Upcoming teaching:

… stay tuned

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Past events:

Gerald presenting Dancing Around Race at Camping in Lyon (June 20) and Paris (June 29) hosted by Centre National de la Danse.

Gerald teaching at Bates Dance Festival, July 17-21, 2023

Gerald at the Bates Dance Festival, July 17-August 7, 2021

https://www.batesdancefestival.org/

Beyond the Proscenium, March 13, 2021, www.beyondtheproscenium.com

Freeskewl: The Big Pedagogy Festival, March 25-28, 2021, more info coming soon.

Tuesday, 6/4/19, 10-12, improvisation 
[everyone welcome]

Improvisation is the dynamic negotiation between freedom and restraint. Working with intuitive rigor, without the burden of creating something interesting or new, we allow ourselves to tap into our deepest creative and feeling selves. This can also lead to greater curiosity, helping us to find our true inventive nature, and awaken alternative processes and systems of creating. We will play with various modes of improvisational forms that include Tuning Scores, Forsythe improvisational technologies, and Mary Overlie and Ann Bogart’s Viewpoints to see what is emerging, what can be cultivated or refused, and how moving indeterminately can heighten attunement in the body's states of being in the world.

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Thursday, 6/6/19, 10-12, contemplative dance practice 
[for BIPOC]

Sourced from Tibetan Buddhist traditions of siting and walking meditation, we meet at the intersection of mindfulness and movement. Starting alone and then dancing together in an open space of community and mindful action, we will come together to sense and be curious about what arises, settles, and dissolves. Beginning with a sitting mediation, we move into individual practices to tune-in and warm-up and into an open space to dance with each other. The practice ends with sitting meditation and discussion. Please bring a cushion or yoga block to sit on and notebooks and pens/pencils to write and draw with.

△ ▲ △

Friday, 6/7/19, 10-12, somatic-based movement practice
[everyone welcome]

An experiential laboratory for movement, this class explores strategies for thinking bodies to expand their range and ease of motion, revealing their truest movement potential. Class will address anatomical principles that are essential to any movement practice (i.e. embodied imagery, awakening of all body systems, dynamic alignment, balance, connectivity and spatial clarity). We will begin with a thorough warm up consisting of gentle floor-work, both learned and improvised (activating spheres of learning that include ideas from Irene Dowd, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and PNF patterns). Class progresses to standing exercises and movement phrases that travel across, in and out of the floor to investigate flow and energy while paying attention to the dancer’s awareness of time, energy, focus, breath, and intimate relationship to gravity. We will awaken the subtle body, question virtuosity, breathe with intention, feel our movement, befriend gravity, learn complex phrases, sing a little, and unlearn patterns that no longer serve our dancing.

△ ▲ △

Tuesday, 6/11/19, 2-4, queer improvisations: authentic pride
[for LGBTQ+]

We start with an Authentic Movement practice (while challenging the words ‘authentic’ and ‘pride’). With eyes closed, we begin by exploring spontaneous gestures and stillness, while following impulses in the present moment. We find strategies of belonging in space and being seen as how we individually define authenticity in our own ways. We move joyfully, dancing as a collective force with and for each other – to witness, feel, and experience an assemblage of fierceness. We honor and celebrate who we are as queer movers and makers, with love and with deep pride.

△ ▲ △

Thursday, 6/13/19, 10-12, somatic-based movement practice 
[everyone welcome] -- see above

△ ▲ △

Friday, 6/14/19, 10-12, somatic-based movement practice
[everyone welcome] -- see above

CLASS DESCRIPTIONS

Somatic-based Modern Technique

An experiential laboratory for movement, this class explores strategies for thinking bodies to expand their range and ease of motion, revealing their truest movement potential. Class will address anatomical principles that are essential to any movement practice (i.e. embodied imagery, awakening of all body systems, dynamic alignment, balance, connectivity and spatial clarity). We will begin with a thorough warm up consisting of gentle floor-work, both learned and improvised (activating spheres of learning that include ideas from Irene Dowd, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and PNF patterns). Class progresses to standing exercises and movement phrases that travel across, in and out of the floor to investigate flow and energy while paying attention to the dancer’s awareness of time, energy, focus, breath, and intimate relationship to gravity. We will awaken the subtle body, question virtuosity, breathe with intention, feel our movement, befriend gravity, learn complex phrases, sing a little, and unlearn patterns that no longer serve our dancing.

Improvisation

Improvisation is the dynamic negotiation between freedom and restraint. Working with intuitive rigor, without the burden of creating something interesting or new, we allow ourselves to tap into our deepest creative and feeling selves. This can also lead to greater curiosity, helping us to find our true inventive nature, and awaken alternative processes and systems of creating. We will play with various modes of improvisational forms that include Tuning Scores, Forsythe improvisational technologies, and Mary Overlie and Ann Bogart’s Viewpoints to see what is emerging, what can be cultivated or refused, and how moving indeterminately can heighten attunement in the body's states of being in the world.

Contemplative Dance Practice for BIPOC

Sourced from Tibetan Buddhist traditions of siting and walking meditation, we meet at the intersection of mindfulness and movement. Starting alone and then dancing together in an open space of community and mindful action, we will come together to sense and be curious about what arises, settles, and dissolves. Beginning with a sitting mediation, we move into individual practices to tune-in and warm-up and into an open space to dance with each other. The practice ends with sitting meditation and discussion. Please bring a cushion or yoga block to sit on and notebooks and pens/pencils to write and draw with.

Queer Improvisations: Authentic Pride for LGBTQ+ folx

We start with an Authentic Movement practice (while challenging the words ‘authentic’ and ‘pride’). With eyes closed, we begin by exploring spontaneous gestures and stillness, while following impulses in the present moment. We find strategies of belonging in space and being seen as how we individually define authenticity in our own ways. We move joyfully, dancing as a collective force with and for each other – to witness, feel, and experience an assemblage of fierceness. We honor and celebrate who we are as queer movers and makers, with love and with deep pride.

Bio

Gerald Casel is Associate Professor of Dance and Associate Chair of the Department of Theater Arts at University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been a faculty member at California State University, Long Beach where he taught Modern Technique, Pedagogy, Composition, Senior Seminar and created choreography for the Department of Dance. He was Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2011-2012 where he also continues to teach in the low-residency MFA program since 2008. In 2010-2011 he was a Professor of Contemporary Dance at Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden and from 2005-2010 he was on faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts where he received the David Payne-Carter Award for Teaching Excellence. He is a frequent guest teacher for Sasha Waltz and Guests in Berlin as well as at ODC in San Francisco.