Dance Tech Lab
Thursdays 6:30 - 7:30

For Int/Adv level dancers (It is intended for dancers to attend the previous Awareness Through Movement class to fully benefit from this class.)
$22 for Awareness Through Movement and Dance Tech Lab together (5:30 - 7:30)

In this class dancers will use their understanding from the Awareness Through Movement lesson to illuminate their individual technical know-how. Dancers are encouraged to shed unhelpful body ideals and movement ideals that hinder the evolving of their full expression of dance from the inside out. Through the use of skeletal models and specially designed exercises dancers increase their available options for movement patterns. Instead of forcing flexibility stretches, dancers learn how to recognize what they are doing that is inhibiting flexibility, and how moving skeletally actually encourages healthy flexibility (also known as the full articulation of the skeleton). Instead of controlling and forcing every aspect of their body, dancers learn how the skeleton can work as a unit with each part responding to every other part. When the muscles reorganize to support individual skeletal ranges of movement the result is better, easier, more fluid technique and dancing. I have seen this way of working help both professional dancers and recreational dancers alike. Contact me if you have any questions or just come to class!

For questions or more info contact Ekaat ekalos@gmx.com or 505-469-6978

Eka is a performer, choreographer and teacher. She has performed around the world with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Pearl Lang Dance Theatre, Moving People Dance, Catherine Cabeen and Company, and Robert Wood Dance NY among others. She is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner as well as a GYROTONIC® and GYOKINESIS® Master Trainer. She is co-creator of Sparrowdance. In the present Eka creates open system performances that explore dimensions of time and space underneath thought-based movement control. Ideas from dynamic systems approach to development and Moshe Feldenkrais’ work and writings inspire her movement practice and her performance systems. Eka uses experiential anatomy principles that she learned from years of studying alternative movement systems to teach functional dance technique from the inside out. Eka strives to initiate her students into a dialogue of development with their movement patterns that can inform their technique continually across all dance styles. She invites her students of all walks of life to find ways to increase options for movement, develop their awareness, and enact action patterns more efficiently.

Eka grew up in Los Angeles, CA where she studied Jazz, Ballet and Modern dance. Her jazz teachers included Jackie Sleight (serving as Sleight’s assistant from 1990-1994), Terry Beeman, and Doug Cauldwell. She studied Modern with former Alvin Ailey dancer Ron Brown and performed his works in Crossroads Dance Company. Her ballet teachers were Adelia Roman and Rosemary Valaire. Eka moved to New York City in 1994 after graduating high school and continued her dance education on full scholarship at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. In 1996 she was accepted into the Martha Graham Dance Company at the age of 20, with whom she performed in the United States and Europe. While in New York Eka trained in Ballet with Finus Jung, Modern with Max Stone, Klein Technique from Susan Klein, and the GYROTONIC® Method with Juliu Horvath. She also danced professionally with the Pearl Lang Dance Company and Javier Dzul Dance Theater. In 2001 Eka moved to Santa Fe, NM to focus on creating her own work and teaching. She served as a principal dancer and resident choreographer for Moving People Dance Theater from 2003- 2009, performing works by Robert Moses, Gail Gilbert, and Sam Watson among others. Eka has trained highschool age pre-professional dance students in Santa Fe since 2004. Her students have been accepted to Juilliard, Boston Conservatory, NYU Tisch, Cal Arts, University of Arizona, Skidmore, Cornish, Lines Pre-professional Program, and Stanford among others. She has been teaching the GYROTONIC® Movement system since 1996. She is a graduate of the 2013 Berkeley 7 Feldenkrais Professional Training program with Director Dennis Leri. Eka loves living in Santa Fe New Mexico, evolving her own work, helping emerging dance artists find their voice and their power, and helping her students from all walks of life expand their awareness of themselves and their development.

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