Every Wednesday from 6-8 pm!

More info about my class:

In my largely Limón-based technique class, I use an exponential set of spinal exercises that breathe out of initial somatic floor work to help the student to fully arrive to class and give complete attention to our practice.  I progress to thorough foot articulation exercises that begin to integrate the upper and lower body halves into simultaneity.  Our warming from the inside out is followed by more complex and physically demanding movement phrases.  Knowing the demands of today’s dance world, I work for a balance of strength and flexibility in my dancers and stress correct alignment to encourage injury prevention. I believe that active dance practice infuses our receptive bodies with needed reminders and further understanding of muscle patterning, rhythm, relationships to space, and anatomical structure.  Ultimately, I want students to feel integrated in their bodies and aware enough to be fully thinking and feeling organisms able to learn and remember a variety of phrase material and analyze movement in depth, even while in motion.

In other news:

Ellie will be choreographing TICK TOCK, a new play by Marcia Cebulska, directed by the amazing Darren Canady, at the Topeka Public Library (TSCPL) on January 13-15th.

Hope to see you in KS in 2012!

From the University Daily Iowan:

“Another alumna returning this weekend is Eleanor Goudie-Averill, an adjunct professor at Temple University and a dancer for two companies in Philadelphia. She said bringing alumni to the UI will show the students the importance of versatility in dance and that there are many different pathways one may take.

“Sometimes, we get a really limited mindset in dance that you’re going to go out and get a job with one company or one university, and that’s just not the way it is,” she said. “You have to do so many different things and wear so many different hats.”

Going for the things that they want is another idea that Goudie-Averill wants to leave with the students. She said the young dancers need to trust themselves and trust their knowledge.

“Things are so much less scary than you think they will be. It seems so terrifying until you do it,” she said. “If you have a dance fantasy, at least try to see where that can get you.”

The week preceding the concert was spent teaching Modern, Ballet, Choreography and serving on career panels for UI students.

Spiel Uhr, meaning “play clock” in German, is a semi-annual performance during which Group Motion presents local and guest artists. The performances allow Philadelphia audiences a chance to see new works, excerpts of works in progress and experimental pieces.

Skirting the Issue is a duet work inspired by Jude Robison’s artist book The Woman Who Loved Worms.  The book contains a poem of the same name, by Collette Inez, about a woman who refuses to marry a powerful Lord and “disdains butterflies,” a symbol of her rejection of femininity.  Robison’s book contains beautiful letterpress and printed imagery on handmade Tibetan paper and is actually quite feminine in nature.  The choreography explores ways in which we “skirt the issue” of our own femininity, picking and choosing what aspects to accept and reject, often focusing more energy on rejecting feminine expectations than on simply being ourselves.  We women often put on our fresh coat of lipstick and then claim to not care how we look!  The book and the dance, express the complexity of these issues.

Jude Robison’s book will be on display alongside the dance!

Bodies of Text is a joint venture between the Philadelphia Center for the Book and the diverse Philly dance community, producing unique dance productions based on the work of selected book artists from across the country.   So far the project coordinators, Mary Tasillo of the Center for the Book and I (Eleanor Goudie-Averill of SDDL!) have produced two successful shows. The final show will take place outdoors at Clark Park C in and is free to the public.

Stone Depot’s Piece …

This installment of Bodies of Text includes our unique collaboration with book artist Anna Mavromatis and visual artist Nicole Donnelly.  Mavromatis’ provocative book, In the Wings, provides the inspiration for choreographers Eleanor Goudie-Averill & Beau Hancock and Donnelly to create a performance/performance environment which will include large outdoor sculptures (see examples at www.nicole-donnelly.com).  The piece also uses source material from early photographs by Robert Muybridge–first attempts at capturing bodies in motion!

Why you should not miss this piece, intellectually speaking …

This performance is an opportunity for audience members to experience dance in an unusual setting, as well as reinventing the usual surroundings of the park for passersby.  Site-specific works provide the audience with the agency to connect with the performance in their own way.  So often dance performance is limited to proscenium stages, expensive concert halls, and obscure or inaccessible venues.  In placing this performance in Clark Park and charging no admission creates a welcoming environment for all members of Philadelphia’s diverse community to share in the artistic process of the Bodies of Text project.

Don’t miss this unique performance on a Brooklyn RoofTop stage!

July 9th at 8 pm

Clip of the Work In Progress: 

www.rooftopdance.com

One audience member said:  “I loved the beginning with Katherine (Stark) avoiding all the cups – that scenario … encompassed so many universal struggles… being confined to a certain amount of space and having obstacles within that space but vigorously weaving around those obstacles and exploring as much as possible within the set space…  there was an interesting qualitative mix of anxiousness and rebellious power that leads one to think about how one reacts to strictly-enforced boundaries …

I haven’t seen a lot of work in Philly that I’ve fallen in love with…so I am moved to share my appreciation.”

Beau Hacock & Eleanor Goudie-Averill, co-directors of Stone Depot, will premiere a new piece in Bodies of Text III, the last in our collaborative series with the Philadelphia Center for the Book, in the Philly Fringe Festival this Fall!

The piece, inspired by Anna Mavromatis’ gorgeous book, is an outdoor site-specific installation. 

Shows are at 4 & 7 pm on September 3rd and will begin at Clark Park C in West Philadelphia.

Support Stone Depot at the A.W.A.R.D. Show as we “compete” for $10,000 on May 18th at the Arts Bank!

Tickets are $15 (or $40 for all four shows and can be purchased at Ticket Philadelphia www.ticketphiladelphia.org  on-line;  215-893-1999 phone 9am-8pm or in person Kimmel Center Box Office, 300 S. Broad St. 10am-6pm

The May 18^th program features Eric Bean, (Koresh Dance Company member) in Prime set on the dancers of Eleone Dance Ensemble.  Eleanor Goudie-Averill (dancer for Group Motion and founder of Stone Depot Dance) presents the premiere of Convictions 1-111. Meredith Rainey (retired PA Ballet dancer and director of Carbon Dance Theatre) will perform This Is It/It Is This, a duet with Sun-Mi Cho. Brian Sanders (MOMIX Alum and founder of Junk) will show excerpts from his latest creation Dancing Dead.

If we are selected from this first evening, we will also perform on May 21st in the Finals!  Ellie will also be dancing for Rain Ross Dance and MacArthur Dance Project on May 19-20th!

The May 2011 installment of choreographic creations by

Stone Depot Dance Lab, Movement Brigade and Here [begin] Dance

will be performed on Friday, May 27th at Studio34 located at 4522 Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia at 8 pm followed by a discussion with the Choreographers and Book Artists, moderated by Philadelphia Center for the Book’s Curator, Mary Tasillo.

The performances will continue throughout the weekend at the historic Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 North American Street in Old City on Saturday May 28th at 7 & 9 pm and Sunday, May 29th at 7 pm. These performances are co-presented by Philadelphia Dance Projects and made possible by a grant from New Stages for Dance, a program of Dance USA/Philadelphia. All three works are world premieres and explore different aspects of the natural and the organic world.   Tickets for the Christ Church performances are $15 ($12 for Dance Pass holders
and $10 for students) and are available in advance through Brown Paper Tickets (http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/168224) and at the door.

Stone Depot Dance Lab’s new work is inspired by Judith Robison’s gorgeous interpretation of Colette Inez’s poem, The Woman Who Loved Worms. Inez created the poem based on the legend of a Japanese woman with “unpinned hair, weevils queuing across her bare and unbound feet.”  Many beautiful layers of Tibetan paper make up the book, just as many layers of interpretation have gone into Goudie-Averill’s intricate
dance.  Danced by Goudie-Averill and Katherine Stark, the piece explores the expectations placed on women across cultures and mimes the poem’s kinetic, natural imagery.

Danced by Goudie-Averill and Katherine Stark, the piece also explores the expectations placed on women across cultures and mines the poem’s kinetic natural imagery.