PRICE: $15-25

Class Description:

This is an hour and half of guided explorations around the inherent relationship between sound and the body. Class will begin with short vocal warmups to prepare the body for wider expressivity and auditory attunement. We will quickly start incorporating movement and gestures to investigate how our physicality is shaped by our melodic prosody and vice versa. This is a class that puts into action how our physicality reflects the sonic textures residing in the body. Through movement and vocal play, we will ponder how freeing up sounds caught in the body is a gateway to freeing up emotional memories stuck in the body. With sound, movement and breath being deeply intertwined with the bodily experience of past, present, and future, we will use those three tools to investigate our understanding and attunement to both memory and the moment. This is a class focused on empowering and prioritizing the voice – its power to vocalize, its flexibility to resonate to other sounds, and its capacity to shape (and BE shaped) by a human-generated sonic atmosphere. Throughout class, we will oscillate between listening to the explicit (people harmonically shaping the space) and attuning to the implicit melodies (what is invisibly echoed in parts of our body as OUR story). Improvisatory movement and coordinated breathwork will be used continuously as a companion to our sounds and will be a supportive backdrop to these explorations. 

BIO:

Livanna Maislen received her BFA in Dance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and upon graduating ventured into Aerial Dance. Maislen has performed aerial-installations for Microsoft, Clinique, Verizon and Nestle, and has toured abroad in Italy, Czech Republic and Bahrain. While Dancer/Rehearsal Assistant with Time Lapse Dance (a Loie Fuller-inspired company), Maislen led residencies at Hofstra and De Sale’s University. In 2013, Maislen became a performer with the Off-Broadway show Sleep No More, where she played eight different roles during her 7 year tenure with Punchdrunk. In 2015, Maislen became Dancer and Rehearsal Assistant for The Francesca Harper Project (FHP), where she assisted in projects such as Nick Cave's Bessie-Award Winning show “The Let Go”, Nona Hendryx & Carrie Mae Weem's "Refrigerated Dreams" and Austria’s Bregenzer Fruehling’s Tanzfestival. Maislen has performed for Nicole von Arx, Yin Yue, Karole Armitage, the San Francisco Opera and the Seattle Opera. She is currently pursuing her Master’s Degree in Somatic Psychotherapy at CIIS and is developing a somatic practice that interweaves her knowledge of movement, mindfulness practices, theatre, and the power of sound.

IG - @livanna-maislen