This week, we are lucky to have San Francisco Bay Area dancer Julie Crothers writing for the blog, sharing about her experience at New Dialect's Winter Intensive in Nashville, TN. (Julie is joined by two other Bay Area artists, Nina Wu and Courtney Armani.)

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Photo: David DeSilva

Friday's schedule:
9:30-11:30 Technique class led by Vim Vigor company member, Jason Cianciulli
11:30-12:30 Lunch
12:30-2:30 Expand on partner phrase
2:30-3:30 Character explorations involving a mic

5 words/phrases to describe Friday:
Possession
Amplify
Psychedelic world
Exploitation
Maturity

What will inform/inspire your teaching work in the coming weeks?
Anytime I take a class or a workshop, I always observe how the teacher leads and relays information, whether it's about a technical exercise or artistic intention, so it's been cool to learn from a few different teachers this week and experience their styles and isms. Today I reflected a lot around timing and language. I remembered how important it is to communicate what you seek before expecting it. And I'm asking myself a lot of questions. In improvisation-based exercises, how much direction/cueing is needed and for what purpose? If a specific aesthetic is desired, what are the most successful pathways and strategies to getting to that result? Today also made me think about how discomfort is met in the classroom. What happens when we are pushed or asked to do something unusual or very uncomfortable, and what do we do about it? From a dancing and teaching standpoint I'm getting a lot of nuggets out of this week for sure.

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