ReadyMade Works presents Open Class, a curated program of weekly professional classes taught by experienced local dance artists.

 

Whether you’re a trained dancer or performer from the parallel worlds of theatre, music and visual arts, this is an opportunity to develop a movement practice or sustain it and connect with the vibrant independent dance community that Sydney boasts.

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ReadyMade Works is changing the way we run our classes for 2024. Instead of running drop-in classes, we are going to run a series of 4 classes by one dance teacher and participants will need to purchase all 4 classes. This will allow the class material to build across the month.

The first series in March will be Countertechnique classes, taught by Madeline Harms. 

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Class Teacher and Description:

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June 19 and 26 2023: Melissa Toogood

Description: Cunningham Technique is a rigorous form of training designed to create strength and flexibility in both the body and the mind. It utilises the torso as well as the legs with attention to all directions in space and varied uses of time. There is no one right way to move; this class is open to all levels and experience. 

 

Bio: Melissa Toogood is a New York Dance and Performance Award winning performer. She was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and among the very last group of dancers to be trained by Merce himself. She has taught Cunningham Technique internationally since 2007, and is an official stager for the Merce Cunningham Trust. She currently dances with and is Rehearsal Director for Pam Tanowitz Dance, NYC. She has performed with Kyle Abraham, Kimberly Bartosik, Michelle Dorrance, Rashaun Mitchell, Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, the Stephen Petronio Company, Sally Silvers, Christopher Willaims, The Bang Group: Tap Lab and many others. She has been on faculty at Bard College, Barnard College, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Dance New Amsterdam, New York Theater Ballet School, and is currently teaching Cunningham Technique to Sydney Dance Company's Pre Pro Year dancers. 

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May 22: Emma Harrison 

Description:

Emma's class is designed to inspire your body to explore a range of movement possibilities through improvisation and phrase material. The class begins with a series of imagery and rhythmic prompts that focus on releasing tension and increasing awareness of your breath, movement, and gaze. As the class progresses, we'll incorporate phrases that invite us to dance beyond our kinesphere, exploring new movement pathways that challenge our physical boundaries. We will move to some super groovy music that will elevate our energy and connection to ourselves and each other. 

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Bio: 

Emma Harrison (she/her) is a dance performer, maker and educator now living on Gadigal Country in Sydney/Warrang after a nomadic upbringing throughout central Queensland and regional NSW. She is a graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts /LINK Dance Company and holds a postgraduate degree in Media Arts and Production (UTS). 

Emma’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses contemporary dance, sung and spoken voice, film and theatre.
Emma is a member of Dance Makers Collective (DMC) and works with independent choreographers across Australia. Recent performance credits include Australian tours of DMC’s ‘The Rivoli’ (2022, 2023) and ‘DADS’ (2021), Sydney Festival ‘The Rivoli’ (2020 Dir. Miranda Wheen) and Tra Mi Dinh’s ‘(UP)HOLDING’ Brand X Sydney, Dancehouse Melbourne (2023).

Her choreographic works have been presented by March Dance Festival, Art Month Sydney, Ausdance NSW, Bondi Feast, Crack X Festival, Strut Dance WA, Sydney Fringe Festival, Fremantle Arts Centre and DirtyFeet Out of the Studio.

Emma was the inaugural recipient of the DMC RAPPORT international artist residency 2022, traveling to South East Dance, Brighton (UK) with sound designer Amy Flannery.

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May : Josie Weise

Description:

Invite ease into the joints and body through imagery and positive mental priming to access freedom, spaciousness and energy in the body. 

 

This class will begin slow and low working through some somatic tracing and stretches to identify and release unnecessary tension. We'll go inwards to heighten our awareness of our internal experience and maintain this sensitivity as we move outwards through some phrases to encourage expansive travel and freedom in the body. 

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Bio: Josephine commenced her dance training at the Pamela Marshall Academy of Dance in Hervey Bay. She then started her full-time training at the Queensland Dance School of Excellence and went on to continue her studies at Sydney Dance Company's Pre-Professional Year in 2014. Following an apprenticeship with SDC, she joined the company and toured extensively throughout Australia and internationally for 3 years. In 2019, Josie joined Australasian Dance Collective and performed with the company for 3 years. She relocated to Naarm in April 2022 and has since worked as a freelance artist with independent creatives/companies such as Alisdair Macindoe, Stephanie Lake Company, Project Animo, Courtney Scheu, Cass Mortimer-Eipper and Kiosk film. 

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May : Miranda Wheen

Description: Class will include a series of exercises to stimulate warmth, elasticity and attention, with a focus on unhooking the pelvis from the spine. We'll move through some phrase material, building on the warm up, and finish with a series of image based improvisations, focusing on self-tasking and noticing.

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Bio: Miranda Wheen is an independent dancer and choreographer based in Sydney. Her practice, whilst rooted in contemporary dance, spans areas of intercultural collaboration, improvisation, teaching, advocacy and dramaturgy for dance. She is an Associate Artist with Marrugeku and a founding member of Dance Makers Collective, for whom she directed their last two shows Dads and The Rivoli. She regularly collaborates with a range of artists and companies including; Martin Del Amo, Stalker Theatre, Shaun Parker and Company, Ghenoa Gela, Mirramu Dance Company, Julie-Anne Long and the Tsai Jui-Yueh Dance Foundation in Taiwan.

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May 1: Tra Mi Dinh

Description: Class will begin with reacquainting ourselves to our sensing body; oiling the joints, and expanding our reach/energy. Once we’re feeling connected/reconnected, class will dance between set movement phrases and improvisation. The overall focus is to build fire in the body while igniting our curiosity to move and indulging in the release of glorious endorphins. This class will include a warm up, set movement pathways, floor work, improvisation, and phrases.

 

Bio: Tra Mi Dinh is a dancer and choreographer based across Sydney and Melbourne. As a dancer, she’s worked for companies’ Lucy Guerin Inc, Chunky Move, Stephanie Lake Company, and Dance Makers Collective. Tra Mi has also worked with a range of incredible independent artists including Victoria Chiu, Lee Serle, Michelle Heaven, Nithya Nagarajan, Isabelle Beauvard, and Monica Bill Barnes & Company in works presented at AsiaTopa, MEL&NYC, Melbourne International Arts Festival, and Dance Massive. In 2019, her performance in Make your Own World by Lucy Guerin was recognised with a Green Room Nomination for Best Dancer in 2019. In 2022, Tra Mi won the 2022 Keir Choreographic Award for her work The ___. Dinh has developed her choreographic work through the support of residencies at Tasdance' On the Island Program, Sydney Fringe’s Art in Isolation, Critical Path, March Dance, DAIR, and DirtyFeet’s Out of the Studio program. She premiered her debut solo work HOLDING at March Dance in Sydney 2021, and more recently (UP)HOLDING at Brand X in January 2023. Tra Mi studied at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, graduating in 2014 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) and the Orloff Family Charitable Trust Scholarship for Most Outstanding Dancer.

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April 17: Cassidy McDermott Smith

Description: Cassidy’s class begins by awakening the body and mind through guiding dancers through a series of improvisational tasking, to find a deeper relationship to the anatomical structure by evoking imagery, sensation and textures. The second half of class focuses on finding deeper physical connections through phrase material that are rooted in floorwork, release, and performative development. The class encourages self exploration, curiosity and bodily autonomy and is appropriate for movers of all levels and backgrounds.

 

Bio: Cassidy McDermott-Smith (she/they) is a queer dancer, choreographer, and educator based in Gadigal country. She grew up training in classical ballet, before moving to the United States where she gained a BFA in dance with a concentration in Modern from Point Park University. She has worked with notable artists such as Emmauel Gat, Bobbi Jean Smith, Sidra Bell, Mitchell Christe and Eliza Cooper and has performed repertoire by Ohad Naharin, Crystal Pite, and Azure Barton. She is passionate about dissolving form through a performative practice that includes various theatrical modalities such as improvisation, writing and storytelling.

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April 3: Emma Riches

Description: Emma’s class gradually progresses in energy and complexity, beginning with a focus on release, imagery and physical conditioning to prepare the body for more dynamic phrase material. Across the class, repetition and accumulation will be used as tools for finding greater anatomical efficiency within movement.

 

Bio: Originally from Darug land in NSW, Emma Riches is an independent dance artist whose practice spans performance, choreographic, writing and teaching practices. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts (BFA Dance 2015), Emma has worked with notable artists including Jo Lloyd, Sandra Parker, Tra Mi Dinh, Siobhan McKenna, Alice Will Caroline, Nebahat Erpolat, Phillip Adams/Matthew Bird, Victoria Hunt, Emily Johnson, Adele Varcoe, Rhys Ryan, Piaera Lauritz and has performed small roles with Tasdance, Lucy Guerin Inc and Phillip Adams BalletLab.

 

Emma's practice has been supported by residencies at Dancehouse (Emerging Choreographers Program), Temperance Hall (Exquisite Corps Cohort in Residence), Schoolhouse Studios (Making Space Program, Merri-bek Council) and Lucy Guerin Inc (Moving Forward Residency). Her choreographic work has been presented at Temperance Hall, Dancehouse, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Fringe Festival and M1 CONTACT Festival, Singapore. Later this year, Emma will travel to regional NSW for a DAIR residency through Ausdance NSW. Emma is currently working on an online publication titled 'The Not New Project' in a collaboration with Dance Is. This project involves bite-sized magazines which zoom in on specific areas of dance practice.

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March 27: Melissa Toogood

Description: Cunningham Technique is a rigorous form of training designed to create strength and flexibility in both the body and the mind. It utilises the torso as well as the legs with attention to all directions in space and varied uses of time. There is no one right way to move; this class is open to all levels and experience. 

 

Bio: Melissa Toogood is a New York Dance and Performance Award winning performer. She was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and among the very last group of dancers to be trained by Merce himself. She has taught Cunningham Technique internationally since 2007, and is an official stager for the Merce Cunningham Trust. She currently dances with and is Rehearsal Director for Pam Tanowitz Dance, NYC. She has performed with Kyle Abraham, Kimberly Bartosik, Michelle Dorrance, Rashaun Mitchell, Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, the Stephen Petronio Company, Sally Silvers, Christopher Willaims, The Bang Group: Tap Lab and many others. She has been on faculty at Bard College, Barnard College, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Dance New Amsterdam, New York Theater Ballet School, and is currently teaching Cunningham Technique to Sydney Dance Company's Pre Pro Year dancers. 

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March 20 : Mitchell Christie

Description: Mitchell's classes explore physical athleticism paired with sensation based stimuli. The first half of class brings heat to the body through a string of repetitious sequences to safely prepare for dynamic movement.  Shifting weight, finding energetic pathways through the body and moving in and out of the floor. The second half of class focuses on improvisation and movement research as Mitchell guides you to move from sensation and impulse. 

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Bio: Mitchell Christie (he/him) is a freelance dancer, creator and educator. Growing up on Dharawal Country (NSW South Coast) he graduated from Newtown High School of the Performing Arts in 2012. In 2013 Mitchell moved to New York to continue his dance education at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, receiving his BFA in 2017. 

Mitchell is a founding member of BIRDHOUSE Collective, a Brooklyn-based company critically acclaimed for their innovative site-specific works and advocacy for accessible art. Whilst in New York he worked for the Cunningham Trust and was involved in consistent research with Susan Marshall at Princeton University. Mitchell has performed professionally across the US and Canada, In Europe he has studied improvisation methodologies under the direction of Emanuel Gat and David Zambrano.

 

Now based in Eora/Sydney, Mitchell is a member of Dance Makers Collective and is passionate about serving the independent dance sector here. 

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Image credit: Natalia Cartley