My teaching is grounded in curiosity about how the body transforms as a result of imagination, shifts of perception, attentional dynamics and relational engagement with others and the environment. Finding clarity and playfulness in our awareness of the physiology and physics in motion.
Experiential anatomy and somatic imagery will be starting points through both improvisation and guided movement pathways, inviting us to engage with our full multidirectional dancing body, diving into both energetic and more restful dances. Finding pleasure in our moving, relationality, and nervous system regulation will be undercurrents.
I will be drawing from my practicing and teaching of improvisation and somatics, my site-responsive and ensemble choreographic work, Contact Improvisation, Qigong and my recent training to certify as a Somatic Stress Release™ practitioner.
Vanessa Grasse is a dance and multidisciplinary artist from Sicily, based in Leeds. She is a choreographer, performer, teacher, mentor and curator. Her practice is grounded in somatic, improvisational, site-responsive, ecological, participatory, and cross-disciplinary practices. Her work explores how we inhabit places, acknowledging our ecological-relational nature with environments and with human and non-human communities.
Grasse’s choreographic work has been commissioned by institutions and festivals such as Dance4, The Great Exhibition of The North, Dance City, Yorkshire Dance, Sanafest, Hull Freedom Festival, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, amongst many others and has toured across the UK, Europe and East Asia. She holds an MA in Creative Practice from Trinity Laban (2014) and has taught release based contemporary dance, improvisation, Contact Improvisation, outdoors and site-based creative practices across Europe, for professional dancers, wider communities and universities including Leeds Beckett University, Northern School of Contemporary Dance and Trinity Laban.