WELCOME!

The classes taught in my studio are rooted in:

• Bellydance technique from Datura Style / 8Elements Training, created by my teacher Rachel Brice. This format places a strong emphasis on alignment and the development clear shapes, pathways and timing, as well as careful attention to musicality, composition, creativity and the internal process of discovering one's own personal dance style.

• The modern fusion of Carolena Nericcio's American Tribal Style Bellydance® (ATS), which uses traditional elements of different dance cultures as the ground for cultivating improvisational, communicative, perceptual and creative skills in a group setting.
ATS® is the fundamental “language” that I teach beginning dancers, and the thread that continues through all our projects and new learning, as it encompasses so many skills, from the development of clear body isolations to interpersonal communications to postural awareness to practice stamina and planning .

• Indian Classical (Odissi) and Rajasthani Folk forms that have to me through my teacher Colleena Shakti.

• Body-mind centering, traditional, adaptive and post-lineage yoga, natural movement, progressive strength training and other somatic practices that bring us into the present moment. I’m a fan of movement that allows dancers to build resilience and stability while exploring their own limits and capabilities in an enjoyable way. I’m not a fan over-conditioning, training to injury or placing performance goals above sustainability.

In our classes we practice cultivating a balanced, wakeful internal posture, with an ease through the breath and joints that allows us to be responsive, expressive and graceful, free of strain. We seek to build a strong foundation for all our bellydance vocabulary, regardless of style or lineage, and to extend the fruits of our dance practice into the rest of our lives through a sense of curiosity, connectedness and joyful effort.

SPRING 2020 CLASS OFFERINGS

• STRENGTH AND STABILITY for dancers, yoga practitioners, and everyone else. aka NOGA CLASS: Now Online
Tuesdays 5:30 - 6:45 DROP-IN BASIS / $10 per class

This is an unconventional class that I also call NOGA (not only yoga / not officially yoga).
We take as our context asana, or a postural basis familiar to yoga practitioners, using it to explore the themes and questions such as:

What is “correct alignment” and is there such a thing? How should we balance stretching with strengthening? What’s the difference between flexibility and mobility? What’s the latest science on how the nervous system adapts to physical demands? How can we investigate our own personal range of motion safely, and without concepts of “ideal form”? What are the best postures for developing joint stability? What is the role of the hamstrings in movement? What about breathing practices? How can we use more critical thinking in examining cherished dogma about yoga and other movement? Are we putting in enough movement variability, novelty and all-around stimulus to keep our bodies learning on a cellular level? What are concrete steps to progressive strength-building that will complement gains made in flexibility? What are the elements of balance training?

Open to everyone!

• FOUNDATIONS of MOVEMENT / ATS® LEVEL 1
NEW 10-WEEK SESSION BEGINS on APRIL 16

edit 4/12: our more weeks added for a 14-week session!

Thursdays 4:00 - 5:25pm


Open to all levels of experience, this class is an introduction to fundamental bellydance movements and isolations. It is also preparation for American Tribal Style® Bellydance*, a beautiful collective fusion form that brings together the gestures and musical styles of several traditions (predominantly Middle Eastern, North African, Andalusian and Indian Folkloric and Classical) while cultivating an elegant posture, finger cymbal fluency and the skill of dancing improvisationally in a group.

The four Fast families of movement (Arabic, Egyptian, Bump and Shimmy) and the mutable, sinuous Slow vocabulary that make up this mesmerizing dance language that will be explored in depth. This form is taught with attention to the specific posture, alignment and strong, elegant arm carriage that characterize the original form and its offshoots labeled Tribal Fusion Bellydance*.  The root vocabularies and dance traditions that precede this form, as well as specific lineages that have nurtured it (such as Salimpour) will be explored with respect and curiosity.

This class requires a steady commitment to support individual and group progress. Open to all dancers, and especially those interested in creative collaboration. Students are also encouraged to attend NOGA class on Tuesdays to develop the strength, joint mobility and balance that support a strong dance practice.

• ATS LEVEL 2/3
Thursdays 5:30 - 7:00pm
This class is currently closed to new students.
Please feel free to drop in and visit, and let us know if you’d like to be part of the new cohort in 2020 (new session begins April .
In this class we not only learn a broad palette of movements and combinations; we go deeper into the principles of cueing, leading, formation and developing spontaneous choreographies. We’ll continue our practice of playing zils (finger cymbals) to accompany our dance, and will build a repertoire of complex variations on the basic movements that are our foundation. 

This class offers a preparation and opportunity for performance for interested dancers.

*In 2020, the wider dance community re-opened a passionate dialogue about whether we might find a different, more suitable name for our dance form than “American Tribal Style Bellydance,” given the cultural implications of the words tribe and tribal.

We recognize the importance of this conversation, and we agree that the time has come to find another way of defining ourselves.

At the same time, it’s difficult to let go of the familiar acronym “ATS”, which is no less than global shorthand for the powerful, uniquely collaborative style of bellydance that has evolved. We honor the teachers who crafted this form and taught it.

I propose that we call our dance American Transitional Style.

This name acknowledges that we are in a time of transition: between the traditional and the post-modern / between the classical gestures that give us eternal inspiration and the still-forming movements of fusion dance / between received forms and invented forms / between our artistic ideas of the past and our apprehension of the present / between what has been seen before and what we haven’t imagined yet


ATS is a dance that is very much about the continual transition between formations, between movements, between leading and following, between qualities of expression. We are in non-linear transition when we dance together, in flux, and this is what permits us to renew the dance again and again.

Location
All classes take place at the studio at 758 Camino Baca Grande, Crestone, Colorado.  
When entered into a GPS or Google Maps, these coordinates are often inaccurate.  The correct location is on the southeast corner (mountain side) of Camino Baca Grande and Panorama Way. The studio is the first driveway on the left immediately after Panorama. The map at right is correct.

Please park neatly and safely inside the courtyard or on Panorama, not Camino Baca Grande.

Questions? Write katie.getchell@gmail.com