MOVE WITH BLiPSWiTCH
Weekly Thursday Class
Thursdays, 10:00-11:30AM
First Street Studio | 701 Tillery St. Austin, TX
$10 Pre-registration
We are proud to offer the most financially accessible year-round weekly dance class in Austin.
Class will begin with a mix of familiar, functional movement patterns exploring body availability, human relation, space occupied, and space created through improvisation and set ideas. After generating muscular warmth through improvisational games and isometric ideas, we will continue on to technical phrase work, both standing and floor-centric, drawing attention to momentum, efficiency, and body awareness. We work to expand our limits through a wide range of largely locomotive and athletic movements, involving weight shifts, directional changes, and exploring the body’s relationship to gravity.
Together we will create a shared experimental space where figuring shit out, mistakes, and individuality are welcome. You will sweat!
Taught by co-director Alex Miller
GUEST ARTIST - MAY 16
2nd Best Dance CompanY
REGISTER VIA OUR REGULAR CLASS LINK
About 2nd Best’s Class:
”This hour and a half shared practice will cycle through a grounded warmup intended to organize the body, conditioning to further investigate use of tone and economical energy, sequential and momentum based traveling material, and will culminate in a final phrase designed to continue our physical research of that day. Text and/or vocalization is often utilized within this class structure in order to familiarize the body and mind with the task of speaking and dancing so that when we are asked to do that within a performance context we don't freak out.”
2nd Best is based out of NYC and lives online here.
Thursday, May 16
10:00-11:30am
First Street Studio
Taught by company member Courtney Barth.
Photo: Ingrid Holmquist
and Don’t miss their evening length performance of RED
Wednesday, May 15 @ 7:30pm
at First Street Studio
2nd Best Dance Company creates, performs, and teaches physically rigorous, sometimes virtuosic, almost always slapstick dance-plays. We connect to audiences, students, and professionals alike as we share emotionally accessible work that is relatable, honest, and resonant.
Our work…
- believes in art-making that is exploratory, empathetic, and goofy.
- values feeling over reality and seeks our truest sensations over absolute truth.
- blends humor and tragedy while tackling “topics like death and queer identity through rigorous, inventive movement and wit” (Dance Magazine).
- grapples with big ideas in very human ways (aka messy ways).
Pursuing these interests, our work has gone past the traditional dance proscenium to include collaborations in sculpture, animation, theater, film, and site-specific works. Led by Hannah Garner, a recipient of the Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch in 2020, 2nd Best continues to seek multidisciplinary partnerships, explore limits of the body, and find solace in the humor of being human.
2nd Best is thrilled to be on the first stop of their second tour of RED, beginning in Oklahoma City, heading south to Dallas and Austin, and ending at home in Brooklyn.
Hannah’s work has been commissioned by Whim W’Him Seattle Contemporary Dance, GroundWorks DanceTheater, Kizuna Dance, the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, The Wassaic Project, A-Y/Dancers, and the Hartt School, as well as musical artists like Snail Mail, Half Waif, and Frankie Cosmos. 2nd Best productions have been presented through Gibney Dance, GALLIM, Arts by the People, Mark Morris Dance Group, The Ace Hotel, Triskelion Arts, Friends Seminary, Dixon Place, The Wassaic Project, WOW Cafè Theatre for The New York International Fringe Festival, and Chen Dance Center, among others.
SPECIAL 2-HOUR BLIP CLASS - MAY 30
Join us for an extended, 2-hour BLiP class as part of the Connec(TX)ions Dance Festival Summer Intensive, led by co-director Alex Miller, with additional phrase work with co-director Taryn Lavery. Check out the full intensive schedule and then sign up through the festival’s portal— linked below— instead of our regular class link!
Use code CTXDF-PRO for a 70% off professional rate, which brings the cost down to $10.50
