Daily Floorwork class is a physical and emotional rendering of form. Activating both athlete and artist, we will begin by generating heat throughout the body via tactile engagement of the skin, lush body-weight conditioning, and grounding exercises that draw forth the body's natural liquid state. We will continue with floorwork sequences that explore the body's natural stealth and sequential spine - focused exercises that reference gyrotonic principles of stabilization through contrasting directional forces, curvilinear motion and breath. This training is simultaneously coupled with improvisational and awareness propositions that aim to awaken the senses and their direct relationship with the moving body. Emphasizing strength and stamina while supporting healthy alignment, the class builds into long and complex phrase work drawn from VIM VIGOR's latest research, affording dancers the opportunity to dig deep into the resources of the body while traversing surprising and challenging landscapes of size, direction, tone and texture. Sweat, surprise and full- bodied ardor await.

Essential for the professional contemporary dancer. PDT will hold partnering classes four days a week. 

We will train in contact improvisation, momentum based partnering that utilizes a variety of grips, and also allocate time for playful exchange - something we call Partner Play.

In Partner Play, dancers will take these skillsets into action - riding the wave together without judgement, prediction or independent control. Through a guided set of exercises and propositions, dancers will become mind reading daredevils that fall, fly, slide, pivot and support a shared practice. Culminating in a circle of support, dancers will join one another to explore and share. Where in the moment creative choices will form new pathways and raw material for future creative development.

PDT dancers will partake in all aspects of the choreographic process. 

Weekly composition classes will delve into the working methods of today's physical dance theater practitioners, giving participants opportunities to work with their own voice inside these methodologies. 

Additionally VIM will lead 2-3 afternoons in an original creative process, immersing dancers in VIM's devised theater creative practice. Dancers will create, embody, adapt and see their essential place within ensemble style creative efforts.

Maintenance is our ritual of self-care - and for dancers it is essential to a long and healthy career.

PDT dancers will have two hours per week dedicated to learning physical and mental self-care practices that include conditioning, stretching, and recovery exercises. Within this practice, dancers will learn the fundamentals of anatomy and kinesiology. 

Dancers will leave the program with an established self-care regimen and also one that they can share with their colleagues. 

When you can surprise yourself, you can surprise an audience. Through games and physical/vocal play, PDT artists will work on following impulses, listening, befriending failure, stepping out into the unknown and assuming their own brilliance. We will play games as a group that demand a high level of focus and listening, we will also work in smaller groups and in partners, acting and reacting and honing in on a moment-to-moment sense of play. We will also explore how true desire and need can force us to get out of our own heads and place the focus on our scene partner.