Guest Choreographers
Natasha Korney
Dates: Feb 17, 24, Mar 3, 10, 17 & 24 - 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm - DJD
Bio
A popular guest artist with numerous arts organizations, and a graduate of the Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (DJD) Professional Training Program, Natasha has been a featured dancer with the DJD company for ten years. During her time spent with DJD, she’s explored choreography with her fellow dancers, and her work has been presented in numerous DJD Dancer-Choreographed shows. Natasha has become increasingly interested in creating and welcomes the opportunity to continue to find ways to solidify her choreographic voice.
Workshop Info: An exploration of how one’s personal movement style can inform or be informed by the use of Jazz principles such as improvisation, connection to music, and sharing of vernacular. The goal is to find a new movement language or expression that meets halfway between what we already know and what we can learn from each other.
Photo credit: Noel Bégin
Kyra Newton
Dates: Feb 25, Mar 4 & 11 - 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm - DJD
Bio
Kyra Newton is a contemporary dance artist and somatic healing practitioner. She is invigorated by mindful movement and the possibilities that exist within contemporary dance and somatics to find inner healing, resolution, pleasure, and peace. As a facilitator of dance, she aims to bring people together to have a shared experience of being present in the body. As a choreographer, she is inspired by the connection that exists between the body, heart, mind, and earth and how dance can impact both the mover and audience members in very transformative ways. Kyra believes that art is a portal for change and that when we create and consume art in a conscious/mindful way, we can shift our communities, city and beyond in magnificently positive ways. In this current time, Kyra is inspired to create choreography that explores one’s relationship to felt sensations and how they can be embodied through abstract movement to tell a story about the human experience.
Workshop Info: Dance gets to be both pleasurable and fun. For these sessions, we will be focusing on the intersection between the physical form of contemporary dance and states of being. For example, the state of bliss - when everything is going well in your life, you feel confident, and your hopes are high - how can we blend this state of being with physical movement? For each session you will learn choreographed phrases of movement and explore improvisational concepts to create short dance pieces to discover what feels nourishing in your body. Each session will have a different focus providing you with a new entry point for inquiry.
Melanie Henderson Batycky
Dates: Mar 31, Apr 7 & 14 - 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm - DJD
Bio
Melanie Henderson Batycky Began her ballet training in Albuquerque, NM. She spent summers training at The Pacific Northwest Ballet school, and The School of American Ballet. And later moved to train full time at the San Francisco Ballet School where she was awarded the Robert Kirby Memorial scholarship for outstanding achievement in dance. Her professional dance career spanned over 17 years where she danced with The San Francisco Ballet as a member of the corps de ballet, Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet as a principal dancer, and with The Alberta Ballet where she danced both soloist and principal roles. She also danced as a guest artist with Ballet BC and The San Jose Dance Theater, and performed at The Miami International Dance Festival in 2002. Melanie has worked with choreographers such as Chistopher Wheeldon, David Bentley, William Forsyth, Alonzo King, Jorma Elo, and Jean Grand-Maitre amongst others. Her choreographic experience includes ballets for The Wright Studio,The Company Show, and Ballet Bodies YYC.
Workshop Info: My workshops will be an exploration of contemporary ballet as well as abstract movement qualities that express human emotions. The movement style that I am investigating moves us toward the connection to our higher self through contemporary ballet, movement and classical music. Do we come closer to our true selves through movement and peeling away the layers that surround us as dancers and as humans? Can we express and heal ourselves by letting go of deep emotion through dance? The level of the workshops is intermediate to advanced ballet-trained dancers.
Barbara England
Dates: Apr 21, 28 & May 5th - 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm - DJD
Bio
Barbara is choreographer, dance and performance artist based in Calgary, Alberta. After completing a classical ballet education she expanded her training to include contemporary dance, performance, and live art practices. She completed post-graduate choreographic studies with a focus on practice-based research methodologies in Kassel, Germany. Since then, she has been an artist in residence at Decidedly Jazz Creative Residency Program, Atelier REAL (Lisbon) with the PRES collaborative, and most recently with AND_lab at Polo de Gaivotas (Lisbon) with Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre.
Since 2018, her work as been performed at Sozo Vim (Germany), Calgary’s Central Public Library for Springboard Performance’s Fluid Festival, Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre’s Art Party, Dancer’s Studio West’s Quick & Dirty Film Festival, and Facet Music’s Chinese New Year Celebration(s) at the Bella Concert Hall and The Grand Theatre.
Barbara’s work is stylistically undefined — the process and outcomes unfold depending on the unique alchemy of the people, personalities, priorities, and circumstances in the room. Whether it results in a dance piece for the stage or a participatory public art happening, it is always approached with experimental vigour and collective care.
Workshop Info: During the Ballet Bodies YYC choreographic workshops, Barbara plans to develop phrases that merge contemporary vocabulary with physical theatre…and whatever you bring! Clear as mud? In short, we’ll generate movement qualities through improvisation, learn specific movement vocabulary, and then see what happens when we f#*k with various elements. All levels are encouraged to attend, and everyone can expect to have a good time (and maybe even sweat a bit!)
Luciana Fortes
Dates: Saturdays, Apr 8, 15 & 22 - 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm - DJD
Bio
Luciana Fortes is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has lived in the United States, France and Canada. As an overseas incomer from the Latin world, her work is centered around what is familiar and foreign, and the space and opportunities in between. She immerses in the idiosyncrasies of the body while embodying the visceral agency of music to push the threshold of comedy and the absurd in dance and theatre.
Luciana holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, and has performed her works at the Shooting Gallery Performance Series and Interplay festival in BC. She also won 1st Place in the Small Stakes Performance Edition of the FringeArts festival in Philadelphia.
Workshop Info: In my workshop, expect to play, laugh, do lots of gestures, and obviously, MOVE! I like to start with a warm-up and do some exercises to get the jitters out. Then, you will learn some movement and then get to twist it, distort it, and basically make it your own! Some of the exercises will be individual, and some in pairs. You will have a chance to personalize the movement according to your personality and story. And, of course, we always end with a mini-sharing session. Dancers of all levels and styles are welcome :)
Daniela Erewa
Dates: Saturdays, Apr 29, May 6 & 13 - 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm - DJD
Bio
Daniela Erewa was born and raised in the beautiful city of Monterrey, Mexico. She participated in various national and international classical competitions, such as “Youth American Grand Prix,” obtaining prestigious awards and scholarships to international schools, such as Orlando Ballet School, Kirov School of Dance and Rock School of Dance.
Daniela has training in all styles such as Ballet, Jazz, Contemporary and Musical Theater. Daniela moved to Vancouver in the spring of 2019 and was able to train with Coastal City Ballet and take classes at Harbour Dance Centre with renowned choreographers and instructors. She has danced and done the background in projects for Netflix, NBC and Disney, working with producer Kenny Ortega, Mandy Moore, and choreographers like Paul Becker, Jill Meyers and Louis Hardsky.
She moved to Calgary in the summer of 2021 and continues her training, learning and creating as a dancer, teacher and choreographer in diverse studios around the city.
Workshop Info: Commercial Movement Workshop
If you want to experience a different way of moving with new and relevant music. Forming new muscular, neural and emotional connections, this space is for you. Dancers who want to explore beyond what they know, willing to expose themselves and feel vulnerable, this is the space. Taking this course will benefit you to find yourself again as a dancer, maybe to know a part of you that you did not know and to grow. You will learn to move differently, think differently and feel different.
We will work with the style of each person individually while working as a team. The choreography will be made up of formations, visual ideas and aesthetics, as well as floor work and rapid movements.
Are you ready?
Graham Mckelvie
Dates: Fridays: May 12, 19, 26 & Jun 2 - 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm / Saturdays: May 20 & 27 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm - DJD
Bio
Hailing from Saskatoon, Graham trained at Canada’s National Ballet School, The Martha Graham School, The School of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and the School of the Toronto Dance Theatre. He performed with the Toronto Dance Theatre for 15 years, working with Canada’s leading choreographers and becoming well-known as a dancer possessed of a certain sensuality and exotic masculinity. He was a featured performer in The Four Horsemen Project, a work of movement and sound poetry which played to critical acclaim and won six Dora awards. Graham was for three years a full-time faculty professor at Kobe Women’s University in Japan. He currently resides in Calgary and is the director for contemporary training at the School of the Alberta Ballet and continues to choreograph and perform. Notable choreographic achievements include, “Songs sung on mountaintops” performed at the Nishinomiya Arts centre in Osaka Japan, “Mad World” at the Fluid Festival, Calgary Alberta, and works shown at the Dance in Canada Festival, Ottawa Ontario and the Toronto Fringe Festival of Dance. His dedication to his students at the Alberta Ballet School has led to many creations, most recently “Pandemic Diaries”, performed at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Calgary Alberta.
Workshop Info:
For my time with Ballet Bodies YYC I want to explore the communicative potential in gestures. Gestures are a thing we see every day and we take them for granted, almost unseen but completely understood. There is grace or insistence, forcefulness and surrender, inherent in movement that occurs spontaneously in every person. They are genuine and authentic to the doer and reflect nuances in the personality. We will explore ascribing meaning to gestures and, conversely, divesting gestures of meaning. We will construct and deconstruct. Open to any who are curious!
Jared Herring
Dates: Saturdays-Feb 25, Mar 4 & 11- 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm - DJD
Bio
Jared Tobias Herring is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring storytelling through dance, film, narrative and music. He trained in contemporary and jazz during a minor at the UofC while studying an English major.
He has worked closely with W&M, Michelle Moss, Jason Galeos, Davida Monk, and Taryn Javier--artists he considers strong mentors. Jared trained in house dance abroad in New York and Seoul, Korea and has taught house dance in Calgary for four years. He actively explores dance in film; in 2022, he collaborated with N.A.P.P.Y Dance Collective, directed a screen dance in France and worked as an actor/dancer, composer and 1st and 2nd camera for several projects.
Most recently, Jared collaborated with Michelle Moss and Kevin Fraser for a live-work presented in Toronto during Dance Immersion & IABD conference.
Currently, Jared is developing a solo work which involves multiple media forms and live performances.
Workshop Info: Jared will explore the intersection between House dance, Contemporary movement and Capoeira floorwork. Dancers will navigate balletic forms through the groove of House into turns, movement in and out of the floor, technical foot patterns, jumps and fluid momentum chasing. Vocabulary will shift each week and balance itself to the dancers in the room.