HWS News
14 March 2024 • Alums HWS Welcomes Central NY Improvisation Conference
Featuring Erin Law ’03, this day-long conference brings together colleagues from Central New York colleges and universities to explore dance improvisation and education.
On Saturday, March 23, Hobart and William Smith’s Department of Dance and Movement Studies will host “Evolving Practices in Embodiment Education and Performance,” a series of workshops focusing on dance improvisation and pedagogy, coordinated by faculty from the Central New York Humanities Corridor.
The conference, which will be held in the Gearan Center for Performing Arts, begins with a warmup followed by a Caribbean dance session exploring Orisha dances from Trinidad and Tobago and a lunchtime discussion about improvisation pedagogy, performing spontaneous movement and choreographing improv structures.
The day concludes with a two-hour workshop led by guest artist and educator Erin Law ’03, focusing on “authenticity, power, liberation, pleasure, and imaginal endurance within dance improvisation practices.”
Law has a background in dance, somatics, bodywork and cultural studies. They earned their undergraduate degree in dance from HWS, certification in Laban Bartenieff Movement Analysis from Integrated Movement Studies, and M.F.A. at Smith College. A Licensed Massage Therapist in the state of Tennessee, Law is a faculty member at Integrated Movement Studies, a certification program for movement analysis and developmental movement, and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Alfred University. Law facilitates and engages in practices, analysis, advocacy and activism to contribute to the transformation and alchemy of systemic oppression/supremacy culture, toward the blossoming of a more resilient and whole humanity. Their call and vocation is to facilitate spaces rooted in creative embodied practice at the borders of education, art and healing that support people and communities who are ready and willing to lean into personal and collective liberation and deeper self-awareness. Learn more at erinlawembodiment.com.
This event is sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor from an award by the Mellon Foundation.
Organizers include HWS Professor of Dance Donna Davenport; Sarah Jacobs of Hamilton College; Kieron Sargeant of Skidmore College; and Missy Pfohl Smith, Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp and Anne Wilcox of the University of Rochester.
