Open Space
Peer to Peer Warm-up
We have reserved a designated space for students to converge, connect, and collaboratively prepare their bodies for a day of dance. Within this environment, fellow students have the opportunity to encounter one another, discover commonalities, share their personal practices, and engage in the exchange of knowledge.
Feldenkrais
The Feldenkrais Method is a work that gives agency to the artist through self-directed choice making. It redefines our habits by aligning our intentions through our actions, giving clarity to our thoughts and specificity to our movement. The work enhances our state of presence, gives us access to our creativity and develops our capacity for connection, leaving us with a remarkable sense of well-being.
Ami Shulman
Freelance lecturer
Contemporary Training by
Ami Shulman teaches a highly dynamic class that integrates the floor as an essential component for exploring full body connectivity and proprioceptive awareness. Her teachings focus on the efficiency and clarity of movement, which liberates the form and allows for a deeper range of physical expression. This approach fosters the movement potential of the individual, promoting somatic awareness while expanding the interpretive possibilities of the performer.
Feldenkrais
The Feldenkrais Method is a work that gives agency to the artist through self-directed choice making. It redefines our habits by aligning our intentions through our actions, giving clarity to our thoughts and specificity to our movement. The work enhances our state of presence, gives us access to our creativity and develops our capacity for connection, leaving us with a remarkable sense of well-being.
Classical Training by Agnès Noltenius
Akademie des Tanzes der Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim
The classical training is suitable for all levels and for students with different backgrounds. The focus is on the relationship to space, work and coordination of the torso and arms.
Keith Morino
Canada’s National Ballet School
A graduate of Canada‘s National Ballet School (NBS), Keith’s professional dance career was principally based in Europe, dancing with NDT II, Ramon Oller in Spain, and in a variety of other dance projects. He also explored choreography for dance, theatre and opera, as well as teaching in different European companies and conservatories. This included the Professional Dance Conservatory of Barcelona (EESA/CPD), where he ultimately served as Artistic Director from 2009 – 2017. Keith became a certified Gaga teacher in 2020, and is currently a full time member of the artistic staff at NBS in Toronto.
Gaga / dancers
Gaga is the movement language developed by Ohad Naharin throughout many years, parallel to his work as a world-renowned choreographer. Gaga classes are predicated on a deep activation of the body and physical sensations. We provide a framework for discovering and strengthening the body and adding flexibility, stamina, agility, and skills including coordination and efficiency while stimulating the senses and the imagination. Participants awaken numb areas, increase their awareness of habits, and improve their efficiency of movement inside multilayered tasks, and they are encouraged to connect to pleasure inside moments of effort. The research of Gaga is in a continual process of evolution, and the classes vary and develop accordingly.
Contemporary Training
Keith Morino offers an opportunity to explore movement quality and interpretation through clear form and musicality. Agency and choice are priorities while developing a clear perception of our physicality and interpretational talents. Influenced by his ballet training, professional dance experience and his training as a Gaga instructor, his classes follow modern dance principles such as use of space, gravity, and oppositional forces. The class is structured by a short warm up, followed by one or two technique exercises and a short performative variation.
Marc Geifes
Ballet Academy, HMTM
Marc Geifeswas trained at the Munich Ballet-Academy from 1988 to 1992. After graduating, he danced for six years under Konstanze Vernon and then for six years under Ivan Liška at the Bavarian State Ballet. During this time, he danced solo and character roles in both the classical and modern repertoire in ballets by, among others, Frederic Ashton, Ray Barra, John Cranko, Mats EK, William Forsythe, Jacopo Godani, Jiří Kylian, John Neumeier, Saburo Teshigawara and Hans van Manen. After his dance career, he studied physiotherapy in Amsterdam and graduated with a Bachelor of Health in 2007. From 2007 to 2010 he worked as a physiotherapist in Arnhem, where he cared for the dance company Introdans and the students of the Artez School of Dance, among others. From 2010 to 2020 he looked after the dancers of the Bavarian State Ballet and the Bavarian State Orchestra.
Since 2020, Marc Geifes has been teaching dance medicine at the HMTM Ballet Academy.
Warm-up and Check-in
We explore the body at the beginning of a dance day to prepare it for what lies ahead. We listen, feel, and investigate our musculoskeletal system. How am I feeling today, and how do I transition into the movement mode required for today? A fundamental warm-up where we gently mobilize and activate ourselves.
Cool-down and Check-out
Ideally concluding our dance day with a cool-down to initiate optimal recovery for the next day. We learn breathing, massage, and stretching techniques. Through individual and teamwork, we explore how to guide both body and mind into relaxation, concluding this day and being ready for the next.
Chantal Fink
Ballet Academy, HMTM
Chantal J. Fink started her dance training at the University of Music and Theatre Munich and graduated from the John Cranko School Stuttgart. She then danced as a member of the Stuttgart Ballet, Semperoper Ballet Dresden, the Bayerisches Staatsballett and as a soloist with Ballet Dortmund. In 2021, Chantal J. Fink received the Master Dance Teacher degree from the Palucca University of Dance Dresden and started teaching at the Ballet Academy of the University of Music and Theatre Munich the same year.
Classical Training
With the base of the Vaganova method the focus of the class is the understanding of the body as a whole, working on movement quality, dynamics as well as physical presence in classical motion.
Tamás Bakó
Tamás Bakó received his dance-education at the Budapest Ballet School in 1995. He has been a member of various foreign and Hungarian ensembles led by Ismael Ivo, Marco Santi, Adrienn Hód, Gábor Goda, and others. He has participated in numerous independent productions and projects as a dancer or co-creator. Since 2009, he has been teaching contemporary dance and Contact Improvisation at the Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy. From 2022, he’s coordinating the BA course at Budapest Circus Arts and Contemporary Dance College. Tamás Bakó has also worked as a guest teacher at other professional contemporary dance schools such as SEAD (Salzburg) and La Manufacture HES-SO (Lausanne).
Contemporary Training
Every movement counts’. The material of the class comes from different fields of dance and movement like contemporary dance, release, or contact improvisation. The class is designed to emphasize functionality and accessibility of the body’s architecture by investigating and utilising organic pathways of the body. By practicing set movement phrases and tasks, we will explore alignment, gravity, and momentum in both challenging and embracing ways. The rolling, walking, and skipping-hopping sequences will be used as vehicles to express these ideas through space, acting them in all possible directions.
Sophia Charlotte Becker
Sophie Charlotte Becker completed her training as a stage dancer at Iwanson International in Munich and studied theatre and performance studies at LMU Munich and Stockholm University. As a freelancer, she works with the kollektiv anderer tanz, Emese Nagy, Johannes Härtl and Joanne Leighton, among others, accepts commissions, f.ex. for the state theatre Ingolstadt or the Kulturbühne Spagat and realises her own projects. Sophie teaches contemporary dance at the August Everding Theatre Academy and Iwanson International. Her last production Hyperreality premiered in Munich in November 2022.
Nina Hümpel
has been the editor of tanznetz.de, an internet community for artistic stage dance in German-speaking countries, since 1996. From 2010-2023 she was the artistic director of the Biennale DANCE, the international festival for contemporary dance in Munich. She is also active in various dance contexts and networks as a lecturer, curator and juror. Nina Hümpel is a member of the Access to Dance – Tanzplan München initiative, which is committed to improving access to contemporary dance in the city through a wide-ranging network.
As a founding member of Tanz.Media, she is increasingly committed to the future of dance journalism and dance archives in the digital space. Her work as a board member of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland focuses on dance journalism, the independent scene and dance companies at municipal theatres.
