BEGINNERS PROGRAMME - WEEK 3

Hatha yoga with Hugo Mega

Hatha yoga is seen as one of the most traditional styles of yoga. This ancient practice focuses on balance, bringing the Yin and Yang, the Sun (Ha) and the Moon (Tha) together into the body. This slower paced, static practice focuses on building a strong foundation and understanding each posture. In this class you will explore the benefits of Pranayama, breathing exercises as a new relation to abdominal and lumbar support. When teaching this style Hugo emphasizes breath awareness while developing your alignment and building a safe practice.

Hugo Mega (PT)

Hugo Mega is a Portuguese yogi, artist, dreamer, and life coach based in Brussels, Belgium. Hugo’s passion for movement & artistic endeavors are the pulse of his life. He dedicated his undergraduate studies to exploring his body’s physical capacities through dance and circus. After finishing his circus studies, yoga enters center stage of his explorative focus. What starts as a nice way to stay in shape, becomes a passion. This changes his life and his perspective on the body. Yoga becomes a lifestyle and in 2014 he starts teaching at Yyoga in Brussels. This urban sanctuary becomes his second home, where he is a core member of the family. When teaching Yoga Hugo is passionate about alignment and anatomy, exploring new ways to connect to the body focusing on awareness and injury prevention. He desires now to support you on your journey of perspective, sharing with you the great practices that support him throughout his journey.

Contemporary technique class with David Hernandez

Dynamic Movement Systems
David Hernandez is interested in movement, training the body and expression through detailed and precise movement, without the loss of the dancer’s individual expression. he is developing an approach to dance technique and movement vocabulary that embraces physicality, craft and approaches the body as an instrument. The class is highly physical with an emphasis on detail. We concentrate on establishing a clear, efficient body alignment as a base to move from while making gravity our partner through discovering the notion of falling and redirected weight. There is an exposure to very specific, dynamic movement vocabulary that concentrates on moving weight, density, texture and the musicality of physical material.

All parts of the body are used to gesture, often play against each other like contrapuntal melody lines. The form is clear and provides a partition in which the dancers can challenge themselves against its rigor while finding a personal approach to the material. Each individual and individual body is different, therefore the material must be translated by each person in their own unique way while honing and crafting the material on their particular body. The class gives the keys to do this while providing tools and skills usable in other styles of work as well.

David Hernandez (US)

David’s unique choreographic voice and detailed dance language has brought critically acclaimed work to stages across Europe for over two decades. Since 2015, he has deepened his choreographic research through a partnership with Cacao Bleu vzw under the banner dh+ / David Hernandez and Collaborators. Within this framework, he created and toured the productions For Movement’s Sake Hullabaloo and Sketches on Scarlatti. These works were supported domestically by STUK (Leuven), Monty (Antwerp), Beursschouwburg (Brussels), and C-mine (Genk) and internationally by the Ballets de Lorraine, Scènes Vosges (Épinal), Into The Fields Festival (Bonn)… amongst many others.

In addition to creating choreographic work with a core group of committed dancers, he continues to influence new generations through his pedagogical activities as a faculty teacher at P.A.R.T.S and guest teacher for various education programs and studios internationally, teaching from his own pedagogical approach called Dynamic Movement Systems which he has been developing for the last several decades. He also created commissioned works for schools, companies and festivals such as Skånes Dansteater/Malmo Opera , Susanne Linke Company (Trier), Folkwang Tanzstudio (Essen) and Zagreb Dance Company. Recent pieces such as Lonely Hunter, Other, …and my beloved, The Devil’s Garden and Passage won over audiences and critics to become important repertory pieces for the companies who commissioned them.

Having begun his artistic career as a singer and student in Opera, Jazz and Studio Music at the University of Miami in his home state of Florida, USA, David continues today to nurture his musicianship through the projects such as Rêve d’Elephant Orchestre with Michel Debrulle and in the early music ensemble Graindelavoix. With over 30 years of stage and arts experience under his belt, David continues to push the limits of his craft through his passion for multimedia, storytelling and composing richly poetic worlds on stage and off.

Project workshop with Anneleen Keppens

Tempo, shape and movement qualities
During this workshop, we will explore the role of three basic ingredients of abstract dance, namely tempo, shape and movement qualities. We will spend time with each component to understand its role and effect on movement, for the dancer as well as the viewer. Tempo is a very basic and raw element that can be consciously applied to create suspension, tension, punctuation and contrast. Shape greatly influences the aesthetic experience of dance and veers into the territory of imagery and sculpture. Movement qualities provide a wide range of physical textures that can colour a dance and allow deep energetic layers of yourself to merge with your movement. We will explore each topic through movement experiments and observation, supported by text material and conversation. By the end of the week you will have a deeper understanding of how these ingredients can support your dancing as well as your choreographic adventures.

Anneleen Keppens (BE)

Anneleen Keppens studied at the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp and at PARTS in Brussels. She works as a choreographer, dancer, artistic collaborator and teacher in Belgium and abroad. In 2016, Anneleen started her research project Transparency in Abstract Dance. This research was the base for her first creation The moon is the moon is the moon, which premiered in October 2017. In 2019 she created her solo performance Movement Essays. Anneleen works with choreographer Daniel Linehan/Hiatus since 2012. She danced in his productions Gaze is a Gap is a Ghost, The Sun Came, The Karaoke Dialogues, dbddbb, Flood, Un sacre du printemps and sspeciess. Together with Linehan, she performed at the Tate Live Performance Room of Tate Modern, and she accompanied several editions of the social-artistic project Vita Activa.

In 2014 Anneleen danced in Rétrospective by Xavier Le Roy at Centre Pompidou in Paris. From 2014 to 2016 she danced in Drumming, the repertoire piece by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Rosas).

Anneleen is an often invited outside-eye for other choreographers’ work and she is the choreographic assistant of Alexander Vantournhout. She is a certified Somatic Movement Educator and has experience in teaching improvisation and composition classes at PARTS SummerSchool and Artesis Hogeschool Antwerp amongst others.