PRE-INTERMEDIATE PROGRAMME - WEEK 5

Ballet class with Libby Farr

The ballet class allows the dancer to re-evaluate their process of where they come from and are now. Focusing on strengthening the dancers awareness of their own natural alignment and experience. The class is divided into two parts: the barre and the centre work. Exercises at the barre emphasise finding the skeletal awareness as a starting point to strengthen the dancer's core awareness and find where the movement initiates in the body to support a functional alignment. The centre work challenges the dancer to use the new found information when learning and executing vocabulary. Vocabulary offered will be dependent on the level of the class.

Libby Farr (US)

Libby Farr arrived in Berlin in 1982 to dance in the Deutsche Oper after dancing with many companies in the US and in Europe. After leaving the Deutsche Oper she continued doing projects and teaching in many schools in Berlin for 11 years and then she joined TanzTheatre Weimar as training director, dancer, teacher. She then became the ballet mistress for Ballet Pretty Ugly Freiburg and Köln . She has been a regular teacher in P.A.R.T.S in Brussels and a regular guest teacher in SEAD in Austria and in Companies in Europe. She is a licensed Gyrokinesis Teacher.

Iyengar yoga with Stéphane Bourhis

In our Yoga practice following the Iyengar® methodology, we will focus and explore precision, alignments, external and internal geometry of the body in several groups of yoga postures. The body is the starting point, the consciousness is the terminal point and the process between those two points is the reading of the body.

Stéphane Bourhis (FR)

Stéphane Bourhis is a professional dancer. He started his career at the Lucerner Ballet and worked as a soloist dancer in the Béjart Ballet Lausanne both in Switzerland. Stéphane practices Iyengar Yoga since 2008 and he has been certified since 2013. He's teaching Iyengar® yoga at P.A.R.T.S., in primary schools and in the Iyengar Yoga Centre of Brussels. He constantly learns, researches and deepens his knowledge in relation to Iyengar® yoga. Besides that, he regularly travels to India where he trains with the Iyengar Family.

Rosas repertoire - Rosas danst Rosas with Fumiyo Ikeda

37 years ago, the Rosas company put itself on the map with the production Rosas danst Rosas. This choreography continues to be staged all over the world. The piece is made up of five chapters, full of intense physical energy. The drive in this body machine is tempered by a series of ‘very familiar and everyday movements’.

We shall look at each part, learning the basic phrase as well as its structure in order to dance some extracts. A truly stimulating experience to great music! (Please bring gym/ running shoes).

One of the big aspects of ‘Rosas danst Rosas’ is based on being the same and being one with your body and with your group. I would like to teach you the movements and the structure as close as to the piece as possible and as much we can do for the time we’ve got. It will be challenging to dance together and to understand the mathematical structure of Anne Teresa. Questions like this will hopefully be answered:

How to practice a repetitive movement?

What is it/ How is it for you to be one with your group?

How is it to be sharing the space/energy/time and emotional approach?

What is your stamina and concentration that comes through?

For those who are wondering: men are welcome too, I already did another ‘Rosas danst Rosas’ workshop with women and men and it was a wonderful experience.

Fumiyo Ikeda (JP)

In 1979, she entered MUDRA, Maurice Béjart’s dance school in Brussels, where she met Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. In 1983 she was one of the founding members/dancers of Rosas. Between 1983 and 2008 she contributed to the creation of and danced in almost all the productions, and defined the face of Rosas. She has also contributed to several of Rosas’ films and videos. Since 2007, Fumiyo has developed her own artistic parcours. In 2007 she created "Nine Finger" with Benjamin Verdonck and Alain Platel. This performance was selected for the Festival d’Avignon 2007, and knew an extended international tour. Her next step was the solo "In pieces", a collaboration with the British theatre writer and frontman of Force Entertainment, Tim Etchells. She performed in "Life and Times, Episode 2", a performance in collaboration with Nature Theater of Oklahoma (2010). In 2013 she created along with the Japanese choreographer Un Yamada "amness". In 2014 she created "Cross Grip" with three Japanese dancers and the percussionist Kuniko Kato. In 2015 she choreographed and performed "Absence" with Frank Focketyn, directed by Peter Vehrelst (NTGent) and Eric Joris (CREW). In 2016 choreographed and performed "De Sleutel" directed by Josse De Pauw. In 2017 she choreographed and performed her solo piece “Piano and String Quartet” by Morton Feldman with live music by Ictus.

Besides choreographing and dancing, she teaches numerous workshops for Rosas and her own work. She taught a few times at KASK and is the rehearsal director of the early pieces of Rosas.