Open ARENA

Open ARENA returns with a brand new round of community dance classes in the Spring—and you’re invited! Whether you’re a working artist, a dance lover, or looking to move your body in community, we’ve got something for you. Spread the word, mark your calendars, and get ready to dance with us this Winter/Spring.

MONDAYS– JAKE NEHRBASS
This dynamic class focuses on traveling in and out of the floor and building strength and agility needed for expressive, athletic dancing. Dancers will explore momentum, weight shifts, and release techniques while pushing physical limits through expansive movement and explosive jumps. Whether you’re launching across the room or grounding into the floor, this class will help you find strength and flight in your contemporary practice.

TUESDAYS – SARAH McCULLOUGH
The core themes of practice often include spaciousness and efficiency in movement, sensory exploration, and engaging with the body’s intuition. We will move through guided improvisation and phrase work to engage the senses and awaken the body with a focus on curiosity and aliveness. We will spend time on the floor, upside down, on one leg, moving through space. Both improvised and set material is approached with curiosity, with room to engage with the material as individual artists. Clothing that covers the limbs (particularly the legs) is recommended.

WEDNESDAYS – NIEYA AMEZQUITA
Nieya’s contemporary class is designed for intermediate to advanced dancers looking to deepen their physical and creative practice. We’ll explore momentum, breath-driven movement, and the body’s connection to space through combinations, floorwork, and improvisation. Drawing from a mix of traditional modern techniques, the class invites dancers to take risks, trust their instincts, and find new pathways in motion.

THURSDAYS – NON EDWARDS
GYROKINESIS® Method: A fluid, rhythmic exercise system, Gyrokinesis focuses on mobile, articulate joints powered by a strong yet supple core. Breathwork focuses exertion and activates your nervous system. Sensation is at the forefront as you build up “interoception” – your ability to sense what’s happening within and through your body. You’ll move through undulations, figure 8s, and spirals while strengthening your abs and increasing your flexibility. Please bring a mat!

FRIDAYS – ALEX ARCE
Range between an open style choreography class that combines and explores fusing styles and genres of music together as well as a foundational class focused on training singular forms within hip hop and Latin diasporic genres such as House, Breaking, Funk Styles, and Salsa. As well as Contemporary Floor work and Freeform Contemporary exploring movement time space and sound.

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Shane Larson (New York)
Tuesdays, February 10 & 17
Thursdays, February 12 & 19
During class we will build bottom to top, floor to standing modular class that deepens with task-based repetition. We are encouraged to learn-by-doing strengthening and building new pathways with great music. Forms are created, deconstructed, and recycled—allowing us to swing through wild, challenging, and intellectual material.

Wynn Fricke (Minnesota)
Fridays, February 27 & March 6
Class is informed by contemporary release techniques as well as by her studies with pioneering modern dance artists like Mary Anthony, Ruth Currier, and Alwin Nikolais. This class will begin with solo improvisations that examine movement principles from an internal perspective, followed by a centering warm-up and traveling phrases where we will practice spiral turns, inversions, and spatial pathways.

Assaf Salhov (New York)
Mondays–Wednesdays, March 16–18
Monday, March 23
Cardinal Movement workshops begin with floorwork exercises as a way to awaken the body and to practice specific coordinations that will be used later in the class. On the floor, participants concentrate on movement elements and alignment through repetition of a series of short exercises. As the class builds, the elements are layered into more sequential movement ideas in the space. Following the floorwork section of the class, participants transition the ideas from the floor to standing exercises and partnerwork. Through dynamic across the floor sequences and jumping exercises, participants find new ways to connect information gathered on the floor in a new standing orientation while inhabiting and moving in space.

Wendell Gray II (New York)
Wednesdays, April 1 & 8
This class explores aliveness as a practice of appreciation, sensitivity, and wholeness. We will engage with dance as an experiential form that examines the articulation of the body and its ability to listen and make decisions. The class works through a vast range of movements, sensations, and embodiments inside of both improvisation and set material. The material will vary in rhythm, dynamic, and speed while also inviting imagination and fiction as a space for possibility. We will use resourcefulness as a tool for recognizing the life that already exists— the life we are living in this moment, and the life we want to create in the future.