Content Driven Choreography:
Layering Dance Technique within Everyday Gestures and Text-Based Narratives
2-Day Intensive with McKnight Fellow, April Sellers
Director of April Sellers Dance Collective (Minneapolis)
Course Description
In collaboration with my choreographic residency at Boston Center for the Arts, Kat Nasti Dance is thrilled to host the inimitableApril Sellers!
Choreographer April Sellers, who’s collective was named “Best Dance Performance” by Minneapolis City Pages in 2015, has earned a reputation for being “sublimely idiosyncratic” with her “abundance of vaudevillian chutzpah”, according to critics. Offering a workshop in Boston for the first time, Sellers will guide participants through her process of layering modern-dance technique within everyday gestures and text-based narratives. The workshop will begin with exercises that promote self-awareness. In the process, individuals will develop objectivity that will allow them to find expression in text and movement. Some of these techniques include emotional and sense memory practices, physical exercises to increase body awareness, and vocal exercises focusing on articulation, projection, and creative expression.
Course Dates and Times
Saturday, January 23, 2016 1-5 pm
Sunday, January 24, 2016 1-5 pm
Location
Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont Street
Boston MA 02116
Cost
$115 for full workshop. We are unable to accept partial registrations due to the course progression.
Make $115.00 workshop payment by clicking link below. Payment is due in full with registration.
Please Note:
Payment due with registration. Reimbursements will be given with the following deductions:
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Cancellations by January 5 at midnight receive refund minus 25%
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Cancellations by January 15 at midnight receive refund minus 50%
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No refunds will be given after January 15
Biography
April Sellers has developed a unique, emotive approach to modern dance as dancer, choreographer and Artistic Director of The April Sellers Dance Collective, a Minneapolis-based company that she founded in 2002. Her dance transforms life’s mundane moments into physical expressions of the struggle to be human. Layering modern-dance technique within everyday gestures and text-based narratives, Sellers creates dance that holds up a magnifying glass to raw and rarified emotions.
“One of the brightest lights on the Minneapolis dance horizon”- Matt Peikin, Pioneer Press
Sellers’s past works have explored such diverse topics as women’s sexual identity (In Her Place, 2000), the cultural and personal rituals of loss (Unveiling Grace, 2003) and the vulnerability of the material body (The V Project, 2007). Her work has been performed at the Walker Art Center, The Southern Theater, Intermedia Arts, the Red Eye Theater and Bryant Lake Bowl in addition to touring Brooklyn NY, Chicago Illinois, Milwaukee Wisconsin and Toronto Canada. In 2005 and 2015, The April Sellers Dance Collective was awarded an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her work with choreographer Judith Howard on House of Big Love won a Sage Award for Outstanding Performance in 2006. She has also collaborated with poets, painters, filmmakers and chefs to present groundbreaking works in galleries, rooftops, bowling alleys, gardens and parks. Notably, Sellers has been featured as a dancer in original works by many artists including Laurie Van Wieren and John Munger.
Southern Theater commissioned two works by Sellers in 2011 for the Tandem series of independent choreographers (Instructions to a Fancy Pack and Acceptable Doses, 2011). Her curated evenings of dance and performance have been seen in many cities, including Chicago, where she developedGeneration Bitch: Gender Identity and Expectations of 21st Century American Women for Links Hall as well as in Minneapolis at Patrick’s Cabaret, where her series Poonies at Patrick’s, aims to celebrate the LGBTQ community’s unique perspective, creativity and diversity. Sellers is a 2011 recipient of a McKnight Fellowship in Choreography.
“The performance is powerful, a serious work that seeks to make sense of the world’s changling moment that does John and Yoko and Jesus and you and me proud.”
- Jim Walsh Southwest Journal
Sellers latest works Jousting and BIG BABY were created while in residence at Djerassi Resident Artists Program Santa Cruz CA, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) Tallahassee FL, and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee MF Thesis/Residency Program. Both works premiered in October 2015 at Intermedia Arts as part of a Catalyst Series commission. BIG BABY was award Best Dance Performance of 2015 by City Pages, Minneapolis.
Minneapolis-based since 1998, Sellers moved to Minnesota after graduating with a BFA in Dance from Ohio State University. She received her MFA in Choreography in 2014 from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
