Int/Adv Floorwork with Kenny Frechette for the Month of March

Sundays in March 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd + 30th , 3:30-5:30pm

Suggested $15-20 Reach out / show up anyway if cost is a barrier.

This class is for folks proficient in foundational aspects of floorwork who are looking to deepen and expand their practice. We’ll warm and work our way into increasingly complex forms, substantive sequences, and invigorating choreography. A great container for those looking to build strength, inhabit new pathways, research tools/techniques, and cultivate more consistent, rigorous community practice around floorwork in Portland. *Pants, long sleeves, and knee pads are encouraged.

LongLife Forms with Linda k. Johnson

Note: No class March 28th

Fridays // 9:30-11:15am (door opens at 9:15am)

Drop-in; $20 (mutable if needed)

For more information - lkjdance@earthlink.net

A contemporary dance class where time and material move at the speed of the mature, injured, recovering or otherwise temporate body. Form + Somatics + Movement Material + Improvisation + Play

LongLife Forms builds on my 40 years of embodied research about the intelligent, sensitive, porous and powerful dancing body. The next iteration of my teaching practice, this intermediate-level class honors and makes space for the body we have at this moment in time - for its current weather to be a palette to be seen, worked with and expressed. Studies of yoga (Diane Wilson), Feldenkrais Method (Lila Hurwtiz), BodyMind Centering (Wendy Hambidge + many), Alexander Technique (Shelley Senter, Robyn Avalon + many), CI (Karen Nelson, Alito Alexis, Steve Paxton), real-time improvisation (Danny Lepkoff), Wild Goose qi gong (Margit Galanter), and formal dance techniques (ballet - so many, Inga Weiss/Wigman, Bebe Miller, Mary Oslund, Yvonne Rainer, Betty Jones, +++) will variously inform our approaches to practice and play.

 This class assumes contemporary, post-Judson dance experience. While not a technique class, it is a forum to use what we know after years of study and practice to play with all of our almost unnameable and innumerable sets of tools. We will practice forms, we will improvise, we will consider our anatomy, we will touch and be touched, we will be in community. We will breathe, sweat, and get a little lost in that feeling of moving with clarity and consciousness in the body that you show up with.

It's a Fucking Miracle!

Tuesdays April 1st, 8th, 15th + 22nd // 6:30pm-7:45pm // FLOCK

REGISTER HERE // To get up-to-date info about class and registration get on Tahni’s e-newsletter: HERE

$15

Since December of 2022 10% of proceeds from class go to: Native American Youth and Family organization. We have donated over $1750 and counting…

Masks are optional

This class comes out of many years of movement study, curiosity and play. It weaves together my somatic leanings, movement improvisational scores, contact improv, authentic movement, contemplative dance, dance boot camp and fiercely dancing-my-ass-off-in-the-club.Original music compositions, pop-culture songs, and abstract sound weaves through each class. it is a mash up encouraging entanglement. It moves you and the class is moved by you.

Must pre-register. Let's figure out how to do this together.

DEEP PLAY PDX PERFORMANCE TROUPE WEEKEND IMMERSION 

a weekend of immersive play and performance

FLOCK & Performance Works NorthWest, Portland OR 

Workshop: Saturday April 5th 12:30-5:30pm FLOCK Dance Center

Optional Durational Performance: Sunday April 6th 12-5pm PWNW

Price: Price is tiered based on an sliding scales of income/subsistence and ranges from $50-100

For all info please go HERE

Come join The PDX Deep Play Performance Troupe and take part in an immersive deep dive into our December 2024 piece Thresholding. This is a chance to fully transition from audience-witness into participant, as we guide you through the improvisational structures and deep play methodologies of our piece (Saturday), and then give you an opportunity to perform with us (Sunday).

Participants should arrive well rested and well fed as both days contain a durational component. On Saturday we will begin promptly at 12:30pm with an opening circle, agreements, and then some warmup games. The main activity of our day on Saturday will be teaching a long-form deep play improvisational structure that will be performed together on Sunday in a durational performance. On Sunday please arrive at 12pm for one hour of setup and warmup. And then 1-5pm will be our durational performance. Participants do not need to be “active” in the piece the entire time, but staying in the performance space for the entire time is required. For both days it is recommended that everyone bring snacks, water bottle, and a journal. Participants are welcome to only attend the Saturday workshop component. 

Additionally, this weekend immersion functions as an initiatory experience for anyone interested in becoming a full-fledged member of the PDX Deep Play Performance Troupe. After the weekend immersion we will reach out to participants interested in joining to have a final audition before potentially joining the troupe. Of course participants may choose to attend the weekend who have no interest in joining the troupe as a full-fledged member. And there will be other opportunities to audition for the troupe for those interested but who aren't able to give this amount of commitment at this time.

Please read below about Thresholding (our December 2024 piece that this workshop/performance is based upon) to get a better sense of what the weekend will be like. 

Unfolding at the intersection of ritual, play, and inquiry, Thresholding is a performative exploration of liminality—the dynamic borderlands between order and chaos, art and therapy, sense and nonsense, performer and audience. At its core, the piece weaves together a series of structured improvisational games and ceremonies designed to engage the mysteries of presence, transformation, and collective imagination. This debut performance by the Deep Play Institute’s PDX Performance Troupe draws on psychodramatic techniques, surrealist language games, rule-based improvisational systems, conversation scores, and vocal experiments. The troupe operates as a living laboratory for "deep play," inhabiting the fluid space between safety and risk, individuality and collectivity, buoyancy and heaviness, centeredness and marginality.

About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers –  aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.

Who: Aaron Finbloom (director) is a philosopher, artist, therapist, and educator whose work aims to expand transformative inquiry through relational games, role play, performance art, and conversation scores. bloom davis is an artist, facilitator, and storyteller dedicated to creating spaces for transformation, connection, and play.  Katie Eichner is a therapist whose spiritual practice is her naked ass in the river. Kathryn Frey is a Portland-based performance artist, yoga teacher, and aspiring cartographer of liminal spaces who channels creative angst into embodied resistance. Sarah Radelet has a curiosity for growth and understanding that spurs ongoing movement in her thoughts, emotions and physical body and is reflected in this Deep Play. 

Queer Affinity Contact Improvistation Jam // Every other Sunday // 9:30am-11:30am

1st + 3rd Sunday of each month: April 6th + 20th
Contact improvisation is a form of improvised dancing involving the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight and touch. Deep listening, consent, self awareness, and play are integral parts of this dance form that will be highlighted at each jam. Every jam will include a mini class, open space to practice the form, and introductory lessons for those interested.

This jam space is exclusively for people who identify as LGBTQAI2S. Beginners and non-dancers are welcome.

Jam sliding scale $0-10

DANCE TO REMEMBER with Cat Petru

Fridays 6:30-7:30PM, April 11, 18 & 25
Suggested Reciprocity: $15 drop in or $45 for the series. Any amount welcome. NOTAFLOF.

This spring we come home to our bodies, experience joy, connect and release, fortify our spirits for collective liberation. No dance experience needed. All ages welcome. Join Cat Petru (she/her) for this short & sweet 3 week series Dance to Remember. An invitation to feel our embodied aliveness in formidable times, each class will progress from a gentle warm-up to light choreography and space to explore and freestyle, and close with stretch and relaxation to support physical integration.

Cat draws inspiration from movement homies & DJs, plant kin, decades of dance, her ancestors, & politicized somatic healing. When she's not dancing, she's co-directing We Rise Production.

Earth /Sky with Tahni Holt

Saturday April 12th // 10am-11:45am

$15-$30 // REGISTER HERE

Earth/Sky focuses on sensitivity practices through somatic inquiry, improvisational movement scores and Contemporary Alexander technique principles. Earth/Sky goes deep into inquires of grounding and gravitational support in one’s being. In Earth/Sky we swim into practices of embodiment where we sensitize into places we may be holding ourselves up, back, and/or in, and ask can we find movement through the cracks, can we rest into presence? Can we listen in on the dark recesses of our unconscious patterns? Can we integrate these practices in our everyday lives? Expect waves of rigorous movement exploration alongside slowed down sensorial capacity building practices. Prompts offer a starting point for exploration to facilitate new ways of moving and being. All are welcome, no prior movement experience needed.
Masks are optional.

$15-$30 (no one turned away from lack of funds)
 pre-registration required
To reserve your spot email Tahni at hello@tahniholt.com

Alignment is a Felt Sense with Emily Jones

April 27th and May 25th 9:30-11:30am

Suggested sliding scale: $15-30 drop in/ class. NOTALOF.

Please register in advance.

REGISTER: HERE

I used this title for a class series in 2023, and I still contemplate the  title, so I’m up-cycling: old title, new material. I am thinking of alignment as a dynamic process of sensing into ourselves, being present to our environment, and cultivating capacity to shift, as needed, to attend to our own physicality, energy and emotional states. Alignment describes relationships, it is self determined, from within, rather than imposed externally. In each class I will offer theory, choreography and improvisation scores to try on. This class is inspired by the Axis Syllabus, and will include concepts from anatomy, biomechanics and physics. Movement motifs will include rolling, crawling, spiraling and traversing through space. This class is open to all levels. Please register in advanced by emailing Emily: ejones248@gmail.com. 

Graphic by Hannah Krafcik