ABOUT LEIMAY LUDUS

LEIMAY LUDUS is an invitation to play in the world of LEIMAY. Through LEIMAY LUDUS Ximena, Shige and the LEIMAY Ensemble share and continue to articulate LEIMAY’s physical conditioning practices, visual art craft, aesthetics, and philosophies while providing another point of access to their creations and process, and contributing to an understanding of the works distinctive to LEIMAY.

LEIMAY LUDUS offers different opportunities to work with artistic director Ximena Garnica, current ensemble dancers, and with an inspiring group of local and international guest and resident teachers working within the field of butoh, physical theater, performance art, and experimental vocal practices.

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Based on principles developed through the LEIMAY’s study of Noguchi Taiso, LUDUS // Water focuses on the conditioning of a conductive body through the identification of the body’s own weight in relationship to gravity and the cultivation of internal rhythm and fluidity. Participants will utilize imagination and imagery to engage with and identify flow of energy. The meditative environment helps create a body both flexible and serene.

Developed from the principles learned from Body Weather’s MB work, LUDUS // Fire focuses on a progressive, energetic, dynamic, and rhythmic movement danced across-the-floor focused on developing strength, endurance, flexibility, and grounding. The class also explores concepts of space, time, and imagery through the utilization of imagination to trigger multiple body conditions. Highly aerobic, get ready to sweat!

Based on butoh’s intrinsic transformative qualities, LUDUS // Becoming uses imagination to delve into a multitude of shapes, textures, worlds, and experiences. Students will constantly morph and change; expanding states of consciousness to enable multiple realms of perception and utilize improvisation as a means of personal exploration. Each student’s individual physical potential is used to develop a unique and individualized movement vocabulary. A playful class that transforms everyday items and experiences into fantastic and surreal realms of heightened potentiality. Join us and dance as the nothingness of mist, the wilt of flowers, or a tangled ball of hair!

Based on LEIMAY’s development of vocal exploration, LUDUS // Voice-Body is a movement-based dance class that focuses on the voice as part of the human body, and therefore, to be used and connected with the physical body. This class focuses on how to condition the connection between voice and body; to move authentically with voice and to incorporate sound and movement seamlessly together, without neglecting or placing more emphasis on either part. A great class for actors or singers who are interested in movement or for dancers who wish to experiment with voice.

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Teacher Bios:

Ximena Garnica (Artistic Co-Director) is an interdisciplinary choreographer, director, and artist and simultaneously an active curator and producer. She is the Co-Artistic Director at LEIMAY. Garnica is part of the dance faculty at P.H.T.S, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. Other teaching credits include master classes and lectures at Denison University, Skidmore College, DeSales University, and Muhlenberg College. She received a B.A. in Theater Arts with a minor in Multimedia Studies from the City College of New York. In 2006 she graduated from Akira Kasai’s Tenshikan Dance Institute in Tokyo. Garnica has been leading a variety of programs at CAVE since the year 2000 including international performance festivals, residencies and training projects.

Andrea Jones (Ensemble member) joined LEIMAY as a member of the performance and research ensemble in 2012.  Since becoming part of the LEIMAY team, she has had the opportunity to study with world-renowned butoh masters and dancers such as Ko Murobushi, Moeno Wakamatsu, Sherwood Chen, Tadashi Endo, Kota Yamazaki, Yuko Kaseki, and Su-en.  She is also an active contributor to the development of the LEIMAY LUDUS.  Andrea is a graduate of George Mason University, where she double majored in dance and comparative literature with a focus in East Asian literature. She is a certified yoga instructor and lived in Japan for a year and a half, studying Noguchi Taiso in Osaka, Tokyo, and Aomori with teacher Mari Osanai.

Masanori Asahara (Ensemble member) is a Japanese born dancer, choreographer and improvisation artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He has worked as a dancer for choreographers Kota Yamazaki, Yoshiko Chuma, Isabel Gotzkowsky, and Nathan Trice among others. Masanori has collaborated with visual artists, installation artists, musicians, filmmakers and multimedia artists in a variety of projects. He has performed at venues such as BAM Fisher, Brooklyn Museum, Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, The Gene Frankel Theater, Joyce SoHo, Judson Church, St. Mark´s Church, Watermill Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Teatro Jorge Eliecer Gaitan (Bogotá, Colombia), Mesa Art Center (Arizona), and Tulsa Performing Arts Center William Theater (Oklahoma). He is a core member of the New York interdisciplinary LEIMAY Ensemble since 2010.

Krystel Copper (Ensemble member) is an NYC based artist. She holds a B.A. in Dance from the University of Maryland, and has performed with Gesel Mason Performance Projects, B3W, Anahata Dance, CircuitDebris, Caenis at Pace, Estado Flotante, and Not for ReTALE, as well as presented her own work at DNA. She currently works with Amanda+James and LEIMAY.

Photo ©Laura Brichta.

LEIMAY LUDUS is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.