PHILOSOPHY:
Chris Elam is guided by an artistic philosophy that every individual is a powerful creative source. By coaching performance skills, choreography, improvisation, contact climbing and partnering, Elam imparts skills and perspectives that encourage students to be inventive in the creation and execution of their movement and choreography.

Improbable Partnering and Exceptional Physical Interactions
Elam combines the teaching of improvisation, choreographic and performance skills, and the physics of contact partnering to develop both heightened body awareness and to encourage new types of creativity in movement invention. Based on the process he uses with his own company to develop improbable situations, Elam teaches skills and ways of thinking with a focus on how students apply these principals directly to their own work. Students create original climbing combinations and examine their implications. Frequently, Elam's company members include a studio or stage performance that becomes content for discussion with the students.

This 10 week course was most recently taught as guest faculty at Brown University. (Sections of this class can be taught as masterclasses, and residencies of various lengths).

Balinese-Modern Technique
Elam's technique incorporates his extensive training in Balinese and Modern dance. A warm-up involving modern, yoga, and imagery leads to phrasework in which dancers send sculptures through space, allow taut, angular movement to transform into spongy liquid actions, and execute complex balances.

Trust Through Movement
Focused on group development, this workshop is for dancers and non-dancers interested in building camaraderie through the use of contact and trust activities. It has been taught to a range of groups (professional dancers, sports teams, peer counsels, elementary and middle school students, and leadership training organizations). Participants learn movement tools to create improvisations based on themes important to the particular group. 

Elam also teaches Repertory and creates New Works. Workshops are available as one-time master classes or extended residencies. Inquire for references.
 

STUDENT TESTIMONIALS:
Testimonial 1
Testimonial 2
Testimonial 3
Testimonial 4
Testimonial 5

Objectives:

By the end of the semester students should be better able to:

• identify and create a vast range of complex physical relationships;
• create unspoken physical dialogues using a broad palette of movement choices coupled with a honed ability to differentiate and articulate movement nuances;
• thoughtfully choose and direct the usage of intension, dynamics, proximity, and focus when creating partnerings;
• apply the physical skills of counterbalance, climbing, and contact partnering to execute a range of movement qualities;
• make use of the context for an interaction – the what, where, who, why, and how which the material is intended to represent.

Examples of Wednesday Workshop Class Exercises:

• Creating vocal maps to movement sentences and then stripping the sound to create the semblance of a conversation between performers.
• Writing character descriptions and then creating movement abstractions to craft scenes in which they intersect.
• Instant Memory Improvisations to hone recall ability.
• Partner climbing training.
• Emotional sculptures: looking at the implications of human shapes.
• Trait-based circumstances – knowing the implications of your choices.
• Ideokinesis imagery activities: widening movement range and potential.

Requirements:
This is a satisfactory/no credit course. In order to receive a grade of S, students must:

1. Participate fully in the rehearsal sessions, attend all tech & dress rehearsals and perform in the final work created for the Spring Dance Concert.

2. Practice material throughout the week outside of class, such that at each Tuesday rehearsal students are prepared to learn further, and the work can progress.

3. Participate in class discussions and activities. I expect students to come to all classes having read and considered the material carefully. On certain weeks throughout the semester movement studies will be assigned to be examined and discussed in class.

4. Maintain a class journal with weekly entries. Journal should respond both to the rehearsal process (your experience, what you observe), and to the class workshops. Each week develop a question in response to the week’s assigned reading, rehearsal, or workshop and write a response on the subject. Use the journal to take notes, sketch ideas, and work through material.  Journals will be collected three times during the semester. 

Journals should be a useful tool for you to process the content of the class and to retain ideas and skills that emerge. Submitting the journal during the semester will allow me to get a sense for what you are experiencing, and provides a benchmark for reflection. Students are encouraged to speak about the subjects in their journals with one another. 

ABSTRACT:
Improbable Partnering and Exceptional Physical Interactions:
Experimental Movement Theater for Dancers and Actors
Drawing from both dance and theater, we will create complex movement relationships between couples and groups. Students will examine ideas, build skills and acquire tools for developing exceptional interactions and improbable partnering onstage. This will be achieved both through movement training and class exercises, and by participating in a rehearsal process culminating in the creation of a dance-theater piece performed by the enrolled students to be presented in the Spring Dance Concert. We will train in physical climbing skills to create multi-person shapes and sculptures, practice improvisational movement, examine the effects of shifts in movement dynamics, use voice and imagery to unleash physical communication, and examine abstract storytelling as a means of building onstage relationships.