Two CI classes this week - Thursday AND Sunday!

[Jenny Sawyer]

Hey CI Philly,

Please note that due to space issues our locations and times are still changing around a bit from normal. (Apologies, we are doing our best!)

• Thursday's class will be at The Whole Shebang from 6:30-8:30pm, taught by Miryam Coppersmith. 
• Sunday's class will be at Mascher from 5-7pm, taught by Leah Stein. This class is in place of our usual jam!

See below for details.

This Week:

Thursday 2/26:  CI Class with Miryam Coppersmith, 6:30-8:30pm, The Whole Shebang Studio

• $10-25 sliding scale ($15 suggested), cash or Venmo. Pre-registration not required.
• The Whole Shebang studio is located at 1813 S 11th St, Philadelphia, PA 19148
  The entrance to the studio is in the back of the building off of the large parking lot next to a large school. 
  There is a door code, so you will need to knock/buzz and wait for the teacher to let you in. There is an entire flight of stairs up to the studio on the second floor.

Arcs of Momentum. This class will prepare us to jam by focusing on the organization of our bodies while in motion. We will warm up our three dimensional bodies, connecting to arcs of support and movement within them. Then, we will experiment with momentum in partnership, feeling the different possibilities when movement is generated by a moving partner and a stable partner, two partners moving in opposition to each other and two partners arcing with the same momentum. 

Miryam Coppersmith (she/they) is a Philadelphia-based performance-maker, writer, dancer, and educator. She encountered Contact Improvisation at Oberlin College in 2012 and has been playing and learning within the form ever since. She also loves to explore the intersections between CI and other forms she has studied including Blues dance, Lindy Hop, House dance, Contemporary dance, and Six Viewpoints. You can learn more about Miryam's work here: miryamcoppersmith.com

Sunday 3/1:  CI Body Voice Class with Leah Stein, 5-7pm, Headlong/Mascher Space

• $10-25 sliding scale ($15 suggested), cash or Venmo. Pre-registration not required.
• Studio is located at 1170 S. Broad St. Please ring the "Rear Studio" buzzer to be let into the building! 

CI body voice. This class invites us to find the vibratory qualities of the voice as 'another limb' or a central channel of the body. We will explore listening, humming and creating vocal sound while maintaining awareness and embodiment of somatic experience and pathways of CI. Building on CI basic forms and awareness of tuning into sensation, weight, momentum, the space of the body, and the room, we will explore together CI with the voice as an integrated part of the body. Leah's teaching style is gentle, welcoming and grounded in curiosity and connection.  

Leah Stein is a longtime CI practitioner, dancer, choreographer, educator and collaborator and creates collaborative site-specific performance projects including large choral dance works as well as intimate small-scale movement works. She founded Leah Stein Dance Company (LSDC)
in 2001 in Philadelphia where her site-specific dances have been performed nationally and internationally in train garages, open fields, vacant city lots, gardens, burial grounds and numerous historic sites. Leah is a 2018 Pew Fellow and received a MacDowell Fellowship in 2019 supporting her ongoing collaborations with composers, musicians and poets. Leah engaged in a yearlong research project with legendary composer Pauline Oliveros to develop Pauline’s Deep Listening practice with singers and dancers. This research is the foundation of Leah’s current teaching. She is a Deep Listening Certificate holder from the Deep Listening Institute founded by Pauline Oliveros. Her longtime collaborators include Toshi Makihara, Diane Monroe, Josey Foo, Alan Harler among others. LSDC moved into the Art Room Studio in 2017 and has focused on making the resource available through low cost rentals, a year long residency, and Studio Works, an artist-centered opportunity for local artists to experiment and explore new ideas in a supportive and intimate setting with an engaged audience. 

Other Upcoming CI Events:

• The Underscore will be hosted by Loren Groenendaal on February 28th, 1-3pm at Cardell Dance Studio. This is a very fun and rewarding focused jam which has a bit more structure than a regular jam. If you have not participated in an Underscore before it usually requires a talk through to understand the structure ahead of time. For more information and to register please contact lorengro...@gmail.com

Current Masking Policy: We are currently in communication with some covid cautious groups to offer a CI Fundamentals class once a month for those who require masking. Masked classes will require all participants to wear a mask that is KN94 grade or higher (KN95) while dancing, including the teacher. Everyone is welcome to join those classes. We will have KN94 masks available at the studio for those who need to borrow. Let us know if you want more information about these classes.

Hope to see you soon!

The CI Philly team (Jenny, Derek, Jamie, Miryam, & Liam)

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Jenny Sawyer

jroes...@gmail.com