Mini Solo Intensive with Alma Esperanza Cunningham

When: Saturday March 29, 10-2 and Sunday March 30, 10-4, with performance opportunity on 4/4 and/or 4/5.

Where: IMPACT Center for Art and Dance

1625 Bush St, suite 4, San Francisco, CA 94109

Cost: My workshop operates on a donation basis, with a suggested donation of $50.00 - $150.00.  ****Absolutely no one turned away for lack of funds.  

This intensive will dig deep into sensation, memory, energy and form.  Each day will begin with a comprehensive warm-up to engage the somatic and technical body.  Through a series of games and prompts participants will generate movement that is personal and meaningful.  Esperanza Cunningham will model how she uses these strategies to develop a kind of choreographic logic.  All participants will create a three minute solo in this two day process and will then have an opportunity to perform on 4/4 under the direction of Esperanza Cunningham.  Please note performance is optional.  This workshop is for experienced movers looking to explore composition or intermediate-advanced, advanced dancers looking to create solo works on their bodies.  All bodies are welcome and embraced.  Questions? Contact Alma at almaesperanzacunningham2022@gmail.com 

"It was Cunningham's choreography that spoke volumes for me. As in the first solo, each chapter mixed recognizable dance vocabulary with unpredictable physical activity and pedestrian tasks. Deconstructing norms and assumptions of what movement can or should 'fit' together, Cunningham seamlessly crafted each phrase into a choreographic stream of consciousness."  Heather Desaulniers, Critical Dance

BIO/Alma Esperanza Cunningham is a mother, choreographer, and public school teacher in San Francisco. While living in New York, Alma's work was presented at Movement Research, Joyce Soho, Dixon Place, and Dance Theater Workshop's Fresh Tracks (Lively Arts). In San Francisco, her work has been presented at the ODC Theater, Cowell Theater, Z Space, and Yerba Buena Gardens. She has been in residence at ODC, Margaret Jenkin's CHIME, CUNY Purchase dance initiative, and Safehouse AIRspace. She has been a guest choreographer at the University of San Francisco's Dance Department and received a Bay Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery Award (GOLDIE) in dance. Alma teaches solo composition workshops to adult dancers and dance and dance-making classes to children in the Tenderloin through the Tenderloin Achievement Group and Safehouse Arts. Alma is a feminist, queer bicultural second gen Latina artist trying to make work that speaks to the complexity and nuances of identity.

almaesperanza.com

-only alma's work turned the proposition of "political" into movement exploration that altered a sense of space and time – and by calling attention to our subjectivity (to our experience of self within an environment) this shifted what we know to be "true" or "real" or "valid" – and i LOVE that approach….    Mari Tollon/Baywatch