international instruction

[ festivals of social dances as well as contemporary dance professional programs ]

alina sokulska has been teaching internationally since 2013, sharing her workshops in more than 15 countries.

among such festivals count the biggest events in the social jazz dance community, such as Paris Jazz Roots (Paris), Rock That Swing (Munich), Harbour Hop (Rotterdam), Paris Midnight Blues (Paris), Bluesila (Vilnius), Barswingona (Barcelona), International Jazz Day organized by UNESCO, etc., as well as commissioned singular workshops for the social dance schools in Europe.

the main pedagogical mission of alina is to provide the students with tools that help them discipline and develop their unique creativity in dance expression. honoring the roots of the social dances we are learning our wisdom from, alina’s suggestion is to project the creativity of the individual discourse within the collective language, into the contemporaneity, and the future.

for your festival:

LECTURES ON DANCE & PERFORMANCE HISTORY & THEORY

We all know how important is knowing what you dancing, where it comes from, or which culture you enter a dialogue with and in which way. Conferences, seminars, lectures and talks about dance history in general, and the history of the dances of non-eurocentric perspective, is the object of Alina’s research. Currently finishing her PhD in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at the University of Barcelona, researching about colonialism & contemporary choreography. Alina is sharing the fruit of her research on the SOUND from the Cat’s Corner lectures, adapted for the events of social dance as well as for the professional academic environment. In her lectures Alina addresses such issues as corporeality & colonialism, body representation & power relations in professional and social dance practices.

Level: open, professional & social dancers.

Duration: minimum 1,5 hours

THE POLITICAL BODY: individual and collective spontaneous composition and improvisation

this workshop has a purpose of exploring power relations of the bodies in dance improvisation, as well as individual and collective spontaneous composition. here we focus on the movement quality, where it can be derived from and how it can be applied to the creative flow of improvisation; as well as on the question of time management and rhythm, while practicing individually or collectively.

the sessions have the underpinning of a moving body as a political entity: what decisions do i make as a dancing body? how do i express what i want to express, when and where? how do i relate to others and how do i contribute to the collective space, developing my strong individual voice?

dance technique and improvisation are the tools here to explore these issues.

Level: open, with dance experience

Duration: minimum 3 hours

THE IMMERSION LAB

The lessons consist of experimental-based movement research practice sessions framed by the 4 elements of nature. On these sessions you are guided to go deep inside yourself, listen to your body and finding your own ways of moving and being creative within the familiar languages of dance. The activities encompass an intense dance improvisation practice involving various approaches like imagination, somatic and anatomic, also with extra-dance activities like text, image, video, meditation.

Level: open with previous dance experience, professional & social dancers.

Duration: minimum 2 hours.

the polyrhythmic body

A dance workshop that places rhythm and musicality as a central topic of the movement research and construction of the improvisation flow. With 14 years of experience of collaborating with live jazz music, Alina has developed her method to approach the rhythm through choreographic decisions of spontaneous composition. Alina is going to introduce her approach to train rhythms and develop polyrhythmic relations through the individual body movement as well as group dance expression.

Level: everybody, open with dance experience, teachers of social dance, amateur social dancers, beginners and advanced.

Duration: minimum 3 hours

jazz techniques

here we learn how to develop your dance expression through a hybrid style of jazz dances and contemporary dance approaches to movement. here we will be learning a certain technical aspect of movement (jazz vocabulary, footwork, coordination, body isolations, musicality, rhythm, etc.), and then apply it to an improvisation strategy that Alina will be proposing to you. the peculiarity of this course is that you can discover the freedom of your movement, organizing it in space and time, based on the improvisation principle of jazz, and the movement technique which is a hybrid between social jazz dances and contemporary dance, Alina’s unique research in both social and contemporary dances.

body movement & blues

one of our student’s most popular and favourite workshops: where we go back to the very root of the movement and practice the development of its smallest quants. body isolations technique that go together with rhythm and musicality, go together with somatic practices that take human anatomy as the principle source of the movement mechanics. these practices serve as a departing point for the blues dance exploration and approach to its unique vocabulary and body movement.