Foto: Silvano Ballone

ProfitrainingKristian Lever

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Contemporary Training - Improvisation and Set Material

The class focuses on choreographic material excerpted from previous repertoire by Kristian Lever. In the class, we intend not only to learn excerpts and phrase material but also to depict the material to better understand the pathways, qualities, and ideas behind the work. Using various tools and techniques, the class intends to train one’s body and spatial awareness, as well as physical imagination. As Kristian’s work often hails and draws inspiration from stories, we focus as well on how to be able to express the work emotionally and to move to tell a story to an audience. The class is also filled with lots of improvisation tasks and games to further enrich the movement as well as one’s creativity and imagination.

Q&A

1. What influences are you using in you choreographic material?
Influences vary depending on the project. In more abstract works it can be from purely physical or musical impulses, following a stylized shape, design, and dynamic.
In storytelling work, I start from an emotional standpoint and take it from there. It can be anything that moves me and connects me to the story, I often draw inspiration from film.

2. Could you give us example of a tools or technique we'll be using to work on spatial or body awareness?
Throughout working on the choreographic material, I put a lot of emphasis on breaking down the technique of it all.
For example, to work on isolation and coordination, I have this task I call "frozen entities". I direct this improvisation task in multiple stages, starting simply from being glued to the floor by one's palms, where one recognizes the sensation of being stuck or "frozen" whilst needing to travel around one's palms. Step by step, by adding more and more tasks, it gets all the more complicated as we get ourselves dancing fleshed out whilst still isolating or "freezing" certain body parts, recognizing the sensation from step one - being glued to the floor. Sounds all very abstract in an email, but I can assure you it's very physical and challenging.

Biography

Kristian Lever is a British-Finnish award-winning director, writer and choreographer.
The Erik Bruhn Prize was awarded to Kristian by the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto. That same year, TANZ magazine honoured him with “Promising Young Talent 2019”. Kristian’s company, Klever Creatives, has toured his dance-theatre performances across Europe. Kristian’s film debut, “The Stranger”, screened at Oscar and Bafta qualifying film festivals worldwide. Kristian was recently nominated for a Musicbed Award for his advertisement work.
As well as creating, Kristian teaches movement and choreographic workshops around the world for schools and festivals.