The Third Floor | Inside this phosphoresent premiers at Conduit in less than two weeks on a joint bill with Lucy Yim and Allie Hankins!

SEA/PORT: dance by Seattle & Portland artists
October 7-8, 2011, 8 PM
BrownPaperTickets: $12-$15 sliding scale

Conduit presents works by Seattle and Portland dance artists:

Allie Hankins | Seattle
Like A Sun That Pours Forth Light but Never Warmth

Lucy Yim | Portland
Song&Dance (work in progress)

Shannon Stewart & Adam Sekuler | Seattle
The Third Floor

Choreographer Shannon Stewart and filmmaker Adam Sekuler’s The Third Floor paces through the remains of a six-story historic Seattle hotel exploring the notion that memory loss, as it is in people, is an essential part of dissociating identities in buildings and neighborhoods. A cascade of characters introduce themselves to create a false history of the hotel while carefully constructing a diorama of an unsettled mind.

Every level of the Publix Hotel ascended unfolds a more desperate tale. The curling edges of paint unglue stories from the wall—over time this two-dimensional surface reveals that it is three. A small square hole cut out of a door signifies a private death--that a hand reached through the opening to turn the doorknob and let themselves in.

In The Third Floor, footsteps echo on ground untouched for years. The contact of feet on ground punctures time, refracts stories encoded in small medicine cabinet mirrors and smoke stains outlining absent picture frames on a wall.

The memory (loss) bank is made possible with support from Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, 4Culture, and the mOuth Studio (Portland).

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c / l / a / s / s / e / s
(Starting September 20th - December 21st)

Int/Adv Contemporary Technique
Wed 9:30 - 11:15am (no class Wed Oct 5th)
$12 Drop-In | $50 Five Class Card

GYROKINESIS®
Tues 5:00 - 6:15pm
$10 Drop-In

The mOuth Studio
810 SE Belmont, Studio 2
PDX.

i / n / f / o

Int/Adv Contemporary Technique
My technique classes are focused on maintaining and strengthening technical fundamentals of contemporary dance while providing space and opportunity to unleash each person’s informed and uninhibited potential.

Warm-ups focus first and foremost on generating heat, turning on the core and expanding the spine with principles and exercises sourced from GYROKINESIS®, Countertechnique, release techniqe and Qi Gong. Class shifts to focus on the building blocks of dance technique from plies to swings to floorwork before moving across the floor and into phrasework. While focusing on the fundamentals, this class calls on your imagination and willingness to take risk in order to deepen your experience of full-bodied movement and push yourself into a new physical realm. Weaving together codified technique with risk taking and imaginative improvisation, this class will give you the strength and tools to follow your desire and understand your body's own movement system.

GYROKINESIS®
Developed by a professional dancer for dancers seeking long and healthy careers, Gyrokinesis deepens our understanding of core strength to include qualities of suppleness, length and expansion. We will move through the fundamental exercises of Gyrokinesis--including the seven natural elements of spinal movement while also addressing all other joint articulations and ongoing deep abdominal engagement. It is helpful to bring a mat or something soft to use as padding for work on the floor.

b / i / o

With degrees in Urban Planning and Dance, Shannon Stewart has a rich history as a contemporary dancer, music organizer, and activist on the West Coast. Since 2001, Shannon has been performing professionally as a dancer locally, nationally and internationally for stage and film and began making her own work in 2008.

Having cross-trained in ballet, contemporary, release, breakdancing, yoga, capoiera, qigong, improvisation, GYROTONIC® system and somatic awareness, Shannon currently dances with tEEth and Salt Horse (2010-2011), and has danced for Dayna Hanson (2010), zoe | juniper (2005, 2008-2010), Ricki Mason (2003-2006), Kathleen Hermesdorf (2006-2008) and many others. She is certified in Gyrokinesis®, teaches contemporary technique, improvisation,, and Dance for Parkinson’s with the Mark Morris Dance For Parkinson’s program.

Shannon co-founded the Vera Project, the All-ages Movement Project, and wrote and released a history and how-two guide for all-ages music organizations in 2010, and acted as Velocity Dance Center's Development and Interim Executive Director from 2008-2011 . Her deep connection to the PNW music and dance scene and activist background impacts her approach to making contemporary performance work, finding unique ways to open up the creative process, choosing collaborators, and feeding the desire to deepen the exchange between performer and audience.