a performing and teaching company

Spring Events

A series of community dance-related events will be presented in Ithaca, NY in conjunction with the Company’s performance season of e-Motion, co-produced by The Cherry Arts and the Company. These are opportunities to talk, view, dance, and create with Daniel and dancer Sarah Hillmon. Each event is free of charge. For any questions please email the Company: info@gwirtzmandance.org

BAGELS AND DANCE FILMS

When: April 23 (Sunday): 12pm-1:30pm

Where: 5 Sisters Studio, 119 S Cayuga St #301, Ithaca, NY 14850 (in the Ithaca Commons)

A community gathering of conversations, food, and films designed to connect local dance artists, educators, and students. A few of the Company’s dance films will be screened and Daniel will introduce the acclaimed Dance With Us platform, created to promote ways to view and speak about dance with comfort, introducing, or reinforcing, the language, essential concepts, and perspectives of dance. RSVP to info@gwirtzmandance.org

DANCE BY THE WATER

When: May 7 (Sunday): 1pm-2pm

Where: The Cherry Arts, 102 Cherry St, Ithaca, NY 14850

Designed for all. The movement workshop consists of fun, easy-to-learn, folk and social dances designed to create a shared common experience among the community regardless of age, ability, or dance experience. Hosted at The Cherry Arts.

Dance by the Water, a highly-interactive teaching event, creates inclusive spaces where diversity is celebrated. Designed to promote the physical and social benefits of communal dancing, and to increase an understanding of global culture, this program brings communities together through a common shared experience. The event teaches simple dances from around the world and introduces dances to people of differing physical abilities and dance backgrounds. Finding the greatest common denominator, and never dumbing things down, the program is audience-proof and a blast! With a long and varied history, Dance by the Water has been replicated over the past two decades in a range of venues with a range of institutional partners including: the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation; Friends of Fort Tryon Trust; Manhattan’s Summer on the Hudson; University Settlement’s camp in Beacon, NY; The MV Preservation Trust in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard; The Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY; and various community centers, universities, colleges, and schools nationally and internationally.

THE ART OF THE DUET

When: May 22 (Monday): 5pm-6:30pm

Where: 5 Sisters Studio, 119 S Cayuga St #301, Ithaca, NY 14850 (in the Ithaca Commons)

Guided by Daniel and Company dancer Sarah Hillmon, this interactive creative workshop is focused on partnering, sharing compositional strategies and techniques to expand one’s palette of dance-making skills. Open to dancers of any age and level, from students to professionals. One of the greatest gifts dance education can promote is the pleasure of working collaboratively with another person. In this compositional master class, participants will work with partners throughout the entire session. Partnering skills depend upon impulsive, pliable, and perceptive decision-making. Negotiating both the large and subtle shifts which occur in real-time between partners requires a deep insight and intellectual resilience. The focus on listening and sensing with the full body requires a focused frame of mind and the capacity to consider another before and equal to one’s self. In the class.

Designed to model the choreographic process Daniel and Sarah have been immersed in through the creation of e-Motion, the workshop offers participants insight into the content and form of e-Motion, providing immediate, up-close, and personal glimpses into the conceptual considerations and aesthetic decisions of making art. Please RSVP to info@gwirtzmandance.org if possible, although all are welcome to show up that day at the door of 5 Sisters terrific studio!