Core Class - Thursday, March 17, 10am

Thursday, March 17th, 10am to 11:30 am
Class Instructor: The Artists of TRY, Ishmael Houston-Jones and Keith Hennessey

Instructor Bio: Ishmael Houston-Jones

Ishmael Houston-Jones is an award winning choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation.

Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third “Bessie” for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd. In 2020 he recieved a fourth "Bessie" for Service to the Field of Dance. Houston-Jones is the DraftWork curator for works-in-progress at Danspace Project in New York. He has curated Platform 2012: Parallels which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now both at Danspace Project.

Instructor Bio: Keith Hennessey

Keith Hennessy was born in a mining town in Northern Ontario, Canada, lives in San Francisco, and tours internationally. He is an award-winning performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer. Hennessy directs Circo Zero, a laboratory for live performance that plays with genre and expectation. Rooted in dance, Hennessy’s work embodies a unique hybrid of performance art, music, visual and conceptual art, circus, and ritual.

Hennessy was a member of Sara Shelton Mann’s legendary Contraband (85-94), as well as the collaborative performance companies CORE (95-98) and the France-based Cahin-caha, cirque bâtard (98-02). His work is featured in several books and documentaries, including Composing While Dancing (Melinda Buckwalter, U of Wisconsin: 2010), How To Make Dances in an Epidemic (David Gere, Univ of Wisconsin: 2004), Gay Ideas (Richard Mohr, Beacon: 1992), and Dancers in Exile (RAPT Productions, 2000). Hennessy is a co-founder of 848 Community Space/CounterPULSE a thriving performance and culture space in San Francisco. He earned an MFA (Choreography) and PhD (Performance Studies) from UC Davis.

Hennessy's awards include the Sui Generis Award (2017), Guggenheim Fellowship (2017), United States Artist Kjenner Fellowship (2012), a Bilinski Fellowship (2011), a NY Bessie (2009) for Crotch, Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (1998, 2000, 2009) for performance, dance activism, and visual design, a Goldie (2007) and the Alpert/MacDowell Fellowship in Dance (2005). Keith has enjoyed residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, MANCC, and Djerassi. Keith’s 2016-17 collaborators include Peaches, Meg Stuart, Scott Wells, Jassem Hindi, J Jha, Annie Danger, Gerald Cassel, and the collaboratives Blank Map and Turbulence. Keith's recent teaching in universities, independent studios, and festivals includes VAC Foundation (Moscow), Ponderosa (Germany), FRESH (SF), HZT (Berlin), Movement Research (NYC), Impulstanz (Vienna), Portland State University, Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam), St. Mary's, and Warsaw Flow International CI Festival. Keith's writings have been published in Contact Quarterly, Movement Research Journal, Performance Research (UK), Society of Dance History Scholars Journal, Dance Theatre Journal (UK), SF MOMA's Open Space, Itch, Front, and In Dance.

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Core Dance opens its doors to the public every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning. Spanning multiple disciplines, morning class is led by a variety of teachers and provides a space for growth, conditioning, and exploration. Take a class with the company, and learn from Atlanta's best.

Directions: Our back entrance is accessible by way of North McDonough Street, at the intersection of Trinity Avenue and the Decatur Square. Look for the entrance between Waffle House and DeWoskin Law Firm. If you get turned around, please call our office at (404) 373-4154.

Parking: Due to the very small nature of our parking lot, Core’s lot is limited to Core staff. Please find on-street parking or take MARTA when attending class. (Free on-street parking is available on Electric Ave.) MARTA’s Decatur Station will plop you down right next to us in the Decatur Square. Visit itsmarta.com for details on Decatur Station and for train and bus schedules.

NOTICE: In light of COVID-19, Core Dance classes are limited to eight people in the room. With this restriction, advance registration is required. All attendees must wear a mask in the building at all times, check temperature upon arrival, and utilize hand sanitizer when entering the building (thermometer and hand sanitizer are present at the entry door).