration of Dance and Theater. Her choreography and directing work has been seen in LA at REDCAT (Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary, Circle Course, Remember Repeat), The 24th Street Theater (Good Night), The Bootleg (Yes is a long time), and various works at Highways. In NY at many venues including The Bam Next Wave Festival, The Kitchen, The Guggenheim Museum, Joyce Soho, and the legendary Apollo Theater among others. As a performer she has been seen on stage at venues including Broadway, Carnegie Hall, and The Metropolitan Opera. She is currently a fulltime Professor in the dance department at The University of California Santa Barbara and a fulltime student. She will premiere a new work with her Company at Highways in May 2009.

free & abundant street parking!
enter around the back of the building, through the garden, under the bridge
if you've never been to Farmlab, it can be a little confusing the first time, so here's a map:

CHIME LIVE Monday December 1

2008-11-25T06:38:00.000-08:00

Monday December 1 at 8 pm with reception to follow

Please join the 2008 CHIME artists as they share their experiences

in this program with the public. Artists will present showings
of work developed during the year, and discuss their insights into
mentorship and the program’s role in affecting choreography.

PRESENTATIONS BY:
Simone Forti & Rae Shaolan Blum,
Rosanna Gamson & Bradley Michaud,
David Roussève & Olivier Tarpaga

Free to the public.

For information,
call 310.405.9376 or e-mail chime@mjdc.org

The Moth Main Stage at the Metabolic Studio

2008-11-21T10:44:00.000-08:00

The Metabolic Studio presents
The Moth: It Takes Two to Tango

December 11 at 7:00pm bar and tacos, 8pm stories begin.

Thursday, December 11

Please join us for a night of storytelling, dance performed by casebolt and smith, and live tango music at The Metabolic Studio.

Hosted by Jonathan Ames

Featuring Stories by:
novelist Jonathan Ames, writer Brian Finkelstein, comedian Anthony Griffith, filmmaker Ellie Lee and Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez

Doors open at 7pm
Stories start on stage at 8pm

$20 tickets (which include complimentary drinks and Mexican food!) are on sale NOW at

www.smarttix.com or by calling (212) 868-4444.

Born eleven years ago in the New York living room of George Dawes Green, THE MOTH features simple, old-fashioned storytelling on thoroughly modern themes by wildly divergent raconteurs. Each show is cast with five carefully selected individuals, who have been coached to share real tales from their lives with no script and no notes. Past storytellers at THE MOTH have included Pulitzer-prize-nominated writers, a pick-pocket, fire-fighters, a professional black jack player, a voodoo priestess, and an astronaut, among many others.

Email, amshumate@hotmail.com for more info.

Oguri and Body Weather Laboratory "Body Weather" Performance

2008-11-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

Friday Nov. 7 and Saturday Nov. 8

8:00 pm

At the Metabolic Studio

Body Weather Laboratory is not a dance company.

The concept of Body Weather Laboratory:

Body Weather Laboratory participants come from different backgrounds and conduct "body" research from their unique perspective.

The workshop is not a training for the performance.

The workshop is a process of the performance, the performance is a process for the workshop.

DANCEbank November 8, 15 with Neil Greenberg

2008-11-05T17:11:00.000-08:00

November 8, 15, Neil Greenberg will be teaching at The Metabolic Studio from 11am-1:30 pm.

$12 for two-hour class

Neil Greenberg

Moved to L.A. from New York City in the fall of 2007 to join the dance faculty of UC Riverside. He has been making dances since 1979 and is known especially for his 1994 work, Not-About- AIDS-Dance, which employs his signature use of projected super-titles as an alternative text to the onstage dance action, and a door into the meanings of viewing dance. His work also reflects the influence of innovative somatic approaches to movement, such as Klein Technique, which he has studied extensively with Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein, and Body-Mind Centering, which he's studied with RoseAnne Spradlin.

Fundraising Party for new Cesar Chavez documentary, "Cesar's Last Fast"

2008-11-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 13, 7pm, at The Metabolic Studio

Norman Lear, Martin Sheen, Eric Garcetti are hosting a fundraising event to benefit upcoming documentary "Cesar's Last Fast," a film about Cesar Chavez's dramatic 36-day fast that called attention to the harmful effects pesticides were having on American's farmworkers and to shine their deplorable working and living conditions.

There is a $40 suggested donation, but no one will be turned away.

Check out the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZFvfwbvVXU

2008-10-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

October 26 Sunday 2:00-9:00

8th Annual EPFC Human Right Festival at The Metabolic Studio

Come check out The 8th Annual Human Rights Film Festival, curated by the Echo Park Film Center this Sunday!

SCHEDULE OF SCREENINGS

2:00-3:00 Joyful Life

3:00-4:30 Faubourg Treme

4:30-5:00 Light Reception- Food and Drinks

5:00-7:00 Intimidad

7:00-9:00 Gashole

The Human Rights festival is a free event, open to the general public. Seating is limited and available on a first come first serve basis so come early!

For more info check out: www.echoparkfilmcenter.org

DANCEbank all fall at The Metabolic Studio

2008-10-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Come join us for an ongoing series of classes led by some of the finest of Los Angeles' movers, dance experimenters, improvisers, interdisciplinary boundary blenders and somatic investigators.

What is DANCEbank?

The experimental dance community in Los Angeles is small but growing. DANCEbank is community-building initiative for artist to actively invest in, a space for supporting and learning from each other in our movement investigations. In an effort to combine resources and support each other in our physical practice, different artist lead class / workshops each week for members of the group and the larger dance community of Los Angeles.

$12 for 2-hour class/$15 for 2.5 hours

$30 for 3 classes with the same teacher

DANCEbank is a project of Show Box, organized by Meg Wolfe

More info at : http://www.myspace.com/dancemegwolfe

August 17, 2008 3:00-7:00 @ Farmlab + Under Spring

2008-08-05T15:04:00.000-07:00

Salsa Salsa, a celebration of Love Apples

Come join Fallen Fruit, Islands of L.A., and Farmlab in a harvest celebration from 3:00 pm-7:00 pm at Farmlab + Under Spring. Bring your homegrown or street-picked tomatoes, chiles, or anything else you put in salsa, and collaborate with your neighbors on new and delicious salsas!

FREE Salsa! Live Salsa Music! FREE Salsa Lessons!

Salsa Salsa is a celebration of public space and the culmination of the LOVE APPLES project in which 72 tomato plants were installed on 12 traffic islands in LA.

LOVE APPLES is a collaboration between the art collective Fallen Fruit (www.fallenfruit.org) and Islands of LA (www.islandsofla.org).

June 2008

2008-05-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

June 12. Thursday at 8:00 pm.
Massimilian Breeder performs Wurlitzer Repetitions
Tickets: $5.00

Born in Genova in 1978, Massimilian Breeder educated himself with the reading of the newspapers, and through the news he learned how to play a broken piano. At the moment he lives and works in New York City. (Using an old 1951 Wurlitzer Piano no longer in working conditions I play musics based on the rudiments of repetition. A cycle already occurred is ready to began again in a training exercise showing a symptom of evolution in its reiteration.

check out Massimilian here: http://www.last.fm/music/Massimilian+Breeder/?autostart=1

click image

June 26-29 Sunday - Thursday at 8:00 pm.
Dance Performance and Video Installation
performed by: Yuko Kaseki, Luigi Coppola, and Isak Immanuel

To (untitled portrait and ocean)
tickets: $20.00
*reservations recommended. please call 323-226-1158 or email: studioforsocialsculpture.ignite@gmail.com

A meeting of performance art installation, videologue, and intimate dance theatre remapping anomie, travel, and the gravity of location. The work is pieced together by an international collaboration of artists from three different countries: Yuko Kaseki (Japanese Butoh dancer and physical theatre artist based in Berlin working with cokaseki and inkBoat), Luigi Coppola (director of the Italian based performing arts company LOSS), and Isak Immanuel (interdisciplinary performance and visual artist and founder of the Floor of Sky series in San Francisco). With amplified bicycle/sound sculpture and a collage of live and recorded music by Bay Area musicians Theresa Wong, Kanoko Nishi, and Zachary Watkins. Additional guests for video performance contributing from Taiwan, Japan, Berlin, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

June 23,24 7:00-10 pm.
Butoh Dance Improvisation Workshop taught by: Yuko Kaseki
Tickets: $50 for both days

Yuko Kaseki - Yuko Kaseki lives and works as a freelance dancer, choreographer and teacher in Berlin (1995-present). From 1989 to 2001, Kaseki was the primary dancer in Anzu Furukawa’s company Dance Butter Tokio and Verwandlungsamt. Under Furukawa’s strong guidance, Kaseki developed a rich vocabulary that is rhythmic and elegant, combining elements of dance technique with music practices to create her Butoh dance. Considered Furukawa’s protégé, Kaseki carries a line of Butoh dance that is both strongly defined and unique to common perceptions of Butoh.

July 2008

2008-05-28T15:39:00.000-07:00

July 5. Saturday 3:00 pm

Steve Koplowitz: TASKFORCE

tickets: FREE

TaskForce dances under the Spring Street Bridge, at the Studio for Social Sculpture and at the neighboring Cornfield - LA's Birthplace. The LA River regularly flooded the Cornfield, nurturing the crops that grew a young city, in a kinetic exploration of the theme TaskForce's eight virtuoso dancers push the boundaries of structure and freedom as they embody Koplowitz's complex movement scores during a 45 minute triptych designed for three different sites on this historic locale.

July 26 Saturday All Day

CurrentTV- DIY Day LA [a discovery and distribution film festival]

tickets: FREE

Come join us for workshops, case studies, and panel discussions as well as a few short film screenings through out the day.

Cluster/Lucky Dragons/Mi Ami

2008-05-19T15:17:00.000-07:00

Thursday May 22/2008 doors open at 6 pm!

For more info and tickets visit, www.donutsparty.com