During Keigwin + Company’s run at The Joyce Theater last month, Nicole Wolcott invited the dance community to join her in an invigorating and technically challenging class at DANY Studios. Nicole asked us each to be present in the space, to “arrive.” In that moment of arrival, we felt our bodies in the studio and we attuned ourselves to the energy in the space. From a place of consciousness, we filled ourselves with what Wolcott calls the “Joy of Dance” (J.O.D.). Wolcott explained that the J.O.D. is the reason we came to class, the reason we will continue to dance into the future. It is that special feeling, that shared love that we experience while performing and watching dance.

Wolcott encouraged us to meld her unique and athletic aesthetic with our own intrinsic sense of timing and movement. Upside-down our legs turned in grand clockwork designs. Right-side-up we found ourselves precariously balanced between labile and stable senses of gravity. We moved with a loose sense of timing that required the use of musical and intuitive rhythmic impulses. Throughout the class, Wolcott’s delightful sense of humor and honest laughter reminded us, again, that dance is fun! The last quarter of the two-hour class synthesized all that came before, as we performed to Björk’s “Innocence.”

The master class series continued on Friday, March 26 with an Afro-Brazilian class taught by Isis Paula Barbosa dos Santos, a DanceBrazil company member, and on Friday, April 9 DANY Studios welcomes Jerri Kumery, Ballet Master for the Richmond Ballet.

Kumery tells us that her advanced ballet class will emphasize a sense of dynamism and fullness of movement, while utilizing a variety of rhythms and accents, which highlight the “gifts and spirit of the artist.” She will guide dancers to move holistically with spatial intent and clarity in order to involve the whole body and spirit. With “movement as an instrument, the body and spirit allow us,” she says, “to see the music.” Jerri Kumery tells the aspiring ballet dancer that it is important to, “Be who you are… honest and genuine, and dance as if there is no tomorrow.”

To RSVP or find more information on these and other upcoming DANY Studios master classes, click here.