The ALTERNATIVE CONSERVATORY of Dance & Related Forms ALTERNATIVE CONSERVATORY Alternative Conservatory exists to cultivate, enrich, and affect the form and field of dance via professional level training in 21st century motives, manifestations and relationships to other art forms. It is an immersive, intensive, international, modular and mobile training ground, and an arena for serious engagement and exchange, focused in and on the field. Alternative Conservatory works in collaboration with KUNST-STOFF arts (www.kunst-stoff.org) in San Francisco, P.O.R.C.H./Stephanie Maher (www.ponderosa-dance.de) in Germany and Delfos/Claudia Lavista & Omar Carrum (www.delfosdanza.com) in Mexico, organizing intensives ranging from 1 week to 3 months with the purpose of consolidating and expanding a sensate/kinetic/conceptual/intellectual/active way of being in art and in the world that we recognize in each other, see around the globe, and continue to articulate and create satellites for. Alternative Conservatory is based in practice, experience, interaction and exchange. The program presents a thorough and diverse training, engaging the physical body, filtering information through its systems, and training in living, expanding forms at the intersections of contemporary techniques, improvisation, performance and discourse. Thematic threads integrated by the faculty offer a depth of experience within a focused container of information. Modular and mobile, it presents opportunities to immerse in a variety of cultures and communities, as well as access to and into the field. Alternative and complementary to academia, altering and intensive in nature, and utilizing connections native to the landscapes it occupies, Alternative Conservatory is rooted in, serves, and conserves the fields of dance and related forms by collecting and disseminating unique bodies of knowledge and bodies in motion that are taking part in shaping art and culture.   =============================== SPRING PROGRAMMING more to come in April & May / more details on Alternative Conservatory page in association with KUNST-STOFF arts REGISTER at www.kunst-stoff.org =============================== FEBRUARY 15-18, 22-25 Sara Shelton Mann Movement Alchemy M-TH • 7-9:30pm $150 - Full workshop / $25 - Drop-in Intensive group process. The heart of improvisation and composition. Active imagination and skil. Cultivation - energy, present moment, relationship to forces and bodies. Performance training – presence, practice, personal direction Sara Shelton Mann’s company, Contraband, appeared on stages, in warehouses, abandoned buildings and outdoors from 1979-1996. Sara has received 4 Isadora Duncan Awards, collaborated and toured internationally with Guillermo Gomez-Pena 96-99, and was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography in 2000. Her ODC Theater 06 presentation of Télios/Telíos was awarded 1 of top 10 dance performances in San Francisco. She created “Inspirare” in 2007 and was commissioned to direct “Alarma” by Galeria de la Raza, inspired by the immigration marches. The “Inspirare Trilogy was presented by ODC Theater in spring 2008. Sara has taught, toured in the U.S., Canada and Europe since 1980. Her work is funded nationally and internally through grants, private foundations and resourceful people. She is presently a Granada Artist-in-Residence at UC Davis, and a recipient of a Gerbode Choreographers in Collaboration Award. Her next work “Tribes” created with collaborator David Szlasa will premier at YBCA, San Francisco in 2010. Sara is certified in several healing modalities and is continual student of dowsing. MARCH 1-4 & 8-11 Kathleen Hermesdorf & Maria Francesca Scaroni Emulating the experimental mind [Can we call this post-contact?] M-TH • 7-10pm $150 - Full workshop / $25 - Drop in Since its origins, Contact Improvisation’s premise was the committed sense of experimentation for its own sake rather than the intention to forge and formalize a new technical vocabulary. Looking at dance as a phenomenon, not as language and emulating this dedication, the class aims to explore movement as an infinite source for experimentation, observation and discovery: dancing (IMPROVISATION MEETS DANCE TECHNIQUE MEETS CLUB DANCING MEETS CONTACT) in and out of the physical body and its surrounding energies, FROM THE CELLULAR TO THE GLOBAL. Kathleen Hermesdorf is the Artistic Director of La ALTERNATIVA. Her style has been called luscious, sensate and mercurial. She has been a member of Bebe Miller & Company, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and Contraband, and worked in long-term collaboration with Scott Wells, Stephanie Maher and Kim Epifano. Hermesdorf has extensive and outstanding training in modern and post-modern dance modalities, release-based techniques, improvisation, contact improvisation, jazz, ballet, various martial arts and somatic investigations and holds a BFA and MFA in Dance Performance & Pedagogy. She has been dancing in the Bay Area since 1991. Maria Francesca Scaroni is a performer and dance maker from Italy, living in Berlin. After dancing in Italian TV productions, she trained independently, studying as a free lancer in Europe and the United States. Since 2004, she has been collaborating with Gravity (Berlin/San Francisco) as performer, teacher and choreographer. Since 2006, Scaroni has performed in works by San Francisco choreographer-master-dance pioneer-visionary Sara Shelton Mann. In Berlin she works as collaborator/performer/co-creator with Wilhelm Groener, Davide Camplani/Sasha Waltz and Guests, Friederike Plafki, and is engaged in installation work with the collective Bridge on a Wall (Rovisco/Hurtado). Maria is part of an improvisation-based group instigated by Meg Stuart, Jeremy Wade and Brendan Dougherty. She holds a Masters degree in Italian Modern Literature, with a focus on Media and Communication, and a thesis on education and dance. She is lately intrigued with the topics of presence, physical states, mediation and transmission. Since 2006, she has been developing The Symmetry Project with Jess Curtis, a mutable performance/installation/media project based in a symmetrical (left/right, top/bottom) and homologous movement practice, a research on the dislocation of physical investigations from a traditional dance/theatrical context into a variety of presentational contexts. APRIL 5-10 (register early) SPRING INTENSIVE • TENACITY (2)010 M-F • 10am-10pm / SAT • 1pm-1am $450 / $400 if registered & 50% paid by March 12 MOTIVES • cultivation, techniques, improvisation, contact, creating material, performance practice, creating history, salons, showing, party FACULTY • Kathleen Hermesdorf, Albert Mathias, Yannis Adoniou, Keith Hennessy ===================================== SUMMER PROGRAMMING in association with Stephanie Maher/P.O.R.C.H. REGISTER at www.ponderosa-dance.de ===================================== MAY 24-JUNE 19 (register early) Alternative Conservatory & P.O.R.C.H. Training Module Ponderosa/Stolzenhagen, Germany 4-weeks of serious, perpetual training 1500eu includes training, room & food MOTIVES • somatic body, diva body, kinetic impulse, potency & presence, techniques & improvisation, creating & destroying, reading & writing MODUS OPERANDI • working, living & eating together, exchange FACULTY • Kathleen Hermesdorf, Stephanie Maher, Peter Pleyer, Maria F. Scaroni, Vania Rovisco, Nancy Stark Smith, Mike Vargas JUNE 21-25 Ponderosa TanzLand Festival 10am-1pm • G.U.T. Techniques 9pm-12am • Strange Attractors/Multi-media guided research with Yoann Trellu ???... This is still being negotiated 200eu for both workshops http://www.kunst-stoff.orghttp://www.ponderosa-dance.dehttp://www.delfosdanza.comhttp://www.kunst-stoff.orghttp://www.ponderosa-dance.deshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4