In November, I had the opportunity to attend day two of a two-day "Impact" Workshop hosted by Juliette Irons. Some of you may know Juliette from her appearance on "So You Think You Can Dance" Canada Season Two. She is originally from St. Catharines, Ontario but currently lives in Los Angeles. She teaches at Millenium Dance Complex and is on faculty with "Move". I asked her questions about her unique style and view of music and dance.
Her contemporary choreography was comprised of unique, quirky movements that coincided with accents in the music. She focused less on 'technique' and more on 'musicality'. This was an interesting change as it allowed me to emulate her style of dance more easily. I learned to listen to the subtleties in the music and that not every accent in the music has to be hit or be hit hard.
At Impact, I also took two hip-hop classes from Ivan Koumaev. Ivan appeared on several seasons of SYTYCD, made top 6 of Season Six and is on faculty with JUMP, NUVO and ihollywood dance.
I've taken class from Ivan before but at Impact due to the smaller class size, I was able to watch him more closely as he danced. He has a fluidity to his movements almost as if he skates across the dance floor. We danced to a "Maroon Five" song and the choreography was a lot of fun. Ivan was able to break down his movements so that they were easy to pick up.
Click on the link to see choreography highlights from the weekend!
I asked Ivan how he selects music...he said for kids my age; he likes to pick something we can easily recognize. It certainly helped to pick up choreography since we knew the song, liked the song and were given something fun to dance. Although I loved learning Ivan's choreography, the important lesson I took away from his class was how cool it is to be humble. Ivan sees many kids and attends many conventions...yet he took the time to sit in on our classes when he wasn't teaching, cheer us on and support me with my idea for a blog.
Thanks to both Juliette and Ivan for being my first interview subjects!
Impact was a great workshop and offered classes with Tokyo, Jillian Meyers and Eryn Waltman as well.
I wish I could post Jillian's choreography but she specifically requested it not get posted to youtube. You should check out her videos though...she is an amazing dancer and great choreographer.
Eryn Waltman did a cool lyrical combination where we had to pretend we were old, looking back on our life when we could move our bodies more freely. I really liked the combo because you had to have good technique to pull it off and musicality.
Impact offered hip hop, lyrical, contemporary and jazz. Can't wait for the next workshop....
