Held & Holding: deepening connection through physical play and practice

Location: Gibney 280 Broadway, Studio Y

Time: 10:30am-1:30pm daily

Workshop Description:
This three-day workshop is an expansive exploration of partnership — not just as physical technique, but as human experience. From the moment we enter the space, we are already in relationship. This is not a class in isolation; it is a shared investigation of presence, timing, and trust.Together, we’ll explore partnering as a fully human act — charged with specificity, character, emotionality, and nuance. We’ll dig into the expressive potential of shared weight and shared choice, working to dissolve the “blank stare” partnering that too often finds contact work. Instead, we aim for aliveness — vivid, honest, messy, and wholly embodied.Through improvisational scores, partnering tools, and compositional play, we will practice physical empathy, the re-patterning of rhythm, and the dance of divergent intentions. Expect to sweat, to laugh, to fall (safely), to hold one another, and to get deeply curious about how we meet in motion.This workshop is geared toward dancers and movers with partnering and contact experience who are ready to deepen their connection — to others, to impulse, and to meaning. We invite those who desire a practice that’s as emotionally intelligent as it is physically attuned.

Bring a friend or two — someone whose presence inspires you — or arrive open to discovering new collaborators. We’ll cultivate a space that welcomes rigor, wildness, and a playful sense of research.We are never dancing alone. Come move with us.