2025 ADG MODERN DANCE INTENSIVE
June 9–13, 2025 at Peridance Center in NYC
Please join us for the 3rd Annual Modern Dance Intensive presented by American Dance Guild in conjunction with Peridance Center.
REGISTRATION WILL OPEN IN 2025
Schedule
MONDAY JUNE 9TH
2:30-4:00 PM | CLASS #1 Anabella Lenzu (Dance Composition)
4:00-5:30 PM | CLASS #2 Janis Brenner ("Interdisciplinary Improvisation”)
TUESDAY JUNE 10TH
2:30-4:00 PM | CLASS #3 Robin Becker (Eleo Pomare Technique and Repertory)
4:00-5:30 PM | CLASS #4 Great Campo (Nai-Ni Chen Technique and Repertory)
WEDNESDAY JUNE 11TH
2:30-4:00 PM | CLASS #5 Gloria McLean (Hawkins Technique)
4:00-5:30 PM | CLASS #6 Margaret Beals (Improvisation)
THURSDAY JUNE 12TH
2:30-4:00 PM | CLASS #7 Sue Bernard (Limon Technique)
4:00-5:30 PM | CLASS #8 Ara Fitzgerald (Improvisation/Daniel Negrin)
FRIDAY JUNE 13TH
2:30-4:00 PM | CLASS #9 Jim May (Technique and Anna Sokolow Repertoire)
4:00-5:30 PM | CLASS #10 Elizabeth Keen (Dance Composition)
Class Descriptions & Biographies
Dance Composition with Anabella Lenzu
This masterclass will give you the tools to create your own original dances, exploring the elements of composition for the stage.
We will examine the creative process by learning how to take risks, transition from thinking to feeling to making artistic choices.
Through short in-class assignments, students will investigate both form and content in choreography. Participants will create solo studies based on choreographic problems.
We look not only at what you dance but also ask the question “Why do you dance?” Dance is the expressive medium of our heart, mind, and soul.
Biography
Originally from Argentina, Anabella Lenzu is a dancer, choreographer, scholar & educator with 35 years of experience working in Argentina, Chile, Italy, and the USA. Lenzu directs her own company, Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama which since 2006 has presented 400 performances, created 15 choreographic works and performed at 100 venues, presenting thought provoking and historically conscious dance-theater in NYC.
As a choreographer, she has been commissioned all over the world for opera, TV programs, theatre productions, and by many dance companies. She has produced and directed several award-winning short dance films and screened her work in over 200 festivals both nationally and internationally.
In 2023, Anabella received the National Award for Outstanding Leadership in the Independent Sector by NDEO (National Dance Education Organization) and in 2022, the Innovative Dance Educator Award by NYSDEA (New York State Dance Education Association), acknowledging her work as a dance educator who develops innovative pedagogy in the dance field, groundbreaking teachings that have a significant impact on dance, as well as an established record of exemplary leadership on the state and national level in USA.
Lenzu has written for various dance and arts magazines, and published two books: Unveiling Motion and Emotion (2013) and Teaching and Learning Dance through Meaningful Gestures (2025).
Interdisciplinary Improvisation with Janis Brenner
Janis Brenner will teach an Interdisciplinary workshop open to all Dancers, Teachers, Musicians, Vocalists, Actors, Writers, Therapists, and anyone who wants to expand their creative thinking. We will explore the process of integrating movement, voice and speaking by delving into the mind/body connection, sensations and experiences through physical and vocal warm-up, and structured improvisation. We’ll be involved in “Serious Play!” with solo as well as group structures, looking at how the art forms of Theatre, Voice, Movement influence and enhance one another to create unique artistic statements. These workshops are a synthesis of Janis’s many years working with such artists as Meredith Monk, Murray Louis and Alwin Nikolais, and the development of her own, unique teaching, performing and choreographic aesthetic over the last 40 years.
Biography
Janis Brenner is an award-winning dancer/choreographer/singer/educator/collagist and Artistic Director of Janis Brenner & Dancers. She has toured in 36 countries and received “Best Performance” and Critics' Choice Award at the United Solo Theatre Festival Off-Broadway for the interdisciplinary, one-woman show Inheritance: A Litany, NY “Bessie" Award in Meredith Monk’s work, Lester Horton Award for Choreography in L.A., grants from Fund for US Artists at Int'l Festivals, Asian Cultural Council, Trust for Mutual Understanding, O'Donnell Green Music & Dance Foundation, US State Department, US Embassy for tours to Moscow, Bosnia, Jakarta and Dakar, and a commission for The Memory Project from the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work has been commissioned/restaged on more than fifty companies and colleges worldwide. Was with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble from 1990 - 2005, 2014, recording on ECM Records, and Murray Louis Dance Company working with Rudolf Nureyev, Placido Domingo, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Joe Papp, Bat Sheva Dance Company, and Alwin Nikolais. On faculty at The Juilliard School from 2009-2021. Currently at Marymount Manhattan College and Steps Conservatory. Teaches improvisation, composition, voice and JB repertory worldwide. Second solo show, She Remembers her Amnesia received critical acclaim and is currently touring, as is Inheritance: A Litany. Ms. Brenner has had three gallery exhibits of her mixed-media collage work in NYC.
Eleo Pomare Technique & Repertory with Robin Becker
Choreographer Eleo Pomare was known for his dramatic choreography and piercingly insightful social commentary. His classes cultivated dancers who developed technically and as performers. Come experience a class in the style and technique of Eleo Pomare and learn about the elements and qualities he valued in dancers and in the creation of choreography. You will learn repertory from two of Eleo Pomare's masterworks.
Biography
Robin Becker, choreographer, teacher, and Artistic Director of Robin Becker Dance founded her company in 1987. The company has performed at The Joyce Theater, Florence Gould Hall, The University of Wisconsin, Madison, Georgetown University, Westpoint Military Academy, and the Harkness Dance Project among others. Robin Becker Dance has been the recipient of two National Endowment of the Arts awards and two awards from the Disabled Veteran’s National Foundation to further the company’s veteran/ military outreach program. In 2015, the company was invited to perform their work Into Sunlight in a three-city tour of Vietnam.
Ms. Becker was a principal dancer with the Eleo Pomare Dance Company for twelve years, and upon leaving the company, Eleo Pomare was a choreographic mentor to Ms. Becker for ten years. Ms. Becker also performed with the Martha Graham Ensemble, the Pearl Lang Dance Company, Zvi Gotheiner, Ballet Etc., and the Los Angeles Dance Theatre.
Robin Becker is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist, and an Authorized Teacher of the somatic practice Continuum. She is currently teaches at Hofstra University, and has also taught at American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey Dance Center, Fiorello LaGuardia High School, Princeton Ballet Society, the Actor’s Studio, Peridance Center, and the Stone-Camryn School of Ballet in Chicago, Illinois.
EXPERIENCE THE LIVING HISTORY OF DANCE
A collaborative project between ADG and Peridance
Organized by Anabella Lenzu
Nai-Ni Chen Technique and Repertory with Greta Campo
Nai-Ni Chen's signature technique combines the essence of Ballet/Modern with Traditional Chinese training and ancient Chinese QiGong, Tai Chi and Martial Arts. This technique emphasizes breathing, tension/release, and the flow of energy using key movement phrases from the Company's cross-cultural repertory.
Biography
Greta Campo began her dance training in Milan, Italy at the Carcano Theater. At age 19, she moved to NYC and she attended the Professional Training Program at the Martha Graham School and, after a couple of months, she joined Graham II, performing in ensemble and solo roles. She also performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company in their 2012 New York Season and has also been traveling nationally and internationally with them.
She was a founding member of Alison Cook Beatty Dance and she also received an award from Fini Dance Festival as a female rising star. Greta has been dancing with the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company since 2012; in 2017 she became associate artistic director and after the loss of the choreographer and artistic director, Nai-Ni Chen, Greta got promoted to artistic director of the Company in December 2021.
From 2019 to 2023 Greta has also performed with Buglisi Dance Theater.
Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company
The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company is a rare Asian-American-woman-led professional touring company with programs for educational settings, community organizations and mainstage venues. The Company’s mission is to be a premier provider of innovative cultural experiences that reflect the inspiring hope and energy of the immigrant’s journey. It was founded with the vision that the immigrant’s journey of crossing cultures and adapting to a new home provides endless inspirations and opportunities for creative expressions that can enrich the human experience. Each one of the company’s works is aimed to increase the visibility of the struggle, triumph, despair and joy of this experience. The Company’s productions provide cross-cultural experiences and bring forth issues of identity, authenticity, and equality. The Company’s worldwide touring is represented by Red Shell Management, led by Edward Schoelwer. Prior to 2021, the Company led the roster of renowned artist manager Joanne Rile, who has since retired.
Choreography is developed with dancers from diverse backgrounds, and each rehearsal is an immersive, boundary-crossing journey that contributes to the creative process under the direction of the choreographers. Our diverse repertory of Nai-Ni Chen’s original works bridges the grace and power of Asian arts and American dynamism which incorporates her broad influences. The company also preserves a variety of festive dances from different regions of China, choreographed by guest immigrant artists bearing the tradition.
The Company began to tour in the early 1990s, originally on the East Coast, and later internationally.
Eric Hawkins Technique with Gloria McLean
“Flow, Form, and Feeling”
This master class in the Hawkins Technique will introduce the principles of Eric Hawkin’s practice that apply to all forms of dance. This technique inspires Gloria’s work, LIFEDANCE, which combines pelvic integration, breath, dynamic kinesiology, momentum, flow, and musicality through creative invention. The master class will explore floor work, standing combinations, and combinations across the floor.
Biography
Gloria McLean is a choreographer, dancer, and teacher, and the artistic director of LIFEDANCE, which offers workshops and performances. She is based in NYC and Andes, NY at Squid Farm a center for dance and sculpture shared with her life partner Ken Hiratsuka. Gloria became well-known as a leading dancer and rehearsal director for the renowned Erick Hawkins Dance Company from 1982 through 1993, when she left to focus on LIFEDANCE. Critically acclaimed for her roles, she is a major exponent of this important Modern Dance Legacy. She is equally recognized for her own choreography with LIFEDANCE/Gloria McLean & Dancers which has been presented in US and internationally, and was called by NYTimes critic Jennifer Dunning “… “An intelligent, witty and sensuous choreographic voice.” LIFEDANCE is a creative movement practice that builds on the Hawkins Technique as a base for somatics, technique, composition and performance. McLean has been President of the American Dance Guild since 2012 supporting our mission of offering a “window to the past” and a “doorway to the future” of dance.
The Art of Improvisation with Margaret Beals
The practice and performance of improvisation is a process of giving oneself, one's energy and being to whatever focus, situation, or stimulus the "now" moment offers. As one gives oneself to that open and unknown space, one becomes more and more able to experience, express, and shape it. Using different stimuli - sight, touch, words, paintings, etc., we will practice meeting the moment with our most present selves. A musician, bass or piano, will participate improvisationally in the class. It is recommended that you view the film Dancing Without Steps: The Art of Improvisation with Margaret Beals before class. The link will be sent on registration.
Biography
Born in Boston, Margaret Beals self-trained, dancing without steps until the age of 17. Arriving in New York, she had the privilege of studying with luminaries Martha Graham, Paul Sanasardo and Jose Limon. In the cabaret scene of the 1960s, she worked with solo musicians, including Sam Rivers, Vishnu Wood, and Lee Kunitz. She ended the 1960s performing in stock musicals such as Finian's Rainbow, The Music Man, Where’s Charley, Can Can and The Boyfriend. In the 1970s, Ms. Beals danced with the companies of Anna Sokolow, Lucas Hoving, and Jean Erdman. A three-year National Endowment for the Arts grant enabled her to create Improvisations to Chopin with pianist Thomas Hrynkiv. In 1976, Ted and Olwyn Hughes gave Ms. Beals the rights to choreograph the “Ariel” poems of Sylvia Plath. She also has written and performed two one-woman evenings, The Teak Room, directed by Tony award winner Tony Tanner, and Pathways, directed by Obie Award winner Lee Nagrin. She continues to coach and teach in her New York studio.
Limón with Sue Bernhard
Together we will explore the movement principles that form the basis of the Humphrey/Limón technique: weight, breath, fall and recovery, opposition, succession, and rhythm as tools to further our potential as expressive, dynamic, creative and enlivened movers, in an atmosphere of joy and discovery.
Biography
A former member of the Jose Limón Dance Company, Sue Bernhard has taught internationally. She is on faculty at Purchase College Conservatory of Dance and rotating faculty of the Jose Limón Institute. She has set Limón works in workshops and colleges and has also taught at the Juilliard School, Marymount Manhattan College, Hunter College and LIU. She has found Limón technique to be an ongoing source of inspiration, exploration and growth. Sue is Artistic Director of Sue Bernhard Dance works. Her choreography has been shown internationally and in many venues in NYC. She has created video dance pieces in collaboration with award-winning videographer Penny Ward. As an active member of the American Dance Guild, she enjoys helping to create performance and learning opportunities in the dance community.
Improvisation with Ara Fitzgerald
In the tradition of ADG honoring dance legends, Ara is thrilled to share basic techniques of the Workgroup, directed by Daniel Nagrin, as well as elements of composition inherent in movement creation in the moment. All level of dancers are welcome. We are led by our personal movement vocabularies into spontaneous interaction with others. Improvisation is an art of its own but as a training tool it can elevate technique to the communicative language we seek in performance.
Biography
Ara Fitzgerald is a choreographer, improvisor, writer, performer and educator. Known for solos with original text, she revels in collaborations with photographer/filmmaker, Peter Cunningham, composer, Wall Matthews, Clare Byrne, Paris based choreographer, Martha Moore, and the honor to perform reconstructions of work by renowned dancer/clown, Lotte Goslar.
She was a member of Daniel Nagrin’s improvisation company, The Workgroup, The Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble, performed with Pat Catterson, Jamie Cunningham, created dances for her own company and contributed choreography to theater productions on and off Broadway.
A graduate of Connecticut College (BA) and Wesleyan University (MALS), she taught at Connecticut College, The O’Neill Theater Center’s National Theater Institute, Hartman Conservatory and Trinity Square Conservatory before serving until 2017 as a director of dance and theater at Manhattanville College. When she told her grandmother, a retired vaudevillian band leader, that she was going to pursue modern dance, her grandmother replied, “A modern dancer is just a vaudevillian with an education.”
Ara also serves on the board of The Mystic Paper Beasts. She and Stuart Pimsler edited and complied Martha Myers’ memoir, Don’t Sit Down. Ara’s pieces and drawings make a leap from stage to page, in her new book, Slow Dancing Is Easy, Scripts for Solo Performer. https://www.arafitzgerald.com/
Daniel Nagrin (1917-2008), one of the great modern dance solo dance artists, was a master teacher, choreographer, and a seminal figure in dance improvisation whose book, “Dance and the Specific Image: Improvisation” was published by The University of Pittsburgh Press in 1994. He directed the Workgroup, an improvisational dance company in the 1970’s whose methods are as relevant today as they ever were.
Technique and Anna Sokolow Repertory with Jim May
The Sokolow style/technique is a unique blend of professional dance & theater that often includes voice in the demanding warm-up. Knowledge of painting, poetry, literature, and culture is essential to take one beyond pure dance. Led by Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble founder and director Jim May, this workshop is a unique opportunity to challenge creativity, go beyond academia, and explore one’s voice in the artistic community.
Biography
Jim May was a devoted disciple of Anna Sokolow for 35 years and co-artistic director of her company, Players’ Project, since 1990. He founded the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble in 2004 to expand the art of dance, working toward a progressive new style of theatre/dance.
May danced in New York for over 40 years, performing with the Limón Company under Jose Limón’s and Carla Maxwell’s direction, the Ruth Currier Company, and Daniel Lewis’ company. Mr. May embraced the distinct styles of both Ms. Sokolow and Mr. Limón. He won a 1996 Fulbright Scholarship to Mexico City to extend his studies of his two mentors and their roles in the relationship between modern dance in the US and Mexico.
He has taught on the faculties of SUNY Purchase, Juilliard School of Music, Princeton University, and the Limón Institute. In 1992, Washington University granted him the Marcus Award for Teaching Excellence. He taught extensively in Taiwan, where he founded the company Dance Forum Taipei, and in Mexico at Central de Investigacion Corografica. He has taught at schools in Italy, France, Germany, Korea, Canada, South America, Switzerland and the United States, and was granted a Fulbright award to teach in Chile. His choreography has been performed by Dance Conduit, Dance Forum Taipei, Thoughts in Motion, and the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble. He has danced on Broadway, with the Eliot Feld Ballet Company, and extensively as a guest artist. In 1999 Mr. May received a Bessie Award for lifetime achievement. In 2024 he received the Martha Hill Award for Lifetime Achievement
Dance Composition with Elizabeth Keen
Biography
Elizabeth Keen is a veteran dancer and choreographer. As a dancer, she appeared with the companies of Paul Taylor and Helen Tamiris/Daniel Nagrin. She choreographed for her own group, The Elizabeth Keen Dance Company, which toured nationally under the auspices of the Dance Touring and the Artists in the Schools programs as well as many seasons in NYC. She has also choreographed for opera and theater Credits include: ANIMAL FARM, TEMPEST, WINTER’S TALE (National Theatre, London); LA TRAVIATA, CARMEN (Glyndebourne); CARMEN (The Met); FIERY ANGEL (LA Opera and L’Opera Bastille); GUYS and DOLLS (Goodman Theater) and A COMEDY of ERRORS, (NY Shakespeare Festival). She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Princeton University, the Juilliard School as well as for The José Limón Summer Dance Workshop and Perry Mansfield in Steamboat Springs, CO. She is a graduate of Barnard College and the Sarah Lawrence Master’s degree program. Currently she is Adjunct Faculty at Marymount Manhattan College and Ailey/Fordham. Elizabeth also performs and choreographs with Dances for a Variable Population, which provides classes for older adults.
