Weekly Professional Class with Abby Z

Abby Zbikowski will teach the weekly professional class ahead of the future is on the way on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 September.

In this workshop participants will experiment with pushing their bodies past perceived limits of speed, range of motion, strength, coordination, and endurance, as well as challenge their own held views on conventions of established forms.

In her classes, Abby Zbikowski utilizes an intercultural approach to the practice of contemporary dance, placing her methods in direct dialogue with the African Diasporic and African forms that have shaped her perspective as a dance-maker and educator, as a means to identify the confluence of aesthetic worlds and cultural information embedded in the practice of contemporary dance.

Dancers should expect a full-bodied, rhythmically driven class and should wear sneakers, pants, and knee pads.

Abby Zbikowski, creates experimental dance works that pay homage to the effort of living, tactics of survival, and the aesthetics produced as a result. She founded Abby Z and the New Utility in 2012 with founding members Fiona Lundie and Jennifer Meckley to create works utilising the physical aspects and psycho-emotional experience of her rigorous training in African and Diasporic forms, playing sports, and performing manual labor.

Image: Abby Z teaching at Focus Records. Courtesy of Festival Un Pas Vers L'Avant in Abidjan, Ivory Coast