Texas Dance Improvisation Festival

Body Shift Collective (front to back, left to right): Olivia O'Hare, Veronica DeWitt, Tanya Winters; Susie Angel, Juan Munoz, Kelly Hasandras; Dany Casey, Errin Delperdang

Hello from Olivia O'Hare, project coordinator of Body Shift! A few weeks ago a group of long time Body Shifters had the pleasure of participating, teaching, and performing at the 10th annual Texas Dance Improvisation Festival (TDIF) hosted by Texas Women's University. Thanks to Veronica DeWitt, our lead instructor, we were accepted to teach a workshop in the DanceAbility method (the videos below capture a few short moments of our workshop) as well as perform a new piece titled, Being Together, in the festival concert. A collective of eight of us (Olivia O’Hare, Juan Munoz, Susie Angel, Tanya Winters, Kelly Hasandras, Errin Delperdang, Dany Casey, and Veronica DeWitt) that included three dancers with disabilities caravanned up to Denton.

Same people, silly poses

Reflections from Tanya Winters:

"Any disability advocate will tell you change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes the strength of many to blaze a trail toward full inclusion and equality. That’s why I am so proud to be a part of Body Shift. Together we danced our way into the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival and created a path that will make it easier not only for dancers (people) with disabilities but anyone who wants to explore the world of movement.

"Every time I dance I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself. I get so excited when I see all the different bodies moving together. Whether it’s in a class or in the community, the advocate in me says you are making a difference. But, performing at a festival like TDIF, on a traditional stage, in front of a captive audience, makes me feel like I am breaking down walls; really challenging people’s perceptions of who a dancer is. I not only feel included, I feel a sense of equality. That’s what real change is made of."

We arrived Friday night just in time for the evening dance jam. It was clear pretty quickly that the community of able-bodied dancers was welcoming but not quite sure how to approach the dancers with disabilities. The next day we taught our workshop as a collective with Veronica and I as the lead instructors with strong support from the rest of the group taking turns demonstrating and leading the exercises. Teaching together felt easy and without ego interference. We taught an introduction to the DanceAbility method with an emphasis on relationship and consent (i.e., saying yes or no through touch). The students were so concentrated that they improvised for two hours without music.

Their movements were generated by sensation (from the inside out), deep listening with their whole body and non-verbal communication. In our closing circle many students commented that they felt liberated to move in new ways and had a new depth of understanding about how to stay connected while improvising even when not in physical contact.

That night we performed as part of the larger concert on a traditional proscenium stage. Our piece Being Together is a structured improvisation that we are developing for future performance opportunities. After the show we went to our second jam. This time the community embraced the dancers with disabilities fully and without hesitation. The shift was profound and left us all feeling grateful for the experience and like we had made a positive impact.

Reflections from Susie Angel:

"About 40 years ago, as a small child, my dream was to be a ballerina even though I couldn't walk. Nobody could tell me otherwise, but when I became a teenager, I came to accept that I had a disability and society wasn't ready to have dancers with disabilities.

"Fast forward 30 years to 2008. That's when Body Shift, a fully inclusive dance group for people with and without disabilities, started. I was part of the group from day one. At first, we only had workshops to teach us the different elements of dance and choreography. Once a core group of us became skilled as dancers, we started doing performances throughout the community in Austin, TX in public places where people could just stop and watch us. Some of us even became certified in DanceAbility, the method of teaching dance to people of all abilities and levels.

"Although I was content with this, I didn't realize that there was still another level I could take. A couple weeks ago I got to travel with seven other Body Shifters to teach and perform at the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival on the Texas Women's University campus in Denton. This was a totally different experience for me. The people we taught and jammed with were mostly all strangers and we performed on stage in front of a captive audience. We went for the 2nd night and the whole 3rd day of the festival. When we arrived, it was in the middle of the jam. For me, it was uncomfortable because I felt like the other dancers were protective of me and afraid to let me give and take weight from them. In other words, they weren't challenging me as a dancer.

"The second day, we taught in the morning, performed in the evening, and went to our second night jam. By the time we got to the jam, I had a much better experience. People were coming up to me and actually dancing with me. In fact, there was a time when I was dancing with a guy that we had in our class that morning. We were creating dance moves like I'm more used to. We were using counterbalancing: he was leaning on me and my wheelchair, counting on me to pull him up from the floor, flipping over my back, and using my wheelchair to do a handstand.

"I left the festival wanting more."

Body Shift: Dance and Social Justice

Body Shift project coordinator, Olivia O’Hare here to share some thoughts regarding our upcoming annual intensive, Patterns of Disruption with Sandra Paola, which will take place June 2-3, 2018. Paola’s focus lies at the intersection of dance and social justice/access/inclusion/diversity. This got me thinking about what social justice means within the context of Body Shift and DanceAbility. Though we do not openly state a political agenda, I do believe that the personal is political. Dance improvisation is extremely personal. Because the dancer generates their own movements and responds by intuition as well as conscious choice making, their personality, habits and desires show up immediately. In general, we do not openly discuss the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within our society that have shaped our bodies and the ways we have been taught are ‘appropriate’ for personal expression. Instead we focus on movement quality, body awareness, and relationship in real time with our dance partner(s). But what if we take some time to work using community-centered inquiry and turn research into movement?

Photo from Crippin' the Streets – DanceAbility Urban Intervention, Fusebox 2014

We might ask the following questions: How do Idealogical ‘Movements’ (i.e., Civil Rights Movement, Disability Rights Movement) affect our culture? How can our own ‘movements’ (physicality of/in ones body) affect our culture or be affected by our culture? By using the universal language of movement we can generate conversations and create art around social justice issues in our communities – ultimately movement initiating ‘Movements.’

It was a purposeful choice made by the Body Shift organizers to focus on dance improvisation, and more specifically the DanceAbility method, rather than styles of dance that emphasize learning steps or predetermined choreography. This is not to downgrade moving together through set choreography as repeating and refining movements can be very powerful. Rather it was a question of inclusivity. The flexibility allowed by improvisation more easily creates an environment that is non-isolating. By starting with improv, participants are given the opportunity to learn the language of their own body and discover their own unique ways of moving. Then participants themselves may be guided to choreograph from their own self-generated movements. (Video below shows more highlights from Crippin' the Streets – DanceAbility Urban Intervention, Fusebox 2014)

To improvise is to make choices in the moment. As Alito Alessi, founder of the DanceAbility method, says, “Always know what you are doing and what else is happening.” This seems very direct and simple but it is actually a skill that must be refined over time – the ability to sense and stay connected to your self while also opening your awareness to the choices that other people are making around you and how your environment shapes your choices moment to moment. By dancing together with people who have unique mental and physical characteristics that may be outside the established norms we are able to open ourselves to new ways of moving and thinking and go beyond habitual ways of being.

Sandra Paola

An excerpt from Sandra Paola’s website:

“I believe that learning about our body through our relationships with others in ensemble improvisation and social dance is an extraordinary way to achieve this and I seek to create spaces and environments where this can be possible. Acknowledging our body (and its relationship to others and the environment) is not something we are often taught. It is something that we have to seek out, or what is more often the case, something we never get to do. Recognizing ourselves in our body fosters a new understanding of who we are and how we relate to the world. This understanding allows love and compassion to flourish and deep transformation happens.

“…My dancemaking is community-driven and community-integrated and it tackles issues of identity and power. I am committed to creating access to experimental dance and improvisation in spaces where it is usually absent and to share its developmental power with the public. I use culture to organize community and organize community to create culture. 

“My work is political by nature; improvisation is playful resistance.”

I hope you will join Sandra Paola and the Body Shift crew for a weekend of dancing and inquiry into education and community organizing that relates to people as social creators of their lives. We will meet all day Saturday, and Sunday will be a continuation of Saturday's work but open to newcomers and will culminate in a jam. Click here to register for Patterns of Disruption with Sandra Paola.

Getting in Touch with Body Shift

Hello, friends! Body Shift project coordinator Olivia here to share a little about our recent class happenings. The February Body Shift: Elements class was taught by guest instructor, Brandon Gonzalez. Brandon and I have danced together and in similar circles for nearly 20 years now. We both have a deep appreciation and natural inclination toward dancing from the inside out. Brandon has traveled the world studying, practicing, teaching, and performing as an improviser. And, in an effort to offer varied perspectives on somatics and movement training, I invited him to share some of his extensive body knowledge with our Body Shifters.

Brandon called his two-part class “Touching Form.” His description of the focus of the class was as follows: What is the feeling of our contact? How is our dialogue resonating and taking shape? Inspired by elements from contact improvisation we’ll find pathways that bridge our sensory perceptions to the dances we create. Flexing our muscles of attention, we’ll investigate how we move and imagine together. Let’s discover new ways of being “in touch.”

Brandon called on Nita Little’s work with ‘attention’ for his first class. There was no literal physical contact. Instead we started with noticing the sensations generated from our own attention and internal awareness. We then layered on giving attention to a partner and noticing how we attend to ourselves as well as how our partner was attending to us and so on. By the end of the class there was a palpable connection – a sort of ‘touch’ – through the negative space between people. For his second class, Brandon focused our awareness on the fascia, or connective tissue, that wraps throughout, supports, and gives the literal shape to our bodies. We began with a solo of reaching and finding the fullest range of our joints, bouncing, and dragging our hands across our own bodies to experience the elastic quality of the fascia. We then worked with various partners in the same way but this time exploring the sliding and gliding of our partners' tissues. This developed into a more free form contact duet that drew attention to the reciprocal relationship of our individual nervous systems through the webbing of the connective tissue. The initial awkwardness of coming in contact with someone you may not know very well was mitigated by setting the focus on the anatomical structure of the body. Regardless of spasticity, rigidity, or other perceived limitations, everyone in the group was able to participate equally and in their own way.

With all that said…touch can be controversial. How we are led into physical contact can stir up different emotional and physical responses based on each person’s past relationship with touch. Some people may be touched a lot when getting assistance with their morning routine, eating, transferring, being exercised…all moments that are potentially quite intimate and yet are often executed in a more clinical or impersonal way. Some people may have a negative association with touch because of past abuse. Perhaps someone might have a particularly sensitive nervous system that gets overstimulated by certain kinds of touch or maybe they have medical concerns around germs that could have a very real impact on their immune system.

And, yet, touch can also be calming and playful. It can be intimate and personal without being sexual. It can be a powerful tool for getting to know yourself and other people on a deeper or maybe just different level than we experience in talking. In the DanceAbility method we work a lot with the idea of dance as a non-verbal conversation. Instead of learning steps or pre-determined choreography, the dancers generate movements in response to sensations they have inside their own body as well as information that they get from communicating non-verbally with their partner(s). Because of all the reasons people may be intimidated by touch I sometimes shy away from teaching contact work in a mixed-ability/mixed-level class and choose to work in relationship through space. That said, it can be limiting and isolating to avoid touch. Many of us rely heavily on our eyes to navigate through our interactions with people and the environment. For people who are visually impaired or blind, to ‘see’ is to sense with their whole body and allowing for touch allows for more information to be shared between partners. When someone is non-mobile or has limited mobility, touch can give access to traveling through space without being forced or manipulated or simply pushed around. Essentially touch is the most fundamental way we can connect with everyone regardless of their unique physical or mental characteristics and ensure that no one is isolated.

The video below shares a moment from the free dance portion of a recent Elements class:

During the closing circle of Brandon’s second class the participants expressed a sense of calm, joyfulness, and gratitude at being given the space to explore the systems of the body experientially and the deep listening that accompanies such exploration. I immediately thought of a quotation from bodyworker Deane Juhan, “We can never touch just one thing; we always touch two things at the same instant, an object and ourselves, and it is in the simultaneous interplay between these two contiguities that the internal sense of self—different from both the collection of body parts and the collection of external objects—is encountered...my tactile surface is not only the interface between my body and the world, it is the interface between my thought processes and my physical existence as well. By rubbing up against the world, I define myself to myself.”

I hope that you all will come and dance with us in the Elements class next month. I will be teaching on March 10th and will host our spring dance jam on March 24th. Please feel free to email me with questions. And if you are new to dance or new to dance improvisation/somatics, you are welcome to join us as an observer before diving in.

Elements class takes place every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month from 2:30-4:30pm at the Town Lake YMCA in the large group exercise room on the first floor. No gym membership is required to attend. Open to adults age 16 and up; all abilities and experience levels. No registration necessary and fee for class is on a sliding scale from $5-$20, cash or check accepted. See you at the Y!

Get Moving in the New Year with Body Shift!

Hey there! Body Shift project coordinator, Olivia O’Hare here to share what’s to come in 2018.

After a heavy emphasis on performance and advancing the skills of long term participants in 2017, the Body Shift team has agreed that it is time to focus inward in the New Year. We plan to cultivate space for folks who are new to dance as well as dancers/teachers who hope to learn how to make their own classes more inclusive. Have you ever been curious about dance but thought to yourself, “I have too many limitations to dance,” or “I’m too shy/awkward/uncoordinated to dance”? Have you been thinking that you want to get moving and find a fun way to exercise but don’t feel comfortable in traditional exercise classes? Or - Are you a dance/movement teacher or choreographer interested in making your work more inclusive of people of all abilities? Are you curious about the current redefinition of dance and the potential diversity of the dancing body?

With this in mind, the January Elements classes will be geared towards welcoming true beginners and offering exercises that could be added to any teacher's toolbox to make dance accessible to all people.  We have an awesome mixed-ability teaching team on the roster - Veronica DeWitt and Juan Munoz - who have been cooking up some lesson plans that explore the fundamentals of the DanceAbility method. DanceAbility is based in improvisation and meant to be practiced by people of multiple abilities and skill levels dancing together. Rather than imitating prescribed moves, you can be a beginner and learn tools to create your own dance and move in ways that feel good to your body. You can be a professional dancer and be challenged to move in new and unique ways outside of your habitual patterns. Practicing the DanceAbility method provides an outlet for creative expression through movement, develops body awareness, and explores non-verbal communication. It also gets you bending and stretching and sweating - basically, it tricks you into exercising with tasks that allow you to move at your own pace and have fun!

Juan Munoz and others dance in the mixed-ability Elements class.

Besides continuing to practice DanceAbility, we will also have guest artists teaching other forms of movement improvisation in the Elements class. In 2017, Lauren Tietz offered a series of classes in Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores. We hope to have her back later this year for more Tuning Scores and you can look forward to learning some new skills from our February guest artist, Brandon Gonzales. All the guests we invite to teach the Elements class have experience teaching in a mixed-ability setting and/or have spent time prepping with one of our lead instructors to ensure that we do our best to offer an environment in which no one feels isolated.

Last year, in addition to our twice monthly Elements class, we began holding dance jams every season. This gave our long time participants as well as more experienced movers from the theatre and dance community a space to practice their skills. The jams were so well-attended that we will continue to have seasonal jams this year.

Also, we are excited to announce that we will be looking for a venue to have an accessible dance party with plenty of space to roll, stroll, and boogie without restriction to fun music! Let us know if you have suggestions for a cool club, hall, or studio that is fully accessible and centrally located.

Body Shift dancers, some in wheelchairs and others standing, move about a spacious room in Elements. 

Come shift your perspective with us this year! If you are intimidated or unsure what to expect from taking class I encourage you to come observe. If two hours seems like too long for your stamina level, join us for the first half of class. We are happy to make accommodations in order to make class friendly to a diverse range of needs.

The Elements class takes place every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month from 2:30-4:30pm at the Townlake YMCA in the first floor group exercise studio (1100West Cesar Chavez St). No gym membership is required to attend. Open to adults age 16 and up; all ability and experience levels. No registration necessary, and the fee for class is on a sliding scale from $5-$20, cash or check accepted.

Let’s dance!

Body Shift Elements Teacher Profile: Lauren Tietz and Tuning Scores

Originally written and posted October 10, 2017 by Olivia O'Hare on the Body Shift blog. Reposted with permission. Photos courtesy of Amber Ortega.

In order to enhance our practice of moving together this month we have invited guest artist, Lauren Tietz, to our Elements class to teach movement from a somewhat different perspective. She will offer an exploration of Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores which, similar to the DanceAbility method, uses more open directives to allow freedom to move in ways that feel good to your body no matter what your abilities or experience level are.

Tuning Scores are a fascinating mosaic of movement and performance discoveries originated by Lisa Nelson. Tuning Scores reveal the basic elements of action, by attuning to the rich details of composition, behavior, and communication, altogether. The games are a multisensorial and kaleidoscopic set of practices that are wildly fun to do. Through the specificity of solo movement warm ups, group dancing, and verbal cues, tuning lays out an approach for performance research that can change how you make, perceive, and do in any creative medium.

Tuning Scores are an intriguing way to investigate fundamental elements of performance, movement behavior, and communication, altogether. The explorations illuminate how we compose perception through action; in other words, we learn how what we see is inextricably linked to how we see, through our multisensorial layers of observation. In “tuning,” we practice together, using both movement and verbal calls. Through these, we communicate our desires, our imagination, and our memory, in a shared image space. And with this material, we compose live art, together.

Margit Galanter and Lauren Tietz during Margit’s 2017 Tuning Scores workshop

Lauren is delighted by the poetics of the everyday- holding hands in public, the color of beet borscht, the dull circular sound of feet against a dry limestone creek bed. She is intrigued with the experience of small, daily things and the cumulative impressions they make on the human body over time. Her work seeks to expose, through movement, sound and image, a certain immediacy of vulnerability and intimacy.

Lauren is a dancer, somatic movement educator, craniosacral therapist, Pilates instructor and filmmaker based in Austin. As an artist and healing arts practitioner she loves to uncover the intelligence of the body, its nuance, poetry and wise council. She savors this relationship of body to language, inner to outer. She believes the body’s expression of movement is our birthright and it is with delight that she shares this work with people of all ages, backgrounds or experience level.

Photo taken during Margit Galenter’s 2017 Tuning Scores workshop

So be sure to join us for this month's special edition of our bimonthly Elements class every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month (this month it will be October 14th and 28th) from 2:30-4:30pm at Town Lake YMCA in the large group exercise room on the first floor.

No gym membership is required to attend. Open to adults age 16 and up; all abilities and experience levels. No registration necessary and fee for class is on a sliding scale from $5-$20, cash or check accepted. See you at the Y!

Body Shift: The Element of Design

Hello, friends! This is Olivia, project coordinator for Body Shift, VSA Texas’ acclaimed mixed-ability dance project. Every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month Body Shift offers a class we call Elements in which we practice improvisational dance in an inclusive way by using the DanceAbility method. In DanceAbility, we work with four basic principles that are the building blocks of choreography. These include sensation, relationship, time, and design. Oftentimes we will choose one of these principles to narrow the focus in order to increase the students' understanding and awareness of how to make use of these elements.

In the July Elements class Kelly Hasandras and I chose to focus on “design.” Oftentimes when people hear the words improv dance they think that means the dancers will make random movements with little or no pre-determined structure. This is rarely the case. In fact, improvisation is a technique that when practiced regularly and with certain principles in mind has the potential to create quite organized compositions in the moment. One way that improv dance can take on a choreographed appearance is to be aware of designing the space using elements that include placement/proximity, levels, patterns, repetition, imitation, unison movement, development, contrast, physical contact, beginnings and endings, entrances and exits, etc.

When you combine body awareness, non-verbal relationships between dancers, use of varied timing (fast, slow, stillness), design naturally occurs. How you move and where you move in relationship to others and the space around you can be determined by your intuition and imagination. Improvisers shift between a more intuitive, preconscious choice making and conscious choice making. An example of this – I might notice that other people in my group are moving very slowly. My intuition might draw me to join in moving slowly with them. My conscious mind might suggest that I contrast what they are doing by moving fast, whatever fast means to me. One is not a better choice than the other. You should be able to make both choices and weave them together. Alito Alessi suggests, “As an improviser you can think of the whole space as a soup that you are helping to cook. Taste the overall flavor and let your senses tell you what spice it needs.”

This is one of the ways that the DanceAbility method makes dance friendly to people of all physical and cognitive abilities. Participants who are more advanced theatre and dance performers can challenge themselves to see and sense what everyone around them is doing and make choices to place themselves in ways that make a satisfying stage picture. Folks who have little or no experience can challenge themselves to move in ways that feel good to their body and ways that relate to their own sensations or the people around them. One does not have to be cognizant of what their movements look like to an audience to have a dance that is both satisfying to do and to watch. Ultimately the deeper one’s concentration and perception of what is happening internally and externally, the more compelling the experience both inside and out.

Here is an example of spontaneous design from the recent Body Shift performance of Nexus outside Ballet Austin during the Austin Dance Festival. You can see the dancers using their awareness of levels (high/medium/low), facing (giving or taking focus by looking in a specific direction), shape (what is the line/placement of your body), and space (how are you placed in relationship to the other dancers) to create an interesting stage picture.

I hope you will join us for this month's Elements class which will be taught by Michael Joplin and takes place August 12 and 26 from 2:30-4:30pm at Townlake YMCA. No membership is required and adults of all abilities age 16 and up are encouraged to attend. Cost is pay-what-you-can on a sliding scale of $5-$20. Remember if you are new to dance but feel intimidated by jumping right in you are welcome to observe class and chat with the dancers about their experience before or after class.

Body Shift: What is a Dance Jam?

Hello, friends! Olivia O’Hare here to let you in on what to expect when attending a dance jam.

A jam session is a relatively informal event where dancers improvise solos, duets, and group dances similar to the way a group of jazz musicians might vamp on tunes, songs, and chord progressions. To "jam" is to improvise dance without extensive preparation or predetermined choreography. The Body Shift jam will be a two-hour event in which folks that have experience with improvisation come together to practice without formal instruction. There will be an opening and closing circle to share our experiences. I will offer a guided warm-up to lead us into open dancing. Some experience with theatre and/or dance improvisation is best but not required. You are welcome to observe if you are new to dancing or take part and learn from the collective knowledge of the more experienced participants.

In the on-going Elements class we generally start with a guided warm-up. We then move through a series of DanceAbility exercises that include various groupings (i.e., solo, duets, trios, small group, or whole group) and follow a theme for the day. The theme for the day may be an exploration of sensation – how can you become more aware of feeling your body as it moves?; relationship – how can you communicate with a partner without words?; time – how can you vary the speed with which you move (fast or slow) to break habitual patterns?; or design – how can you be aware of what you’re doing and what else is happening around you in order to make informed choices about the shapes you are making or where you are placing yourself in relationship to others to create a landscape or stage picture?

For those of us who have formally practiced these principles for some time, it is fun to have a day where we get to move freely with the knowledge we have gained from our previous experience dancing together. In a dance jam, people of varied abilities and skill levels are given the opportunity to play. It is meant to be a social dance. Except instead of dancing to pop music like you might at a club, we often dance in silence. This opens up the space for even more possibilities and unique ways of moving that might not otherwise happen when dictated by the lyrics or beat of a song. Instead, the rhythm comes from the sensation of our bodies breathing or from the speed at which we choose to move. We dance based on our own desire to creatively express ourselves and move in ways that feel good rather than follow prescribed movements. That is not to say, however, that there is no structure. The DanceAbility principles are essentially a succinct way of discovering choreography in the moment that makes it possible to dance in an organized way without music or direct instruction. You might think it would look like chaos. Instead, what you see is a series of lovely movement conversations taking place. People’s personalities shine through and narratives develop. People are surprised as they discover new ways of moving and being moved based on the alchemy of the group and the partners they choose to dance with. In a jam, you are welcome to come and go as you please. You can take breaks to watch or rest and move in and out of the space fluidly.

For a little more insight please read the following excerpt from the article “New Worlds Opening: A Participant's View of DanceAbility and Contact Improvisation” by Bjo Ashwill:

“DanceAbility is feeling the word ‘yes.’ It is options. It is opening new thoughts and new behaviors. It is intimate. I’ve just named some of the most difficult and frightening adventures humans can face. Opening up, being vulnerable, taking risks, making changes. These same things are also the pathway to great joy, freedom and personal growth…

“We forget. We learn how to do something and it is successful so we repeat it. It becomes habit, the preferred option. We forget we have other options. Our thoughts work the same way. There is only one way to ‘break the habit.’ Do something different…

“Walk in another person’s shoes. Roll in another person’s wheelchair. Dance to the rhythm of other people’s breathing. New worlds open up to you. Freedom breathes deeply. Excitement pours into your body and you dance life more freely…

“We forget. In our rush to do all we must in our lives, we forget the dance. The joy and beauty of being in attunement with self and others, without judgment, without our critical thinking machine limiting and narrowing our experiences.

“The DanceAbility workshop acts as a clarion call to that part of us, deep inside, that hasn’t forgotten and hungers for the balance, the contact, the creativity and the mutual responding. We come out of the woodwork, fearful, shy, rigid, creaky, walking, rolling, limping, skipping, temporarily able-bodied people, people with disabilities, and every mix in between. We come, to lean against the wall, arms folded across our shallow breathing chests, to be convinced that this is something we can do. Something we did without thinking as babies. Something other people and ourselves couldn’t believe we could do.

“We come with our sneakers, our canes, our wheelchairs, our two left feet, our bodies we see as too short, too tall, too fat, too skinny, too ‘something’ and we danced. By God, every sub-atomic particle of us danced in ways we could not have believed if someone had told us about it.”

Juan Munoz and Dany Casey during the 2015 DanceAbility teacher certification course here in Austin (photo courtesy of Zach Khoo)

Is Art Really a Waste of Money?

Way back in 1965, the United States Congress decided that there should be a federal, independent agency whose “funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities.” This is how the National Endowment for the Arts came to be. There is a reason VSA Texas and the National Endowment for the Arts work so well together; through our missions, we strive to make art an important part of life that reaches across all lines. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about defunding one of the only federal agencies I like, and it’s just not something I can understand. Is art really a waste of money?

For the last ten years, the NEA has funded some of our most groundbreaking work. Our first grant from them allowed us to put together a strategic plan that paved the way for us to bring Accessible Arts, an art therapy program, into schools. This was the first validation of the quality of work we were doing.

Photo of cast and crew from “Daze of Our Lives,” onstage after a 2008 performance at the LBJ Performing Arts Center

This led to another year that allowed us to hire a choreographer and director for our Actual Lives Company. Up to that point, we were mostly doing stretching and movement on stage. Now, we were able to bring in a dance element, and from this, we created our program Body Shift.

“I continue to be amazed at the transformative impact Celia Hughes and VSA Texas have had on the central Texas dance community. What started as a few annual classes has grown into a dance community comprised of people of all abilities, and this supportive Body Shift community could not have existed without the efforts of Celia and her team. I’m humbled by their endless work towards increasing access to the arts for all people, and I’m proud to partner with them for another season of Body Shift.” - Allison Orr, Artistic Director, Forklift Danceworks

The next year, with the success of the previous two grants, we were able to bring in Alito Alessi, founder of Danceability International, to do a 10-day teacher orientation and workshop to introduce his method to our Body Shift Mixed Ability Dance Community. From that, we were then able to raise our own funds to bring him back for a month to train twenty-eight teachers from all over the United States and Mexico. We are very proud to be the first city in the US to host this full-on Danceability Teacher Certification training program in ten years!

Three women in blue t-shirts engage in dance with a woman in a pink shirt in a wheelchair and a man in a red shirt, who is also in a wheelchair.

This year, we are bringing in StopGap Dance Company, a premier mixed ability dance company out of the United Kingdom. They will be devising a new site-specific performance with dancers from the Body Shift community to be seen in Austin in early August 2017.

I’m telling you all of this because through four small grants, the NEA has provided the VSA Texas family with some of the most valuable programs we run and they have directly been responsible for the improvement of well over 5,000 lives. VSA Texas is proof that you don’t have to have a lot of money to make a HUGE impact, not to mention a pretty solid return on investment, considering how much we were able to do with around $10,000 per grant.

We need to change the rhetoric that the arts are a dispensable commodity, rather than a crucial part of the very fabric our humanity is built upon. If you don’t want to see the arts go away in your lifetime, then say something about it. Make your voice heard. Support a local arts organization, buy from a local artist, employ artists and pay them what they’re worth. We can’t control national funding, but we can support people in our own backyards. It’s time to get creative.

Body Shift: Year in Review and February Elements Teacher Profiles

Hello, friends! Olivia O'Hare, Body Shift Project Coordinator, speaking to you from the VSA Texas offices. 2016 was an amazing year for the development and expansion of Body Shift's programming. We began offering the Elements class twice a month, got the choreography lab under way, and had a variety of performances around town as well as guest artist Heidi Latsky's movement installation, On Display, in honor of the International Day of People with Disabilities. There is no sign of things slowing down in 2017! In additon to our on-going classes we are happy to share that Nina Martin will return to work with us in March and April. We will also be hosting StopGap Dance Company from England for a two week residency in the end of July! For more information and updates about the calendar of events, please check out our new and improved Body Shift website here.

One of the things we hope for in the new year is that you will consider coming to dance with us in our all level, all abilities dance improvisation class Elements in which we practice the DanceAbility method (click here for more information about our Elements class). Classes have grown since this time last year but we still have plenty of room for more of you all to join us. No dance experience, no problem. Professional dancer? I encourage you to join us as well. The cool thing about the DanceAbility method is that the more diverse the group, the more effective and enriching the experience is for everyone involved. We hope for a broad spectrum of abilities and backgrounds to come together to dance and have fun. Instead of imitating prescribed movements, improvisation offers the opportunity to discover the full potential of your body, as you are.

Since Body Shift hosted the month long, 150 hour DanceAbility teacher certification course back in 2015, we now have an awesome team of instructors in rotation to teach the Elements class. Included below is a little more info about the folks who will be co-teaching on February 11th and 25th – save those dates 'cause Errin and Dany always teach an awesome class!

Errin, Andy (Townlake YMCA employee) and Dany together after the Body Shift informance at the YMCA Abilities Expo

Teacher Profile – Errin Delperdang

Errin always knew she wanted to dance and, at the age of 5, she finally convinced her parents to sign her up for classes. She studied and performed ballet, tap and jazz throughout her childhood and teenage years and decided to pursue dance at the collegiate level after high school. In 2003 Errin graduated from UT with a BFA in dance. After school she moved to New York and worked with many inspiring dancers, choreographers, musicians and artists. Errin returned to Austin in 2009 and began making work. Her choreography has been produced by Fusebox Festival, Ready Set Go!, Co-lab, Dance Umbrella and others. In addition to her artistic endeavors, Errin began taking classes taught by DanceAbility trained teachers Olivia O’Hare and Silva Laukkanen. She became interested in the improvisational techniques and the unique movement generated in these classes so when the opportunity to become certified in the DanceAbility method arose, she signed up and became a teacher herself.

Learning the DanceAbility method and dancing with Body Shift consistently opens up new possibilities for movement that Errin didn’t know existed. The experience of dancing with a diverse group of movers is empowering and educational. Errin is constantly amazed by the ability of dance to connect people with one another in a unique and meaningful way. Errin also teaches Pilates and is fascinated by human movement potential in many applications. Body Shift is different in that there is no prescribed or codified movement, as there is with Pilates and most other forms of dance. There are no steps to learn or a “correct” form. All movement is appreciated and included, allowing for creativity to be the guiding principle.

The next endeavor for Errin is to become a physical therapist. In June she starts the physical therapy doctoral program at Texas State University. Her goal is to bring the benefits of improvisational movement to a physical therapy practice in the hopes of helping people achieve their full movement potential. When she isn’t dancing, teaching or studying, Errin loves to see live performance, take her dog on greenbelt hikes and go camping when she can get away.

Tanya Winters, Errin and Dany in rehearsal for last summer's Body Shift performance directed by Olivia O'Hare, "Your Way of Thinking"

Teacher Profile – Dany Casey

Dany Casey loves to dance. She earned her B.A. in Dance from the New School University (NYC) and bounced around the country before landing here in Austin. After starting a job at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI), she became wildly interested in accessibility and the unique perspectives and experiences gained by a diverse and inclusive population. By chance, a few months after starting that job, a DanceAbility teacher training came to Austin. It was the perfect marriage of movement, inclusion, collaboration, creativity, and teaching. Dany loves to persistently explore new possibilities with others, which is a cornerstone in the DanceAbility method. She has found that through working in groups where there is sensory diversity, one can open doors of perception that would otherwise be invisible.

In addition to working at TSBVI and working with Body Shift, Dany is also pursuing her Sign Language Interpreter Certification through Austin Community College (ACC). It is another lens through which to approach accessibility, and she has immensely enjoyed interacting in the Deaf Community (which is totally CHAMP here in Austin!). She has a particular interest in working with the Deaf-Blind community.

When she is not being delighted by her students or signing in an interpreting class, you might find her tending to her army of plants or throwing a stick for her pup. She looks forward to dancing with you!

Dany, Errin and Susie Angel performing in last summer's Body Shift performance directed by Olivia O'Hare, "Your Way of Thinking"

If you are new to dance or perhaps have always loved to dance but are interested in a new way of moving, the Elements class is for you. Come shift your perspective! Every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month at the Townlake YMCA in Austin from 2:30-4:30 PM. Cost is on a sliding scale of $5-$20 and no membership to the Y is required.

Body Shift: The Element of Time

Hello, friends!  This is Olivia, project coordinator for Body Shift, VSA Texas’ and Forklift Danceworks' acclaimed mixed-ability dance project.  Every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month Body Shift offers a class we call Elements in which we practice improvisational dance in an inclusive way by using the DanceAbility method.  You can find a general overview of what to expect from Elements in my blog post from April 28, 2016 here.  In DanceAbility, we work with four basic principles that are the building blocks of choreography.  These include sensation, relationship, time and design.  Oftentimes we will choose one of these principles to narrow the focus in order to increase the students' understanding and awareness of how to make use of these elements.

In class last Saturday, after working to develop our awareness of moving from internal sensation and how to be in relationship to a partner, I led the group through an exploration of time.  Time is relative to the person and the pace that is reasonable for their body.  You can do a quick improv wherever you are as you read this… Choose one body part and begin moving it in whatever way feels good to you.  Notice the sensation that is generated from that movement.  Continue with the same basic moves but now try doing them fast (whatever fast means to you).  Then try doing them slow (whatever slow means to you).  Try going back and forth between fast and slow while moving a different body part or your whole body and add in the option to be still whenever you choose.  As you are moving, continue to see if you can stay aware of what it feels like as you move.  Staying in tune with sensation when moving fast is a more advanced skill and takes practice.  Continue moving fast, slow and being still and now add in the awareness of duration.  How long do you choose to move fast?  Slow?  Be still?  Notice if you fall into a pattern of doing the same speed for the same length of time and challenge yourself to mix things up – sometimes longer stillness; sometimes moving short and quick or long and sustained, etc.  After practicing with time as a solo, you can also work with a partner or in groups.

Last Saturday we went from working with fast, slow and stillness in duets to quartets to the whole group into an open improvisation at the end of class.  Below are two short clips from our exploration in pairs.  Notice the diverse range of choices people are making about what fast, slow, and still means.  Also notice how long they choose to stay with each as well as the way they are affected by their partner.  Sometimes one might choose to follow their partner's pacing or they may choose to contrast.

“In improvising, when you move, and how quickly or slowly, can be just as important as what you are doing… The goal is to control time rather than be controlled by your habitual sense of timing… Spontaneity is not always the best choice.  Making the same movement but choosing to do it at a different time or doing it faster or slower can change the movement and its relation to the rest of the improvisation. ” (Alito Alessi, founder of  DanceAbility International and Joint Forces Dance Company, www.danceability.com)

Below are short clips of each of the quartets from last class practicing Fast, Slow and Still:

Hope to see you in class August 13th!  Elements takes place every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month at the Townlake YMCA in Austin from 2:30-4:30pm.  Like Body Shift on Facebook and visit our website for more details: www.bodyshift.org.

Body Shift: Elements

Hello, friends!  This is Olivia, project coordinator for Body Shift, VSA Texas’ and Forklift Danceworks acclaimed mixed-ability dance project.  Since Body Shift began six years ago, it has morphed from a three day intensive once a year to an on-going project that now offers intensives with guest artists that are leaders in the field of mixed-ability dance, performance workshops, a monthly choreography lab and a class we call Elements that takes place twice a month.  Today I want to share more specifics about the Elements class.  What the heck do we mean when we say Elements?  We call it that because we use the DanceAbility method of integrated dance to study the building blocks of what make a dance.  We practice movement improvisation using verbal cueing and physical demonstration to develop body awareness, experience collaboration, and make choices about how, when, and where to move in an effort to design the space.

At the most fundamental, dance is when you move your body in ways that extend beyond your daily movement patterns.  It also includes moments when you feel your body as it moves.  This is called sensation.  So often nowadays because of technology we lose track of sensing our bodies and get stuck in habitual ways of moving with unnecessary amounts of tension.  In improvisation we begin with a warm-up that consists of attending to the sensation of your body breathing and noticing what it feels like to move in different ways.  With guidance from the teacher, you get to choose what feels good to your body and move in ways that help to focus your mind and stretch and enliven your senses.  This is one aspect that makes Elements different than other dance classes – rather than imitating set choreography you get to use interpretation to move in ways that are unique to you.  Not only is this great for relieving stress as well as physical and mental tension it can also be fun and empowering.

A moment of open dancing toward the end of class. Feeling it!

After taking time to solo with our own sensations, we then practice exercises that help us learn how to build relationships with other people while dancing.  Often we will do the same exercise with multiple partners to experience how different the dance becomes each time due to each person’s individual personality.  One basic exercise we do is called “one action, one response.”  One person will make a movement until they decide they are done and choose to hold stillness.  Then the other person makes a movement in response to what they saw the person do before.  This goes on back and forth like a movement conversation until the teacher cues the group to find an end.  By being attentive and really listening with all your senses to what your partner is saying with their body you get inspired to move in new ways you may never have thought of when dancing on your own.  Many exercises we do to practice being in relationship can also provoke empathy.  Empathy is the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective.  You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling.  Research has uncovered the existence of "mirror neurons" in our brains, which react to emotions expressed by others and then reproduce them.  Not only are we dancing together and shifting our perception of what dance looks like, we are getting the chance to connect with people of all abilities on a deeper level.

(Below: A short clip beginning as a one minute sensation solo moves into a two minute duet exploring moving in relationship with your partner.)

The next skill that we layer in is an awareness of design.  We offer exercises that allow beginners to stay engaged at their own level of understanding while at the same time challenging even the most experienced dancer.  For the dancers with more experience at improvising, the teacher offers cues to get them thinking at all times about where they are and what else is happening.  Not only are you asked to be aware of what you and your partner are doing, but where and what kind of timing, levels, spatial relationship, shapes, gestures are happening all around you.  This usually happens naturally by the end of class and everyone experiences a sense of flow along with high levels of concentration and energy.  Participants have said they feel like they have been transported to another place through this energetic connection.  It becomes a spontaneous choreography that the group generates together.

Connecting through movement and having fun!

If you are new to dance or perhaps have always loved to dance but are interested in a new way of moving, the Elements class is for you.  Come shift your perspective!  Every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month at the Townlake YMCA in Austin from 2:30-4:30 pm.  Visit our website for more details: www.bodyshift.org

Body Shift and DanceAbility!

Hello, friends!  This is Olivia, project coordinator for Body Shift, VSA Texas’ acclaimed mixed-ability dance project.  I can't believe it was 12 years ago that Silva, who is originally from Finland, and I first met in the DanceAbility course in Trier, Germany.  By good fortune we are now here in Austin teaching together.  The DanceAbility method has been devised and reined by Alito Alessi over the past 30 years.  Along with Celia Hughes, VSA Texas' executive director, I recently organized the DanceAbility Teacher Certification Training in Austin.  Many locals as well as people from across the country and Mexico came together to take part.  The course was successfully completed in December and Austin now has 17 people of all abilities certified to teach DanceAbility!

Check out highlights from the “informance” directed by Alito Alessi and featuring the participants of the teacher certification course:

So what is DanceAbility?  DanceAbility is a form of movement training that uses the fundamentals of dance improvisation and choreography to make movement accessible to people of all ages and abilities.  Founder of DanceAbility, Alito Alessi, explains, “DanceAbility is a dance method.  It is not a form of therapy.  In therapies, which happen for all people but particularly for people with disabilities, there’s always an idea about ‘How can we help you?  How can we change you?  How can we teach you to conform to what is the norm?’  And that process of moving in that direction is usually about teaching someone how to function better.  We [DanceAbility International] value expression over function.  We have been taught how to see and it’s not really seeing.  It’s assumptions that organize the way that people see something.  So one of the interests in our work is to show them things they’ve never seen before.”

Watch this video of Alito and his long time dance partner Emery Blackwell explaining the philosophy of DanceAbility: http://www.opb.org/television/programs/artbeat/segment/danceability-international/

Alito working with participants of 2013 DanceAbility
teacher orientation in Austin

In DanceAbility we work with four principles – sensation, relationship, time, and design – to develop increased body awareness, understanding of non-verbal communication, strategies for moving in new ways beyond habitual movement patterns, and awareness of how to present work to an audience.

Besides having fun dancing together, one of the main benefits I have noticed for myself as well as our regular participants is that improvising using the DanceAbility method encourages mindfulness.  Mindfulness is paying attention or noting whatever is happening in the moment with a gentle and open mind.  It involves being present in the moment, the one you’re in right now.  Mindfulness can help lower stress and builds resilience so you can meet the demands of your day with more ease. It allows you to have more clarity to solve problems.  Mindfulness can help you be patient with yourself and others.  And it can make you more effective and feel happier.  I also find that people discover new and unique ways of moving their body they would not otherwise experience.  Jana Meszaros, a participant in the Austin DanceAbility certification course and teaching artist for DanceAbility International, said, "When you grow up training vigorously to be a professional dancer you gain a lot of closed minded ideas about what it is to dance and this sort of work and this sort of teaching completely shatters all of those ideas."

You can experience the DanceAbility method when you join us for our semi-monthly Elements of Dance class at the Townlake YMCA every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month!  Check our website for more details: www.bodyshift.org