Apogee Arts’ approach to our education programming emphasizes physically-based creativity over sheer steps and technique, encourages play and invention, and invites participants into the process of developing new movement vocabularies. Programming is led by Artistic Director Alison Chase—a deeply experienced teacher whose first class at Dartmouth inspired the creation of the internationally-renowned dance companies Pilobolus and Momix—and a range of collaborators.
Collaborative
Apogee Arts often works with other artists ranging from photographers, composers, graphic designers and sculptors. We seek partnerships with corporations, schools, theaters, community-based groups, and non-profit institutions.
Customizable
Programming can be tailored to fit a variety of needs and formats, from single day workshops to ongoing cumulative sessions.
Useful in and beyond dance
Our workshops and classes build skills that are relevant in dance and performance but also have far-reaching usefulness in other sectors like healthcare, business, economics, and civic government.
Past partnerships included Wolf Trap, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Cleveland School for the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dance St. Louis, Steps on Broadway, Martha Graham School, Lafayette College, The Rockettes, and others.
Apogee Arts welcomes opportunities to work with presenters to offer education programs that complement public performances in and out of the proscenium. Please contact director@apogeearts.org for more information.
Alison Chase shares her unique approach using improvisation and the “skeleton-to-skeleton” to teach weight sharing techniques, performance, and collaboration. These workshops provide close individual attention so participants can build and solidify partnering and improvisation skills, essential tools for a stronger performer. Duration and frequency of workshops is flexible, but a minimum of three sessions is recommended.
Great dance comes from original expression that breaks new boundaries. In this course, Alison will work with professional and pre-professional dancers to explore tools for developing innovative work. The goal is to develop your choreographic voice and unpack your sensibilities through open sourced experimentations and choreographic dialogue.
Through movement sketching, improvisation, sharing, and refining students will:
Investigate how to sequence, condense and edit, solo, duet, and small group works with clear beginnings and endings
Build collaborative skills that respect the individual and the collective effort
Partner across all types of boundaries and spaces
Heighten performance skills
Appropriate for all movement genres. Prior composition study required.
Sound is a dynamic partner in the choreographic process. Learning how to pair movement with sound effectively expands one’s choreographic voice. Through structured improvs and short set phrases we will explore a variety of musical/sound options. New technologies and software advances now offer an even wider field of selection. We will explore and discuss how an audio line amplifies, supports, destroys, counterpoints, or interfaces with the movement. We will investigate the pros and cons of: starting with the audio line, adding the audio after the choreographic process, using an improvised accompaniment, having an original score, or engineering sound montages. Students should bring three pre-recorded audio files that are as different as possible from each other and that you think have choreographic potential to jump-start this loud, lively, or silent discussion.
Alison Chase has created over 50 works for the stage over the course of her career. In-depth exploration of her groundbreaking repertoire provides students with a unique opportunity to develop valuable performance experience through exposure to significant and influential choreography taught by the artist herself.
(No experience necessary)
Using movement-based improvisation, Apogee Arts adult workshops explore collaboration, invention, and the interplay of impulse and intuition in the creative process. This is accomplished in an accessible, casual, and playful environment with great music. No previous experience is necessary.
Apogee Arts works with elementary, middle school, and high school students to provide movement-based instruction that promotes creativity and physical habits for life-long health. Students create and perform original choreography that instills pride in their own creative voice and increased physical awareness.
Each session focuses on a specific theme, such as alignment, relaxation, or invention. Students may explore familiar movement forms such as street dance or sports as a way to expand their movement vocabulary and invent their own short original dance to share with the class. As time and space permits, students will present a culminating performance for family and community members.
Apogee Arts programming supports students as they grow:
Social skills such as commitment, respect, and collaboration
Ways to care for their bodies and physical health that extend beyond the dance classroom
Body awareness and somatic literacy becoming comfortable with vocabulary of movement and gesture and able to read the movement of others.
Whether as stand-alone training or in tandem with our Arts-In-Education Youth Programs, Apogee Arts offers professional development to classroom teachers. These trainings support educators in understanding dance as an element of physical fitness and mode of self expression and gives them new exercises to use in the classroom.