Profitraining Laura Hicks

Dynamic Conditioning and Improvisation

Laura has been building her approach to working with kinaesthetic intelligence in solo improvisation for a decade. The class prepares the dancer by training strength, coordination, speed and release by training our senses to be ready for risk taking with balance, timing, and recovery in improvisation. Constantly deepening and building on our experience of the felt body, we use kinaesthesia as a way to tune to “qualities” and “textures” of movement. Agility and reflexes are challenged by layering qualities of movement in relation to gravity and momentum, while composing choices in relation to time and space. These classes are geared towards the professional dancer who is interested in training an articulate solo body, strength and reflex conditioning, and a deeper understanding of specificity in improvisation. We will train our senses, move our joints, build into flow and get sweaty, all while cultivating a sense of aliveness in our bodies.

Biography

LAURA HICKS (*Toronto) is a choreographer, dancer, and educator. Since 2008 she has produced solos, group works and collaborations. Her choreographic work is an exploration of kinaesthetic states, affects and intensities. Created in collaboration with Hannah Shakti Bühler, she produced and directed the remount of Der Klumpen (Hicks&Bühler/2018) for the Tanz Festival Rhein-Main in 2022. Making Impressions and Other Failures (Hicks and Reynolds/2018), Dritter Raum (2022), and Gut Symmetries (2022) are additional notable works. In collaboration with Ilana Reynolds, a new work, “Host w/t” will be a coproduction with Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in 2025. She is a guest teaches for the Dance Theater Heidelberg (AD Ivan Perez) and the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company (AD Ioannis Mandafounis) and adjunct faculty with the dance department of the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts and P.A.R.T.S in Brussels. She holds an MA in Contemporary Dance Education is the curator for professional training at Tanzplattform Rhein-Main/Mousonturm in Frankfurt.