What is FLOCK?
FLOCK is a dance center for movement exploration, creation and artistic practice, dedicated to Portland's dance artists.
What is FLOCK?
FLOCK is a dance center for movement exploration, creation and artistic practice, dedicated to Portland's dance artists.
FLOCK is a 501©3 tax exempt nonprofit
What we do.
FLOCK is a dance center for movement exploration, creation, and artistic practice, stewarded by dance artists. We are committed to the practice of justice and collective liberation. We are dynamic, adaptive, and responsive to the present moment and deeply care about our community.
FLOCK provides an accessible creative hub for artists who relate to dance as an essential vehicle for grappling with the world. We are a community that offers an affordable home for long term deepening practices, for educational engagements, for sharing choreographic works, and for artistic exchange.
FLOCK is a place in perpetual motion that is shaped by the artists involved and the projects that it supports. We re-imagine what dance space and community look and feel like and rethink ways of being together while being committed to multiple identities.
FLOCK is a dynamic incubator for risky creative endeavors that radically impacts the ecology of the Portland dance and art communities. We are thrilled to be a space in PDX that inspires experimentation both in the making of art and in the making of sustainable communities.
If you are interested in renting FLOCK, please note we are a volunteer run organization and need to receive the request at least four weeks prior to the proposed rental. Thank you!
Akela Jaffi performer, Photo by Kimberly Marie Kimble
Would you like to be a FLOCK Resident artist?
For the past seven years, FLOCK has been a dance center for movement exploration, creation, and artistic practice. We serve dance artists who desire consistent studio space and time for their process and can make a commitment for a year or more.
OPEN CALL
ANNOUNCING OUR SUBSIDIZED RESIDENCY PROGRAM!
FLOCK’s Subsidized Residency Program offers free rehearsal space at our studio in NW Portland to movement artists who exist at the intersections of two or more of the following communities: Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Disabled, Immigrant, Trans, Elder, Queer, Low income, Fat, and Parents/Caregivers.
Our Offering.
FLOCK has four distinct offerings: Resident Artist, Subsidized Resident Artist, Education, and the Critical Engagement Series + Showings.
Each of these programs nurtures a generous community spirit. Sharing space, information and inspiration bolsters the autonomy of artists’ individualized practices while building community.
Our Offering.
FLOCK has four distinct offerings: Resident Artist, Subsidized Resident Artist, Education, and the Critical Engagement Series + Showings.
Each of these programs nurtures a generous community spirit. Sharing space, information and inspiration bolsters the autonomy of artists’ individualized practices while building community.
resident artists
The Resident Artist Program provides a committed studio home to fourteen of Portland’s most driven and innovative contemporary dance makers.
FLOCK presents a much-needed alternative to the product-oriented, project-by-project model of studio access prevalent in our region. The resident artist framework allows artists accustomed to this model to re-imagine dance time. A flat monthly fee redefines the relationship to studio time and expenses. A combination of set and flex rehearsal times affords artists a degree of scheduling freedom otherwise unavailable in the Portland area. Teaching and in-progress showings are permitted without additional fees, freeing up artists to pursue income earning opportunities. Our resident artist program makes FLOCK a hub of healthy experimentation unencumbered by obligations to produce an end product. It offers dependable studio times uninterrupted by the schedule conflicts encountered when performance halls are rented for shows.
LEARN More →
Subsidized Residency
FLOCK’s Subsidized Residency Program offers 3 hours of free rehearsal space per week for six months at our studio in NW Portland. In our attempt to prioritize access and address inequity, we are opening this call to movement artists who exist at the intersections of two or more of the following communities: Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Disabled, Immigrant, Trans, Elder, Queer, Low income, Fat, and Parents/Caregivers and who agree to utilize one of several time slots offered. After the submission deadline, the artist is selected by a random lottery selection process.
Learn More →
Education
The Education Program is smaller in scale, though no less integral to FLOCK. Presenting thoughtful inlets to the larger dance community, the Education Program creates a series of classes geared towards interest and inquiries that are currently reflected in the field. FLOCK is dedicated to supporting local, national and international dance artists through opportunities to both facilitate and participate in on-going classes and series-based workshops. These offerings may also be coordinated with resident artists' artistic practices and interests. Located inside Building Five of NW Marine Artworks, a large home for artists, FLOCK's Education Program forges connections with visiting artists and facilitates learning opportunities synergistic with other artists and creators. FLOCK recognizes that the vitality and health of Portland's dance community relies on inclusive, thought provoking, physically vigorous dance education. At the heart of FLOCK's educational programming lies a commitment to making publicly accessible a diverse array of compelling classes and workshops.
Classes & workshops →
Critical Engagement
Our Critical Engagement series brings together audiences & choreographers to engage with the mystery surrounding the perceived illegibility of dance & the unique practices of individual choreographers. We start with the question: What does the choreographer need at this particular moment in their process & how might this also serve the wider community? The series encourages artists of all mediums, as well as curious individuals with no art background to attend and to take the opportunity to ask questions and make observations. As dancers, we often hear that audiences don’t know how to watch dance, or don’t know how to make sense of what they see when watching dance. This series celebrates the elusiveness of the medium and creates a supportive environment where the artist and audiences can unpack the complexity of the performing body and its politic. The first of our rebooted Critical Engagement Series was curated by the FLOCK stewards. The two curated artists were both BIPOC artists with BIPOC casts and were each given a stipend of $500 and up to six hours of free rehearsal space. We hosted their works in an informal showing at FLOCK. Those two artists each chose one artist to participate in the second Critical Engagement Series. Those artists will curate the third, and so on. This is meant as a way to make the curatorial process more community-based and wider-reaching.
Who is FLOCK?
This is the dynamic team of choreographers who call FLOCK their artistic home
Who is FLOCK?
This is the dynamic team of choreographers who call FLOCK their artistic home
FLOCK STEWARDS
Tahni Holt
Tahni Holt is a choreographer, performer, Alexander Technique teacher and founder of FLOCK. Holt has been creating dances in Portland for the past 20+ years and is deeply committed to this region's arts ecology and its communities. She has traveled extensively as a choreographer, performer and teacher, most recently to perform her work in Bulgaria and Portugal. Her creative practice follows her curiosities by asking questions that demand rigorous specificity yet remain open to a terrain of inquiry-inviting rather than prescribing interpretation. Holt's work uses destabilization as a tactic to never quite reside in certainty. Her dance making, teachings, and organizational endeavors all aim toward a central goal: to create important conversations - be they in movement or in language - that allow us to pause, think and feel into the complexities of our world.
Artist Website →
Muffie Delgado COnnelly
Muffie Delgado Connelly is a dance artist. She is a chicago born chicanx, who’s daily rituals include the balancing and integration of dance, somatic practitioning, mothering and community activism. Her artistic practice digests these systems to create original works of dance that meet at the intersection of indigenous cell to spirit mycelial networking, colonial dance education, somatic ideologies and experimental performance practices. Her choreographic work has been presented at LINKS HALL (Chicago), Packer Schopf Gallery (Chicago), The Art Institute of Chicago, Movement Research Festival (New York), The Gibney Dance Center (New York) and The Newmark Theater (Portland, OR). She has been a resident artist at NEW Expressive works (PDX), Ponderosa (Germany), and Happydog Performance Gallery (Chicago). Currently she is in an extensive dance research process called “Veulve: en la concha de tu madre,” a work that explores relational lineages and survivor resilience.
Artist Website →
Allie Hankins
Allie Hankins is a Portland-based dancer, performer and performance maker, and is an inaugural resident artist of FLOCK. Her current collaborators include Physical Education (Lu Yim, keyon gaskin, and Taka Yamamoto), Linda Austin, and Rachael Dichter (SF). Most recently, Hankins has danced for Milka Djordjevich (LA), and Morgan Thorson (Minneapolis). She's currently reading Zany, Cute, Interesting by Sianne Ngai, Calamities by Renee Gladman, all the Ali Smith she can get her hands on, and she is eagerly awaiting her turn on the library's waitlist for In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. She loves book recommendations.
Artist Website →
lyra butler-denman
Lyra Butler-Denman (she/her) is a dancer, actor, choreographer, visual artist, and teacher. She has been preforming in Portland since 2007 and has trained and performed as a dancer and actor in the US and Europe. She has been a resident artist at FLOCK since 2017. In addition to choreography and performance, Lyra pursuers her somatic inquiry through visual art and teaching. She holds a degree in Studio Art and currently works in alternative process and platinum photography. Lyra is also a Contemporary Alexander Technique teacher and is on the faculty of the Contemporary Alexander School and the Alexander Alliance International.
Artist Website →
ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE PORTLAND →
current resident artists
Muffie Delgado Connelly
Allie Hankins
Tracy Broyles
Lyra Butler-Denman
Tahni Holt
Linda K. Johnson
Danielle Ross
Andrea Parson
Jessica Zoller
Sadie Leigh
Sarah Parker
Kye Grant
A HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE DONATED IN 2018:
keyon gaskin, Kristan Kennedy, Nica DeMaria, Shannon Stewart, Erin Doughton-Boberg, Linda K. Johnson, Erica Christensen, Suba Ganesan, Shaun Keylock, Angelle Hebert, Darr Longster, Michael Chambers, Orna Hankins-Berkowitz, Helen Spencer-Wallace, Roya Amirsoleymani, John Niekrasz, Maggie Heath, Eugenie Frerichs, Mickey Sanchez, Madalina Dan, Rebecca Harrison, Cara Levine, Matthew Labadie, Allie Hankins, Leah Wilmoth, Holly Haddock, Taka Yamamoto, Stacey Tran, Alanna Hoyman-Browe, Sandra Lanz, Brendan McCracken, Karen and Ron Query, Katherine Longstreth, Kelli Kessler, Claire Olberding, Crystal Query + Ryan Linville, Jessica Hightower, Mary Oslund, Suzanne Chi, Toren Volkmann, Matthew Fielder, Mizu Desierto, Linda Austin + Jeff Forbes, Kasandra Gruener, Desi + Kurt Hudson, Mary Oslund, Nickels Sunshine, Jerry Tischleder, Muffie Connelly Delgado, Conrad Kaczor, Justine LaViolette, Doug White, Jackie Davis, L A Liverman, Toby Query, Renée Archibald, S. Baum, Kelly Nesbitt, Sara Naegelin, Chelsea Petrakis, Anet Riskelman, Stephanie Lanckton, LeBrie Rich, Sally Butler, Celine Bouly, Taylor A Eggan + Daniel Addy, Tracy Broyles, John W. Johnson, Kelly Rauer, Adrianna Audoma + Lauren Smith, Mark Koenigsberg Tere Mathern, Luke Wyland, René Smith, Lisa Degrace, Michael Chambers, Christa von Behren, Marty Gross, Erin Spens, Nicole Dalton, Patty Holt, Laura Sloan, Larissa Babij, Kate Bredeson, PDX Gallery, Lyra Butler-Denman and all of you who want to remain anonymous (you know who you are!).