OMDC Update

OMDC and Omaha Performing Arts teamed up April 22 to offer a movement workshop for dancers from the community, taught by company members Lauren Alzamora and Nolan DeMarco McGahan of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. ASFB is a contemporary ballet company that was visiting Omaha to perform on OPA’s dance series.

Held at the Omaha Academy of Ballet studios, the free workshop gave participants a chance to try several exercises in movement improvisation. Alzamora and McGahan explained that many contemporary ballet choreographers who create works for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet work with the company’s dancers through improvisation to develop movement ideas when they are creating new works.

They demonstrated and then had the participants try several improvisational exercises with names such as “orange-slicing” (broad straight-armed movements); “popping” (abrupt movements of isolated body parts) and  ”sphering” (visualizing a sphere and moving it around the body.) These types of exercises, they said, can help a dancer create and develop movement ideas that can be assembled into choreography.

Workshop participants also received a discount code that let them buy specially-priced tickets for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s April 24 performance at the Orpheum.

Click below to see a slideshow of photos from the workshop:

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About the workshop instructors: 

Lauren Alzamora danced with Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech and Battery Dance Company in New York City before joining Aspen Santa Fe Ballet five seasons ago. She trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and also studied at School of American Ballet, The Kirov Academy, The Rock School of Pennsylvania Ballet and American Ballet Theater. For Lauren, dancing provides ways to challenge herself physically, mentally, and artistically. “In a physical sense, dancing can be quite grueling”, she admits. “Ultimately, it is wonderful to experience those times when all the years of training and struggle pay off – you feel invincible!” Lauren is also a certified Pilates instructor.

Nolan DeMarco McGahan, a native of Dallas, Texas, trained at Dallas Ballet Center, Ballet Academy of Texas and with Fernando Bujones at the Orlando Ballet School. He also attended Booker T. High School of the Performing and Visual Arts before graduating from The Julliard School in New York, earning his BFA in dance and dancing work by noted choreographers. “There are many things I love about dancing,” he says. “One thing I have loved about dancing from Day One is the athleticism.”

Teachers Susan Dickson-Matsunami, Keefer Peterson and Kathy Bass work with members of Club Orpheum to explore the creative process that Stomp uses to create their rythmic numbers.  Students enjoyed a modern technique warm-up class and then moved into creating rhythmic performance pieces.  Club Orpheum is a musical theater program for high school students through Omaha Performing Arts.  After the workshop, teachers and students attended the STOMP performace.  “I enjoyed watching the students have an ‘aha’ moment during the performance as they realized they had just gone through the same process as the performers in creating a new piece,” Kathy Bass