Christian Denice || The Playground NYC
Company:
The Playground NYC
Christian Denice
Thursday, 07/21 || 12:00-1:45pm, $6
Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, NYC
Entrance 53A Chambers Street
The Playground NYC allows dancers to experience various choreographic styles and ideas, engage with a new community of dancers, and gather resourceful information and inspiration from the array of choreographers involved. In turn, established choreographers are paid for their creative investigations, are given free space to explore new movements with professional dancers, and are provided with the opportunity to establish relationships with new dancers and fellow choreographers.
Class Description:
Driven by movement exploration and personal investigation, and rooted in both classical and contemporary techniques, this class allows dancers the freedom to cultivate their own artistic voice and tune into their subtle energetic body. Class is guided using two movement concepts; the body being as soft and available as possible to receive information, nuance, and feel sensation, as well as discovering external tension providing a limit and resistance to the body to allow feedback to be understood and experienced. Utilizing movement exercises, guided prompts, and structured phrase work, the class is designed to unite both the physical, athletic body with the nuances of the body’s response in a way that offers dancers more insight into their own artistic expression. Class begins with floor work exercises to release unnecessary tension and begin to discover the effects of momentum with a focus on releasing the hips and spine. As we begin to find the floor underneath our feet, exercises encourage the exploration of sensations of weight and counterbalance with the awareness of tension and gravity. The class is designed to make the full body connection, between the energetic and physical bodies and minds, with the emphasis on exploration and study of the reactions movement creates. Phrase work will finish the class in a grander way to experience these nuances earlier established in class.
Bio:
Christian Denice's professional dance experience includes Odyssey Dance Theatre, River North Dance Chicago, and BJM Danse (Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal). Upon stepping away from the stage, Christian spent two years on faculty with the Joffrey Academy of Dance and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's HS Pro Program. As a choreographer, he has created new works for Odyssey Dance Theatre, LEVELdance Chicago, DanceWorks Chicago, Interlochen Center for the Arts, METdance too, the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, Visceral Dance Chicago, Missouri Contemporary Ballet, Western Michigan University, METdance Houston, Modern America Dance Company, Modas Dance, SALT II, Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company, Eisenhower Dance Detroit, Houston Contemporary Dance Company, and Wright State University. Christian is the 2015-2016 winner of the University of South Florida's Echo Choreographic Competition and the 2016 winner of the Joffrey Academy's Winning Works Choreographic competition. Christian has been on faculty with Modas Dance, Open Doors Dance Festival, EPIC Dance Utah, Eisenhower Dance Detroit NEWdanceFEST, Kansas City Jazz Dance Fest, DanceWorks Chicago Dance360, and AXIS Connect Los Angeles. Christian had the opportunity to re-stage KOSMOS by Andonis Foniadakis on the dancers of the National School of Dance in Athens, Greece in 2019 and the Nationaltheater Mannheim Tanz this Spring. Christian is both performing artist and guest choreographer with Chamber Dance Project in Washington, DC, and recently worked with New York City based filmmaker Alexander Sargent on a dance film of his work “Dwellings” which premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in October 2021. Christian is currently dancing in a production for Andonis Foniadakis Dance Company based in Athens, Greece and is the Artist in Residence at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University.
PC: Craig MacLeod
