Pathways Through Us: Flying Low and Passing Through

This floorwork and group improvisation workshop expands our relationship to the floor to include all surfaces of the room and our bodies. Rooted in the work of David Zambrano and in dialogue with qi-gong, we will research ways of directing our energy through space dynamically, energetically and creatively with other humans. In Passing Through, our bodies become shared terrain for an every-shifting group improvisation. We walk, run, lead and follow— awakening the reactivity and connection between floor, feet, hands, and body center. Then Flying Low reveals our own bodies’ efficient, spiral pathways for going into and out of the floor. Together these practices help us to transform our bodies, the group and the space in which we play. Training doesn’t culminate in choreography, but rather progresses through solo and group investigations. How can we each become a conduit between earth and sky, one person and another?

Sarah creates improvised works with collaborators from dance, music, circus and theatre. In New York, her work has been curated by Performance Mix Festival, EstroGenius Festival, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Triskelion Arts, The Brick, DanceSafari in Riverside Park, and Insitu Dance Festival. She was a company member of Andre Zachary/Renegade Performance Group, Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, and Time Lapse Dance. 

Her choreographic work is in constant dialogue with the generative practices (teaching, producing, training) that make up her artistic identity. Recent research focuses on developing an improvised performance form she calls the “supported solo” and translating principles of David Zambrano’s group improvisation score “Passing Through” into new settings.

 Sarah has taught contemporary floorwork and improvisation classes at the National Ballet of Ecuador, Princeton University, at CollettivO CineticO in Ferrara, Italy, and throughout New York City at studios like Chez Bushwick, Mark Morris, Gibney Dance, and Brooklyn Studios for Dance.

 She currently produces ¡Spontaneous Combustion!, a rooftop performance party; Floor Friends, a training network for contemporary floorwork; and co-curates Symbiosis at Spectrum NYC, an experimental dance and music collaboration series. She is part of ∞therside, an international improvisation collective formed summer 2018 in Slovakia with 7 peers, each from different countries. Her one-woman-show, Songs Stuck in My Body premiered January 2019 at Triskelion Arts and tours to the Providence Fringe in July 2019.

www.sarahchien.com/teach

About Floor Friends

(optional context about my New York City teaching)
www.facebook.com/floorfriends

Floor Friends is a network of dancers and teachers, creating a space for contemporary floorwork in the New York City professional dance scene. Floor Friends produces roving, pop-up classes, workshops and performances that all focus on highly- athletic, three-dimensional, momentum-based, acrobatic floorwork and improvisation. Founded in 2013, Floor Friends is the only dance teaching organization consistently promoting floorwork classes on the East Coast. Partners have included: Mark Morris, 100 Grand, Chez Bushwick, Gibney Dance and the Playground. Teachers have hailed from New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Ecuador, Argentina, Costa Rica, Denmark, Belgium and Sweden. In 2017, workshops expanded outside of NYC to include Philadelphia.