Photo by Petra Migneau
You’re invited to join us for our sixth annual Winter Intensive! This workshop series is for dancers, movement artists and performance makers to come together and be guided through a week-long exploration. We encourage you to join us in Pōneke and take the time to be nourished and connect to one another. This year we have Norwegian New Zealanders Matthew Onarheim-Smith and Benedikte Onarheim-Smith leading workshops and sharing their practice, offering an opportunity to fill the creative toolkit with luscious dance moves and generative improvisation tasks.
There are limited spaces available for this Intensive, so registration will be by application. To apply, please complete the simple online application form below by Wednesday 29th June.
Monday 18th July - Friday 22nd July 2022
10am-4pm
Northland Memorial Community Centre
5 Woburn Road, Northland, Wellington
Cost: $150
Please email Artistic Manager Anita Hunziker if you have any questions - anita@footnote.org.nz
Workshops
The Sugar Free Centrifuge
This class will be looking at how internal geometries of the body can be organized to follow optimized external geometries through space. We will explore centrifuge as a means to arc in and out of the floor and into the air. We will be off center, off/on balance, leaning into our turns this way and that. We will also use our fascial system’s elasticity to give some time out to our muscles. AND by harnessing the centrifuge our muscles can also take some rest breaks. Less work = less sugar consumed. YAY! In some moments we can even be, or some parts of us at least, pretty much sugar free!!l. Double YAY!. What more do you need from a workshop? :).
Matthew Onarheim-Smith
Matthew has worked internationally as a teacher, performer and dance maker. He has worked with a diverse array of companies such as Random Scream of Belgium, Carol Brown Dances of UK/NZ, Company Willi Dorner, Theater Combinat, and Klaus Obermaier of Austria. In New Zealand he was a company member of Black Grace but also danced with Human Garden, Commotion Company, Touch Compass.
He has been a long term collaborator in one of Norway’s major companies Impure.” He also danced in Impure collaborations with Cena 11 of Brazil and with the hip hop crew deepdowndopism.
Matthew’s dance teaching draws extensively from his obsessive body nerdom as he is a practicing Osteopath, a certified Pilates and an Axis Syllabus teacher.
Together with Benedikte Onarheim-Smith he founded Kiwigians Inc. in 2020. Their first work This piece won’t change the World was awarded best dance piece of the Dunedin Fringe Festival 2021.
Finding Your Inner Flamingo with Benedikte
This workshop will be about you finding your playful creativity in performing.
We will be working in groups with slightly silly creative tasks that hopefully can spark your imagination and pleasure in performing.
Very often in the (performing) world we construct a certain way of working, basing feedback on criticism. Somehow that seems like the only way of reaching a certain quality and standard. What happens if we decide to starve the ‘bad’ and focus on the positive, like we are supposed to do with children (if you are a parent or a caretaker you probably know what I’m talking about).
We start with a movement based somatic class, where we explore the moments in our bodies. You will get your heart rate up. If you have a strong technique in your repertoire , you are welcomed to explore it and push it. If you have not, it doesn’t matter. Do what you can. How subtle is the body and can we at times move out of the conscious and into letting the body take the lead from the space of pleasure? I will lead you into imagery to spark your exploration. After the movement class, it’s more up to you how you would like to perform. Because that is what is going to happen, we will perform for each other in a safe and supportive environment. You can be very much in your body and/or you can explore your voice through talking, storytelling and maybe even singing. Let’s see how far we get in a short space of time.
Benedikte Onarheim-Smith
Benedikte Onarheim-Smith is a contemporary dancer, teacher, and choreographer from Norway. She received her BA in Modern/Contemporary Dance from Norway's elite Art Academy in 2009. Since graduating she has worked as a freelance dancer, teacher, choreographer, and dance producer. She created and produced a concept called "An Evening", that was a forum where artists could show their unfinished or experimental works at any state of development. “An Evening" received funding from the Norwegian Arts Council and FFUK and ran from 2011-2018. Benedikte has danced for Norwegian dance companies Stellaris Dansteater (NO), Moltrix Scenekunst (NO), Company UT and for the U.K based artist Jorge Cresis. She was awarded a grant to travel to Vienna to attend the Impuls Tanz Festival and to study the Axis Syllabus in the U.S.
Benedikte is also a Polestar Pilates Certified Practitioner and a Mentor In Training, in addition to being an Audio Book Reader.