Workshops and Classes
Sense Appeal - Being and Seeing
Classes on experiential perception, performance philosophy and improvisation
These training formats offers a context for professionals and curious dancers alike to practice perception and self-guidance in relationship. It is based on an improvisational approach to sense-reflection, mind integration and navigating the unknown in each moving moment.
These classes will bring us together to renew clarity about our current subtle-body realities. We expand ways of being present together in moving, sensing and spiriting and we practice to sharpen our inner compass to the desires presently moving us in relationship.
As usual I will use performative awareness and psycho-sensual experiencing to guide us in movement, rest, touch and group brain experiences. Together we perceive and play with the constant dying and making of movements, relational desires, feelings, forms, compositions and scenes. We slow down so we can self-guide and notice internal and external reality. How does perception and choice relate? How does our sense of presence, our erotic curiosities, coherence, dissonance or synchronicity show up in class, as well as our daily life?
In our visual and language dominated surround, ‘doing and knowing' seems highly valued. In return these workshops offer you a space to melt your brain into the body's darkness. What words would we be uttering from there?
We use each other as very personal, yet impersonal portals to conjure a ‘timelessness’ that can offer moments of inner knowing on how exactly to proceed, one breath at a time.
That was the most amazing movement workshop I’ve ever experienced in a lifetime as a dancer. Or maybe just the most amazing thing I’ve experienced full stop, if I get to be dramatic? Huge props to Melanie, thanks so much for bringing her, that healed a lot of my normie associations with that dance room & how folks connect in it!
Katie, Dartmouth University, Graduate Program 2024
Circulating touch – a Qi Gong based movement class for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities
Principles of the Chinese 5 element system are brought in relationship to somatic and improvisational approaches.
We will spend time exploring and trusting our individual way of ‘being’, way of listening, way of expressing, and way making sense of the given exercises.
Exercises I like to offer like the Swimming Dragon, Energetic Organ Touch, Looking Mediation, Touching but not Touching and explorations in feeling oneself through embodied imagery are meant to cultivate individual movement intuition and activate the energetic qualities and sensations we each are innately drawn to.
These explorations can bring more awareness, skill, curiosity, and well-being to the experience of the various bodily, energetic, psychological, temporal, and situational realms we move in and out of in any given moment.
ONGOING:
– teaching classes and workshops for dancers and choreographers, guest teaching and speaking about the work at schools and universities, facilitating study groups, mentoring individuals, hosting movment sessions and Discos for senior women and people with disabilities, as well as guiding Somatic Sensuality and Sexuality Integrations sessions for private clients and groups.
RECENT / UPCOMING TEACHING:
2026-
ongoing monthly Everybody Disco! a dance happening for people with disabilities
Juli 1-7 - workshop for Artis Umbria retreat/ImpulsTanz
February - Raw Matters Vienna, Facilitators Exchange
January - workshop for Kimmunity Berlin on Emotions and somatic Capacity
2025-
monthly Discos for people with disabilities living at WG Kondor, Vienna
October/November/December - process as guide group at Tanzquartier Wien
September - Being and Seeing Workshop at Vivace Berlin
June/July/ August - Classes, Workshop for ImpulsTanz Vienna
January/ April/June - Tanzquartier Wien
March/April - Dance Film Project with youths and SATURDANCE for Tanz die Toleranz
2024-
Oktober/ November- Tanz die Toleranz Vienna
August- ImpulsTanz Festival Vienna, Sense Appeal Workshop
April - Bennington College US, Graduate Program, Embodied Love Workshop
April - Dartmouth College US, Graduate Program workshop on Improvisation
January- Tanzfabrik Berlin, Sense Appeal workshop
January/ March- Tanzstudio Maar, Ballet Coaching Workshop
2023-
November- University for Applied Arts/Performance Lab Vienna, Morning Practice
October- Pädagogische Hochschule Vienna, workshop 'movement and sound'
August - IMpuls Tanz workshops
June - The Loft Brooklyn, workshop 'Desires and Touch'
February - Tanzstudio Maar, Ballet Coaching Workshop
2022-
Jan - December MFA process as guide teaching (4 artists concluded the program)
July - Tanzfabrik Berlin Workshop
March til June - 3rd semester DIY MFA process as guide
January- Tanzfabrik Berlin Workshop Sense Appeal
2021-
Jan - December MFA process as guide teaching
July- IMpulsTanz Field Workshop for professional dance makers together with Edie Nightcrawler.
February til December - online DIY MFA process as guide 1st and 2nd semester.
2020-
October to December - online study group for process as guide.
July- teaching a PUBLIC MOVES outdoor workshop, Sense Appeal, as part of ImpulsTanz Vienna. Sense Appeal is co-created with Ede Nightcrawler.
leading one-one-one process as guide sessions in preparation for the DIY MFA program I formed beginning in February 20121.
March through May- leading a pandemic zoom process as guide study group.
2019-
September through December- leading process as guide -a study group for dance artists. Brooklyn NY.
July- teaching workshops at Tanzstudio Maar and
April 27th/28th- . co- teaching a workshop for Movement Research with Edie Nightcrawler. ‘Sense Appeal’- Deconstructing the Erotic in Performance https://movementresearch.org/event/10546
March through May- . leading process as guide– at LEMAY studios Brooklyn.
January- . leading a 2 week training for professional dancers at TanzQuartierVienna . teaching 2 day coaching workshop for young ballet dancers at Tanzstudio Maar Vienna
2018-
. leading a 2 week training for professional dancers at TanzQuartier Vienna
. facilitating a studies group for female artists at Domestic Performance Agency Brooklyn
. master class for Dancers at Middlebury College, VM
. workshop Practicing Being and Seeing, TanzHotel Vienna
2017-
. workshop, Practicing Being and Seeing, at Pieter Los Angeles
. guest faculty for Improvisation at The New School/ Lang College
. 3 month long workshop at Movement Research, Circulating Touch.
2016-
. workshop at Brooklyn Studios for Dance
. research workshop at Laboratório Somático, Mexico City
. workshops Studio Wolf and Tanzstudio Maar, Vienna
. guest teacher at The Danish National Dance School, Copenhagen
image credit- Laura Bartczak
students of improvisation The New School/Lang College