Stream of Dance Free Workshops

Energy Fitness & Anatomy Of A Choreography
with Davida Monk

Energy Fitness:
These classes focus on developing the skills of recognizing, sensing, cultivating and circulating energy. Overall, the work reduces stress and increases vitality. The practice integrates and harmonizes the body, emotion and mind: empowering the imagination, increasing creative potential, lifting the heart and vitalizing the body. The material is based on Master Lee Holden’s Qi Gong techniques. Classes are one hour in duration, including physical warmups and Qi Gong flow movement patterns and ending with a short meditation.

Anatomy Of A Choreography:
Anatomy of a Choreography is an audiovisual lecture format presentation. It provides a platform for a choreographer to share the details and stages of a choreographic process with members of the discipline, artists of other disciplines and interested members of the general public. Davida Monk has presented Anatomy of Choreography presentations in Calgary, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

At New Dance Horizons 2023 Stream of Dance Festival Monk will lead presentation attendees through an in-depth exploration of the making of her work The Call (2016, 2018). Monk will scan the entire creative process from inception to realization, touching on concept, background detail, research, and movement creation. The presentation includes images, sounds and design elements that played a significant creative role. The hour-long presentation will end with a Q & A session.

Here is what reviewer Stephen Bonfield had to say about The Call:
"But the highlight of the night was Davida Monk’s The Call, set in a choreographic language that glistened with an endless variety of kinetics, derived from a series of set movement ideas. The work is rhapsodic in its individual poetry, but compelling in its collective ensemble work too at many points, featuring momentary duos of spacious richness which can only come from an experienced well-practised combinatorial imagination. Monk choreographs with a seemingly endless surfeit of lyrical beauty."
-Stephen Bonfield, The Calgary Herald, July 2016

Energy Fitness Dates & Times:

Tuesday, June 6, 2023, 9:30am-10:30am
Wednesday, June 7, 2023, 9:30am-10:30 am
Thursday, June 8, 2023, 9:30am-10:30 am
Friday, June 9, 2023, 9:30am-10:30 am

Anatomy Of A Choreography Date & Time:

Tuesday, June 6, 2023, 5:00pm-6:00pm

Location:
University of Regina, Riddell Centre, RC 176 (The Blue Room)

Cost:
Free-of-charge, registration is required.
(Donations are welcome)

Energy Fitness with Davida Monk

Anatomy Of A Choreography PowerPoint Presentation

Davida Monk, Choreographer, Performer, Teacher, Artistic Director

Davida Monk began her professional career in 1985 with Le Groupe de la Place Royale of Ottawa, and was instrumental in the development of Canada’s first professional contemporary dance laboratory for choreographic development, Le Groupe Dance Lab. Monk’s works have been presented across Canada and in Europe. Amongst her most celebrated creations are LYRIC (2002), The Land Quartet (2011), and Dream Pavilion (2013), Pan (2015), The Call (2016) and Ashes for Beauty (2017). She has taught dance technique, creative process and choreography in a wide variety of contexts and has danced for and collaborated with many Canadian choreographers and artists of other disciplines. Monk is currently engaged in creative and performance projects in Alberta and across Canada. Recently she has danced solo works from Calgary choreographers Linnea Swan, Helen Husak and Catherine Hayward, and was in residence with a company of seven dancers at Vancouver’s Scotiabank Dance Centre where an evening of her works was presented in May 2019. Her current project Songs Without Words focuses on the creation of 20 distinct solos, and their dissemination and creative production, live and on video, over several years, with other artists, emerging and mature across Canada. Monk is the recipient of awards for choreographic development and touring from the University of Calgary, Calgary Arts Development, and Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Banff Centre. Monk directed Calgary’s Dancers’ Studio West, an organization dedicated to the development of choreographers from 2008 – 2018. Monk is Associate Professor Emerita (University of Calgary), and Artistic Director of M-Body (www.m-body.ca), dedicated to the development of her own works, since 2004.
https://m-body.ca/

Masterclass / Movement for Aging with Joy
with Margie Gillis

Master Class
Re-awaken the joy of movement using dance exercises, games and imagery. This workshop is tailored to the students. Beginners gain a better understanding of the body, while the more experienced acquire a greater knowledge of their unique way of expression. Participants are sensitized to the links between thoughts, emotions and movement. Emphasis is on observing the natural kinetic process: how our “inner landscape”, generated by electric impulses, is expressed in the muscles through movement. This in turn can support health, injury prevention, and convalescence.

Movement for Aging with Joy
Re-awaken the joy of movement using dance exercises, games and imagery. This workshop is tailored to the students. Beginners gain a better understanding of the body, while the more experienced acquire a greater knowledge of their unique way of expression. Participants are sensitized to the links between thoughts, emotions and movement. Emphasis is on observing the natural kinetic process: how our “inner landscape”, generated by electric impulses, is expressed in the muscles through movement. This in turn can support health, injury prevention, and convalescence. For ages 40 & up.

Dates & Times:
Masterclass

Saturday, June 10, 2023, 10:30-12:00 pm

Movement for Aging with Joy

Sunday, June 11, 2023, 11:00-12:45 pm

Location:
Masterclass

University of Regina, Riddell Centre, RC 176 (The Blue Room)

Movement for Aging with Joy

Youth Ballet of Saskatchewan, 1106 McNiven Ave

Cost:
Free-of-charge, registration is required.
(Donations are welcome)

Masterclass with Margie Gillis

Movement For Aging With Joy with Margie Gillis

Photo Credit: Desdemona Burgin

Internationally acclaimed dance Artist Margie Gillis C.M. is one of the most influential Canadian choreographers/dancers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her company, the Margie Gillis Dance Foundation, was founded in 1981. Margie has created more than one hundred and fifty creations, solos, duets, and group works, which have been performed around the globe. Her repertoire covers a wide array of topics including the feminine consciousness, the natural world, and the transformative process, all merging in a profound and powerful expression of humanism and emotion. Teaching, mentoring and passing her legacy and creative history are an integral part of her vision. From there was born the Margie Gillis - Legacy Project Dance Company, which is now performing and touring both new and retrospective works. She has received numerous awards including Officer of the Order of Canada, Chevalier de l’Ordre du Québec, the Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award from the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award Foundation, an Honorary Degree from Concordia University and many more. She continues to develop her craft through experimenting, teaching, creation, innovation and performance. In 2023, Margie Gillis is celebrating her 50th career anniversary: 50 years of creation, love, and dance.

https://margiegillis.org/

Itcush Method
with Ashley Johnson

Class Description:
Itcush Method aims to improve posture, align the skeleton and build functional movement patterns. The Itcush Method uses principles of the Mitzvah Technique to teach self-maintenance exercises. The outcome is improved physical function, freedom from pain and renewed connection with daily movements. All levels welcome, no equipment needed.

Dates & Times:

Tuesday, June 6, 2023, 1:00pm-2:15pm
Wednesday, June 7, 2023, 1:00pm-2:15pm

Location:
University of Regina, Riddell Centre, RC 176 (The Blue Room)

Cost:
Free-of-charge, registration is required.
(Donations are welcome)

Itcush Method with Ashley Johnson

Ashley Johnson is a Saskatchewan based dance artist and Registered Somatic Movement Educator, trained in group facilitation and hands on bodywork as a teacher of the Mitzvah Technique/Itcush Method and Continuum Movement. Ashley trained extensively with her primary mentors, Amelia Itcush and Emilie Conrad, until their respective passing. She mentored under high performance kinesiologist, Shauna Sky, arts educators and martial artists to understand a moving body that is complex, and ever changing. Ashley has a somatic approach to injury rehabilitation. She brings a decade of experience as an artist and somatic movement educator working in public schools, health centers, libraries, galleries. She has a diversified approach developed from time living in Northern Saskatchewan. Ashley is a graduate of Grant MacEwan College Dance Program and University of Calgary (BA in Dance). She lives on Treaty 4 territory where she collaborates with artists, movers and health practitioners.
www.constantlyseekingsoftness.ca

Jigging & Square-Dancing
with Marcus Merasty

Class Description:
Metis Square-Dancing is a cultural dance that has its roots in European and Indigenous dance forms and has become a part of the unique cultural heritage of the Metis peoples. The square-dance is a partnered pattern dance to fiddle music, often dance at social gatherings. The footwork consists of the traditional jig step.

Date & Time:
Tuesday, June 6, 2023, 2:30pm-3:30pm

Location:
University of Regina, Riddell Centre, RC 176 (The Blue Room)

Cost:
Free-of-charge, registration is required.
(Donations are welcome)

Jigging & Square Dancing with Marcus Merasty

Photo Credit: Daniel Paquet

Marcus Merasty is from Pelican Narrows, SK and is of Cree descent. His interest in dance began with learning traditional Métis dance in 2013. A year later, following the invitation to perform in a contemporary dance work by Edward Poitras and Robin Poitras he began to pursue a life in dance. This was also the beginning of an on-going mentorship with artists Robin Poitras and Edward Poitras. Since then Marcus has participated in the Indigenous Dance Residency (2016) and the Indigenous Choreographers Creation Lab (2019) at The Banff Centre, and has toured across eastern Canada with The Dancers of Damelahamid. Marcus recently completed the 4 year Professional Program at The School of Contemporary Dancers and is working toward his BA. (Hons) in Contemporary Dance from the University of Winnipeg. He is currently employed with New Dance Horizons with a major focus on archiving the organization’s 37 year history.

Stream of Dance Festival

Energy Fitness & Anatomy Of A Choreography​​with Davida Monk​