Workshops

Educational Programs and Master Classes for all ages and all levels of experience 

Contemporary African Movement Practice and Transformation Techniques:

This is a hybrid technique class that draws from West African, contemporary, and improvisation dance techniques. Dancers will work to build skills pertaining to contemporary dance including: integrated strength building and aerobic conditioning, moving quickly and rhythmically in relation to the drum, improvisational skills, and executing full-bodied movement sequences. Dancers will be given the opportunity to practice material with repetition to be able to inhabit the movement with confidence while making individual choices about dynamics, phrasing, presence/performance, and improvisation. West African movement material will derive from Senegalese Sabar and Mandingue Djembe.

Olivier teaching

Choreographic Research Workshop:

Intercultural Collaborations/Directing Processes/Music and Choreography. Choose one or all of the above for a workshop that gives tools and feedback for dancers/choreographers/musisicans to explore and develop their embodied and performative articulation. Develop your own distinct style, intention, vision, vocabulary, and politic. We’ll work on our ability to “see” what’s going on in a dance and pay more attention to the choices that are available to us as we put works together.

Improvisation:

A mixtures of post-modern improvisation techniques and contemporary African innovations.

West African Percussion:

Learn to play Djembe and Dun Dun including cultural histories of the griot.  

Geographical Bodies: Crossing Borders

In this workshop we will be improvising, moving together, moving against, paying special attention to the multiplicity of performed identities. Drawing from my background in performance art strategies and contemporary improvisation strategies, this workshop is physical and collaborative.

Choreographic Residency:

The company creates an original work on professional or student companies that incorporates Baker & Tarpaga’s hybrid dance theatre approach, exciting live music, and works in collaboration with the unique voice of each population.

A few samples our work from around the world:

Ateliers Aex Corps in Dakar, Senegal 2010

Ballet Djoliba in Conakry, Guinea 2009

The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA  Repertory Works