guest artist classes
2025 Visiting Artist Movement Classes
Visiting Artists and Artists-In-Residence from Keshet’s Makers Space Experience and Presenting Voices programs often offer guest classes, workshops, and master classes while they are in Albuquerque. Check here for classes as they come up, or follow our social media!
All classes are on a sliding scale from $0-$20 per class.
January 2025 Classes
Registration will open December 21, 2024!
Friday, January 17 | 9:30-11:00am
Choreography for Social Change: Striving for Truth Through Interdisciplinary Dance Making with Kim Karpanty
This making workshop will unite us through our responses to personal, cultural and world events. After a short warm-up, we will plunge into moving with texts and sensory stimuli as individuals, pairs, and groups. Prepare to share your stories and witness others’. Bring courage and a notebook with blank pages.
Saturday, January 18 | 9:30-11:00am
Rhythms of Resistance: Cultural Exchange through Native and Black Dance Traditions with Celeste Mercadel
This class examines the shared cultural and historical connections between Native and Black communities in both New Mexico and New Orleans, highlighting how dance and music foster resistance and identity. Participants explore traditions like Mardi Gras Indian culture and Native movement through rhythm and storytelling, celebrating cultural exchange and solidarity.
Sunday, January 19 | 9:30-11:00am
Modern Dance with Yvonne Montoya
This intermediate level modern dance class shares Graham-based classic modern dance foundational techniques with emphasis on contractions, spinal articulation, and floor work. Dancers will learn excerpts of Safos Dance Theatre’s repertoire in this fun and fast paced class.
Monday, January 20 | 9:30-11:00am
BAILA TODO/DANCE EVERYTHING with Nina Osoria Ahmadi
Inspired by popular music from diasporas of the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, we will discover what movements naturally emerge and bring joy.
Tuesday, January 21 | 9:30-11:00am
JAM with Joy Prendergast
Jam is a guided improvisation. Jam Class operates by listening to and following the rhythms and the textures of soul, groove, and funk in the body. By accessing our history, our experience, and the memories of our insides, we come upon many shades of joy and meaning that influence how we move. Jam Class rides along the arc of a playlist, moving from slow to upbeat, gentle to ecstatic. The body simultaneously finds itself both old and young, wise and experienced, as it delves into the essence of jamming at any age.
Wednesday, January 22 | 9:30-11:00am
Somatic-Based Movement Exploration with Lauren Lee
This class is rooted in sensation and delves into the exploration of the various pathways/textures present in our surroundings. How can the spaces around us inform or drive our movement? How do the movement landscapes of the people in our orbit inform our own? How can we move together?
Thursday, January 23rd | 9:30-11:00am
Bodies in Motion with Nell Breyer
Dancers explore biological and mechanical constraints of moving systems. Following a physical warm up, and exploration of the surrounding spaces, participants will work with their our own bodies and in partners, using physical portraiture, mapping, paper/pencil, cameras and other simple tools, to investigate diverse ways to capture a range of experiences that are accessible through bodily motion. Movement Scores using analog and digital media are integrated, layered, reorganized and edited in order to find new ways of compressing / expanding time, developing a movement language and directing ephemeral kinetic perceptions. Choreographic, filmic, drawn and installed studies will be shared at the culmination of the 90-minute workshop and aim to introduce a regular ‘live sketch’; movement practice.
February 2025 Classes
Registration will open December 21, 2024!
Friday, February 7 | 9:30am- 11am
Contemporary Improvisation with Jessy Crist
Contemporary Improvisation is a movement workshop focused on exploring our bodies’ authentic voice through movement. We will work to use effort as a motor and break out of habitual movement. Dancers will be encouraged to use their existing movement vocabulary as a support for new choice and risk taking. As a group we will access what we already know as genuine movement, cycling through a prompted improvisational score, and phrase work. This class is suited for those who have experienced movement on any level, and for those who have an understanding of their bodies abilities.
Saturday Feb 8 | 9:30am- 11am
Action Theater/Building a Communal Vocabulary with Isa Braun
Using improvisational exercises informed by the Viewpoints Training developed by Mary Overlie, this class will offer space for intent physical listening. We will use the six ‘viewpoints’ (space, time, shape, movement, story and emotion) to inform our collective physical storytelling using mostly pedestrian movements. No formal dance experience required!
Sunday, Feb 9 | 9:30am- 11am
The dance that doesn’t want anything/ Release technique to contact improvisation class with Maya Schwartz
In this class, we explore movement through disorientation,falling and failing, drawing inspiration from Donna Haraway’s “arms that don’t want anything.” We will focus on neutral touch, building trust, and shifting perspectives through inversions and falling.
Monday, Feb 10 | 9:30am- 11am
Attentive Motion with Sanchita Sharma
This class views attention as the primary resource to generate and organize bodily movement. We use improvisation, contemporary floor-work, and non-linear phrases to explore attention as an impulse and a tool to choreograph movement. We work to enhance spinal articulation and mobility, reconnect with our breath, and ground our bodies.
Tuesday, Feb 11 | 9:30am- 11am
Digging: imagination and self-centered exploration with Minh Nguyen
How do we move when we focus inward? After a guided warm-up of about 30 minutes the workshop will switch to facilitate the improvisatory searching where “diggers” move with eyes closed (preferably) while dedicated observers/containers witness and keep the diggers safe from harm and collision. It’s a practice to explore trust, observation, protection, discomfort, and expansion.
Wednesday Feb 12 | 9:30am- 11am
Zoning with José Luis
A composition class, we will arrive into self-awareness before offering prompts and conversations through dance making. I aim for us to leave with a broader sense of defining our practices as creators, observers, and supporters. Leading questions to investigate: How do you navigate with others? Who are you?