with Katy Pyle and guests
January 14 – February 18 | February 25 – April 1
Mondays | 7:30-9:00 pm
$12.00 Drop-in | $60.00 for workshop
Adult Ballez class is a dance class for beginners and experienced dancers alike to explore ballet movements outside of a heteronormative construct. We’ll play with ballet’s traditionally gendered form, learning and practicing the steps of both ballerinas and danseurs. We’ll warm-up at the barre, practice codified postures and movements, and then move into center to turn, jump and learn short movement phrases. We’ll practice partnering that is not based on size, but rather on weight-sharing, listening, and cooperation.
This class will be taught by Katy Pyle with Ballez dancers Cassie Mey and Jules Skloot. No prior dance experience necessary! All queer identified and queer allied bodies are welcome. The class will reference previous week’s material, but drop-ins are also welcome.
About Katy Pyle and guests:
Katy Pyle began studying ballet as a child, and was often sneaking into men’s class to do all the cool jumps, turns, and soaring leaps. She became a company apprentice with Austin Contemporary Ballet at 14 and furthered her studies at North Carolina School of the Arts. At 16, she diverged from ballet because of the limited gender representations and narrow idea about body shapes. She went on to study modern and post-modern dance at NCSA, and then Hollins. She’s created and performed regularly in NYC since graduating in 2002, with such artists as Faye Driscoll, Young Jean Lee, John Jasperse, Karinne Keithley, Jennifer Monson, and Katie Workum. She began creating her first Ballez, The Firebird, through a space grant at BAX this past Fall, 2011, and is excited to share this re-imagined form!
Jules Skloot started ballet classes at age five but promptly came home and reported “it’s not what my body wants to do.” From then on Jules trained in modern (including lots of Graham) and post-modern techniques throughout high school, at Hampshire College, and in graduate school at Sarah Lawrence College. It is only recently that Jules has discovered ballet to be something his body wants to do. Jules loves to jump and turn, to lift and be lifted, and the clarity, strength, and organization that can be found in ballez training. Jules teaches partnering among other things at BAX and schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and has performed most recently (and most often) in NYC with Katy Pyle and Sara Rudner.
Cassie Mey‘s mom signed her up for dance class after she saw Cassie dancing around the living room, inspired by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland on tv.Cassie soon began training at the Academy of Colorado Ballet in Denver, with Russian teachers from the Vaganova school. As a teen, she began to identify as a feminist, discovered other forms of dance at Denver School of the Arts, and at summer camp was voted most likely to choreograph a riot grrl ballet. She is finally now getting her chance to radicalize ballet as the Sorceress in Katy Pyle’s The Firebird. Cassie received her BA in Dance from Mills College in 2001, performed with Molissa Fenley and Dancers from 2002-2011, and her other recent dance projects are with Dean Moss, and Jillian Peña. Cassie loves how Ballez brings out her inner superheroine and her community spirit!
