Douglas Becker / BALLET

Dance as a Central Activation of Possibility

A+B level, C level

We will work on developing an agile relationship between the head, shoulders, arms and legs; considering ballet as art, as a system, and as “changeable architecture”. Attention is given to interior mechanics driven by counterpoint. Throughout the class, attentiveness to the musicality of the form gives insight into the various understandings of tempi and interacting rhythms.

This ballet workshop is proposed as a collaborative setting where new information and knowledge about the moving body, in relationship to form and history, happen in the moment. The professional level workshop will also include learning set material, and the further exploration of improvisation techniques, systems, and trace forms.

BIOGRAPHY

Douglas Becker (based in Brussels Belgium) is a freelance choreographer & educator at work for over four decades at the intersection of ballet & contemporary dance. His area of expertise & research engage with the learning, teaching, making, and investigation of new forms and new ways of thinking about dance and dancing. A former dancer with the Joffrey Ballet in New York City, The National Ballet of Canada, the Dallas Ballet, and a principal artist with the Frankfurt Ballet under the direction of William Forsythe, for which he has reconstructed numerous works worldwide for professional companies, festivals & institutions. His own choreographies have been featured on the stages of Belgium’s Royal Flemish Theatre, Switzerland’s Grand Théâtre de Genève, and the Choreographic Centers of Grenoble and Nancy in France. He has been a visiting faculty member of P.A.R.T.S. school in Brussels (since 1997), New York University Tisch School of the Arts, The University of California at Irvine, and the National Conservatories of Paris and Lyon among many others.

Official homepage of Douglas Becker here.