Education & Outreach
Workshop
Rena’s workshop is playfully geared towards kinetic + intuitive investigation while sharpening useful tools to deepen a multifaceted approach to an artistic experience. The class begins with guided imagery, exploring both fluid and stabilizing exercises to inform various structures in the body. It then flows into dynamic phrasing that encompasses improvisational tasks, floor work, detailed gesturing, musicality, and more.
Video by Michelina Artist for Steps on Broadway
Steps on Broadway:
Black Voices in Dance
Int/Adv Contemporary Master Class
Hubbard Street Chicago
Dance Lab 2019
Interview with Picture this Post
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"I began building choreographic workshops for local teens in Chicago in 2019, called DanceLab. It was a free, choreographic workshop for teens between the ages of 14-17, from variouss socioeconomic backgrounds, and the goal was to find commonality in creation for both dancers and nondancers alike. Kathryn Humphreys and I co-created the program, and it went well, but because of the discontinuation of Hubbard Street’s educational programs last year, it could no longer continue. So, I wanted to keep defining and repurposing the program."
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DanceTeacher Interview
“I find myself asking the question of how a resting or home space can be generative for any art practice right now,” says Butler. “The course was originally designed around the concept of how environment informs identity and how identity can inform environment. Transcribing the class onto a virtual platform worked out beautifully because it was a matter of applying what the students learned from class onto a different landscape.”
