Dance / Creative process workshop with Ginelle Chagnon

August 10-14th, 2009
Location: School of Contemporary Dancers
Cost: $100 for the week


Dance / Dance classes

Objective: to stimulate and increase the sense of reality of one’s dancing body. Class will include floor work to help the participant to work realistically with the weight of their body. The class will also include standing and moving exercises across the floor to engage the body in precise movement and rhythmical design. Participants will work on presence, focus, weight, rhythm, initiation of movement, dynamics, coordination and spatial relationship as well as to prioritize movement over shape.


Dance / Creative process workshops

Objective: to stimulate awareness, active participation and creativity through the use of the human body in motion
In this series of workshops, participants will investigate the dance medium through simple exercises designed to activate the relationship between mind, body, emotion, sensation, action and sense of observation. They will learn to execute movement as well as to create new and personal dances.

Participants will be creating new choreographies using stimulations such as thematic improvisation, memorization, observation and contact with others. Participants will learn to articulate and exchange ideas, to communicate by the intermediary dancing body.

Participants will also work on the architectural relationship of the human body in space. They will be creating dances in small and intimate spaces as well as larger public spaces.

A journal will be kept by all participants to the creative workshops.

An informal presentation of the works will happen on the last day of the workshop.

Facilitator

Ginelle Chagnon started dancing professionally in 1971 with the Grands Ballets Canadiens, where after a decade in ballet, she turned to contemporary dance. In the 1980s, she was initiated to the work of rehearsal mistress for repertory dance companies Danse Partout and Montréal Danse. These years spent receiving first hand exposure to the creative process were highly formative and prepared her for the task of assisting in the choreographical creative process. The year of 1993 marks the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration with artist and choreographer Jean-Pierre Perreault that continues on today, as she now attends to the preservation and perpetuation of his work. She teaches contemporary technique at Concordia University, and occasionally at LADMMI, The Contemporary Dance School, as well as in other canadian and international professionnal venues. She also teaches numerous workshops in dance interpretation and creation.