Please note change of teacher from Gill Clarke to Abigail Yager: Member of Trisha Brown Company 1995-2002.

My class is designed to cultivate awareness. It trains the eye to see and analyze as well as the body to express movement. It draws on various somatic practices including The Alexander Technique, Yoga, Qi Gong and Klein Technique to look at movement from the inside out placing emphasis on anatomic efficiency, freedom in the joints, use of weight, swing, and breath.  Special attention is paid to mechanical specificity, spatial and directional clarity, points of initiation, and cause and effect.

Questions this class raises include:
•    How do we define strength?
•    Does muscular “doing” access maximum movement potential?
•    What alternate sources of power are available to us as movers?
•    What does it mean to dance into the floor rather than on top of the floor?
•    How can we use gravity and momentum to our advantage?

Other classes place more emphasis on improvisation; the role of the senses to effect change on our dancing selves; thought, reaction and impulse; dancing from various bodily systems (muscular, skeletal, articular, organic, nervous etc.)  All classes employ a mixture of these approaches in various proportions depending on class population, need and desire.

Guy Claxton, Learning Scientist (PAL talk)

Intelligence in the Flesh
A conversation between Guy Claxton and Gill Clarke

The science of Embodied Cognition is changing the face of psychology. Minds, it seems, are not a kind of abstract intelligence that bosses  bodies around; rather they are emanations of bodily processes that are themselves highly intelligent. This intelligence makes itself known as much through intuitions and physical promptings as through deliberate thought. This conversation between learning scientist Guy Claxton and dancer Gill Clarke will explore the relationship between the science and the experience of movement and action, touching on play, making things, and what dance might be for.

Crossing Borders
Open to all | 4 Oct - 13 Dec | Tues, 7 – 8.30pm
PAL talks £6 / £4 concession per talk I CB talks £5 / £3 freelance dance artists and concessions per talk

A series of conversations with artists whose particular practice has led them beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries, offering fresh vantage points on artistic practice, ideas and working environment. In partnership with graduate school of LCDS.

This year Crossing Borders includes a series of conversations with distinguished guests from beyond Dance, as part of the ‘Movement and Meaning Lab’ programme produced by PAL and led by Gill Clarke. With generous support from Arts Council England, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Jerwood Charitable Foundation. www.pallabs.org.

To book: 020 7091 9650 / info@independentdance.co.uk