Tracy Fleming, who brings to her discipline not only performing experience but also a master's degree in biology, is convinced that Skinner Releasing can benefit dancers versed in any style. Others speak just as fervently about the transforming nature of their classes. They use their potential, beyond linear choreography, to make dance a life project.' It's something I've been able to systematize to open doors to dancers from any background. 'To bring to the contemporary the principles of universal dance. 'My goal is to offer a possibility of reshaping the individual,' says Reyes, whose Taiki sessions, June 28-30, fall under the umbrella of the FIU institute. In addition to their workshop on June 25 and performance next Sunday, dance concerts by several Florida groups, New York's Stephen Petronio Company, Brazil's LM-zmini Cia de Dana and others (at the Colony Theater and New World Dance Theater) extend the learning experience for the next two weeks. This festival component includes an artistic tradition on the endangered list: Mayan dance to native instruments, brought by Grupo Cultural Uk-Ux Pop Wuj.

This reaches beyond ballet and modern techniques and repertory to jazz, flamenco, body-spirit conditioning, improvisation, even aerial acrobatics, and special workshops for integrated partnering (dancers with and without disabilities).Ĭollege credit can be earned through an associated program, the Latin American and Caribbean Dance Institute organized by Florida International University. Philosophical depth and step-by-step methodology are meant to bring serious students to new dance dimensions throughout the curriculum. Robert Atwood from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, for instance, will pass on the heritage of the Vaganova and Cecchetti schools, along with more innovative 'floor barre' exercises giving horizontal support to classical line for greater strength and refinement.īut the strong flavors of native South American traditions, island rhythms and fresher, earthier approaches to the Western canon should also draw even inveterate ballerinas.ĭon't think, however, that the festival's alternatives to balletic strictures entail a devil-may-care attitude or touchy-feely approaches to instruction without rigor. Of course, if it's classical ballet or traditional modern dance they want, that's also on the menu for enrollees at the festival, with workshops running today through June 30 at downtown Miami's New World School of the Arts. In her sessions, students learn to move from spiritual impulses. 'You could call it the song of the body,' she says.

Reyes, in fact, gives her performances the name Taiki, derived from a term meaning both dance and music in the Andean language of Quechua.

Elemental studio percussion