JOIN OUR FREE COMMUNITY MOVEMENT PRACTICE 

Open to all ages, bodies, and abilities - No dance experience required

Moving Connections begins again in April! 

NEW: All workshops will devote more time to guided movement explorations based on imagery behind the gestures. Outdoor Practice Labs will include inspiring collaborative dance making (dependent on Government protocol).

Our Spring sessions will continue to provide an online platform to bring us together to engage in a live movement practice. In a choreographed sequence developed just before the pandemic, we will move in harmony with one another from our own spaces! These workshops provide a place for friends, family and community to come together to move and connect.

SPRING SESSION: APRIL 5-25, 2021

These online workshops consist of: 

• Monday Learning Labs (online)

• Wednesday Practice Labs (online)

We welcome you to join these workshops at any time - Drop-in to one workshop or register for the whole series!

Week 1:

Mon, April 5 | 5:00-5:45pm - Learning Lab 

Wed, April 7 | 5:00-5:45pm - Practice Lab

Week 2:

Mon, April 12 | 5:00-5:45pm - Learning Lab 

Wed, April 14 | 5:00-5:45pm - Practice Lab

Week 3:

Mon, April 17 | 5:00-5:45pm - Learning Lab 

Wed, April 19 | 5:00-5:45pm - Practice Lab 

Sat, April 24 | 5:00-6:00 - Practice Lab and Social

Learning Labs will be your tutorials for learning the choreographed sequence which is composed of 32 gesture-based movements. It will be broken down into smaller sections of 10-12 gestures in each lab.

Practice Labs will be your opportunity to fully engage in an uninterrupted run of the choreographed sequence, connecting all 32 gestures as a flowing, meditative movement practice. Each Practice Lab will conclude with a movement exploration inspired by memories of connection and touch thoughtfully guided by your facilitator.

Outdoor Practice Labs In lieu of our final Outdoor Practice Lab, there will be an additional Online Practice Lab and Social (1 Hour Workshop) on Saturday, April 24th at 5PM EST on Zoom! We hope you can join us for this special workshop — grab your beverage-of-choice, and for the last 20 mins we will connect with the folks who we have moved with over the course of these sessions.

*While it is not a requirement, it is recommended that you attend two Learning Labs prior to participating in a Practice Lab. 

Videos with guided instruction, Closed Captioning, and ASL are also available for participants upon request.

The Moving Connections Project and workshops were conceived, directed and developed in 2018 by Karen Kaeja. The project is an umbrella for her three decades of research of intergenerational collaborative dance making created through personal stories. Karen’s early training as a Dance Therapist where she pioneered the first Dance Therapy program at North York’s Baycrest Centre, seeded her research on the benefits of dancing for older adults and has now blossomed into the Moving Connections Project.

Moving Connections is made possible by the generous support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the University of Calgary / Kaeja d’Dance partnership SSHRC grant - Moving Connections and aging partnership: sharing danced memories to build meaningful relations led by Dr. Pil Hansen.

Header photo: Community Participants in Moving Connections Outdoor Practice; October 2020. Photo by Drew Berry.