Choreographies for CLASS: practice + communing
Hearts at Lions Jaw Festival 2019
BAND / Portier is committed to a rigorous teaching practice that requires ongoing experimentation and care. Her approach is an expansive practice that serves varied, yet overlapping, objectives and yields varied, yet overlapping, forms. From primarily pedagogical agendas, such as specific skill-building or a semester-long course, to experiential choreographies, such as Geologic Body, Portier’s teaching practice is at the forefront of the field, transforming creative scholarship and the space between pedagogy and choreography.
Many voices have generously guided, stoked, and shaped my approach - teachers, friends, families, and students who have and continue to help me see with new perspectives. Special recognition to Kathleen Hermesdorf and Albert Mathias, whose classes exposed how the craft could bend time and ignite catharsis.
Experiential Choreographies
A meticulously crafted invocation, experiential choreography refers to the visceral imageries + dynamic swells of action, reflection, sweat, challenge, ongoingness, spirit, stillness, texture, color, imagination, conjuring, cheering, support, deep exploration, flying, and if called into, big-ass dancing. It is practice-forward; class-like but instruction is not a priority - the experience is. The choreography is the form and function - a creative apparatus for a guided yet agent, immersive embodied event that can, like art does, inspire and keep us going.
Vital Studies and Geologic Body are two of these choreographies->
Previous and ongoing
BAND/Kendra Portier has an extensive teaching roster with previous and ongoing partnerships with dance programs across the world…
… such as Gibney Dance Center (NY), Reconnect Festival (International -online), freeskewl (USA - online), New Dialect (TN), The Field Center (VT), The Wooden Floor (CA), Lions Jaw Festival (MA), University of Alabama, The Ohio State University, Ohio University, SUNY Brockport, SUNY Buffalo, Wesleyan University (CT), Zenon Dance (MN), Dance New Amsterdam (NY), Mark Morris Dance Center (NY), Peridance (NY), Broadway Dance (NY), Praxisspace (NY), James Madison University (VA), Virginia Commonwealth University, Unidancehub (Midwest consortium), ACDA - multiple locations (Seton Hill University, Western Michigan University, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, University of Maryland), Emory University (GA), Salem State University (MA), CORE Dance (GA), Dance Education Laboratory at 92Y (NY), Bates Dance Festival (ME), Connecticut College, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Barnard College (NY), Oakland University (MI), University of Nebraska, Bates College (ME), University of Utah, Hunter College (NY), Pennsylvania State University, national and international tours with David Dorfman Dance (American South, Greece, Tajikistan, Armenia, Turkey, etc.), and DSA at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC).
C L A S S (general)
In this class, we will stretch our movement capacities through guided improvisation, visceral imagery, and dynamic (+ very sweaty) phrase material. We will mobilize in and out of the floor, explore the qualitative/durational/rhythmic range(s), and challenge physical and creative endurance. Movement tends towards a weighted use of the pelvis as both anchor and piston for multidirectional action. We will dance via poetic physics with and without other bodies, and relish in the effort. We will process and cultivate our practice together.
Vital Studies
An invitation to (re)consider our/your vitality, that which is life-giving, through embodied practice. Emphasizing pleasure, curiosity, delight, challenge, and courage, this experiential choreography is designed to reach for ecstasy and revelation. Visceral imageries are knit into a maelstrom of action, music, and community. Come as you are, actively and critical engage with what keeps you going and how that may shift, transform, or need to be recalibrated towards our/your vitality.
Geologic Body
Focused on patience, time, healthy competition, and transformation, gb draws from ecological lessons to attend to how we relate to progress, togetherness, support, and connection. From what the natural world may mean - grandeur of Time, geologic mechanizations, color, rhythm - to familial ancestry, this is our kin and body - the trees, the moss, the deep ocean.