Micaela Gardner
Bio
I am a dancer, choreographer and director with a particular focus on site dance work.
I was trained classically and then developed my dance voice with modern and folk forms. My work is described as modern or post modern. My professional dance life has been taken up with setting works in outdoor locations, both with student and adult dancers. Site work occurs anywhere outside the proscenium and off the stage. My inspiration is more often found in outside environments.
My interest in working with student dancers engages around research, reflection, creativity and agency. Our process supports young dancers with license to make and understand their own dance making. We choose and then research a site, establishing its history, ecology, habitat, and species. Deriving touch points from our research, we generate gestures and phrases that develop into a suite of dances and set them in the landscape. The resulting work is fresh and meaningful, inviting dancers and audiences to contemplate our landscapes, as well as our mutual impact and connection with the environment.
Classes
Site Dance Making and Performance
Program type: 8-Week Residency
Grades: 7th through 12th
Hourly rate: $85.00
Workshop/Residency Program Fees: $3,000.00
Requires: Rehearsal Studio, twice-weekly for 2 hours
With a chosen site in mind, we research its elements, history, ecologies and species. Utilizing key words and phrases derived from our research, we build and develop dance material in an atmosphere of play, inquiry and discussion. The result is a 30-40 minute suite of dances performed publicly. Over the experience of developing and then performing our work, dancers employ imagination, investigation, construction and reflection. We learn collaboration, openness to feedback, making connections and responding. We improve our dance skills within a workshop atmosphere of improvisation, teaching and sharing our work. We embody our newly acquired knowledge through interpretive movement and exercise our agency to make dance.
Dance Building through Research
Program type: 4-Week Residency, 2 rehearsals per week
Grades: 7th through 12th
Hourly rate: $85.00
Workshop/Residency Program Fees: $1,500.00
Requires: Rehearsal Studio, twice-weekly for 2 hours
Themes and ideas that interest us are collectively selected and researched. Salient words and phrases are pulled from our research and used as inspiration for generating dance material. Beginning with smaller groups, we develop phrases that amass into larger dances. The result is a 20-minute suite of dances performed for school assembly and parent audiences.
Over the course of making and performing this work, dancers work with imagination, investigation, construction and reflection. We learn to collaborate with mutual respect and openness to feedback, making connections and responding, both to our research and each others’ work. We grow our dance skills of improvisation and retention, as well as enrich our self confidence with the lisence to imagine and make our own dances.