Chicago @ Aloft

Photo by Andrew T. Foster

Aloft is super excited to announce that we will be presenting Special Guest Artist Lisa Natoli, in residence at Aloft next session, from June 7-July 31. Lisa is an incredible NYC-based artist and coach and encourage you to take this unique opportunity to study under her unique perspective on rope, silks, lyra and artistic development. She will be teaching three special session-length workshops (Vertical Partnering: Bodies Vrs Gravity, Research and Destroy and Cross Pollination) as well as many of our regularly scheduled classes.

I asked Lisa what motivates her as a teacher and artist and here’s her beautiful response:
One of the most confusing things anyone’s said to me was that my work was “honest.” If you’re not being honest with your own art, what are you doing? I think it was growing up in New Orleans in the 70’s where work and everyday life and art just seemed to be rubbing up against each other all the time, maybe bleeding into each other, everywhere you looked, day and night, that’s had the biggest influence on how I think about my own work. I don’t separate and compartmentalize things. Everything factors into everything else. Food has as much chance of inspiring my next piece as a performance I saw or some music I heard. Everything inspires me: smells, flavors, the way someone walked across the street, something I read. Art is a way for me to work out what’s on my mind, a way of exploring my own thoughts and feelings, and rehearsal, performance and teaching are all just facets of that exploration.Teaching in particular is a way for me to bring other people along on the ride.

Class Descriptions:

Vertical Partnering–Bodies Vs. Gravity: Sundays 1:30-3 (Beginning June 12)
This class is for aerialists interested in experimental partnering and duo/ensemble work. We will focus on partnering, collaboration, and floor-to-air exits and entrances, using skills and theories borrowed from contact improvisation and movement studies, such as rolling and skipping points of contact, releasing, weight shifts, balance / counterbalance, all in context to your apparatus and partner.

Cross Pollination: Friday, 6-8PM
This class is for aerialists with some experience who want to broaden boundaries and identify the habits, assumptions and expectations in their artistic practice. We will work collaboratively, building awareness through technique, research, and experience, towards the goal of creating a coherent, thinking body. We will integrate transitions and skills into sequences to become better technicians and performing artists, being mindful of the question, “what are we choosing/drawing on, and why?”
Pre-reg: Be able to invert in air repeatedly, execute a clean hip key and know two ways to get into an S-wrap. I ask that you come with an open mind, available body and one skill or idea that you would like to build into a collaborative sequence.
“All notes playing in harmony to build a blissful stability.” John Coltrane

Research and Destroy: Monday, 7:30­-9:30 (Beginning June 13)
In this workshop series we will look at creating abstract and non-linear narratives by exploring focus, motifs, character, range of motion and wrap awareness. We will examine repetition and research skills as a process to inform how movement constructs and deconstructs, and suggest meaning in a physical score.

Lisa will also be teaching the following classes! Get a taste of someone else’s medicine!
○ Monday, 6­-7:30: Advanced Beginning Silks
○ Tuesday, 7:30­9: Intermediate Lyra
○ Wednesday, 7:30­9: Advanced Silks
○ Thursday, 6­7:30: Advanced Lyra
○ Thursday, 7:30­9: Intermediate 1 Silks
○ Sunday, 10:30­12: Intermediate 1 Silks
○ Sunday, 12­1:30: Advanced Rope

Sign ups will begin when regular session sign ups begin.

https://www.facebook.com/events/228581167516363/