About Registration: Before registering for classes & workshops, please review our registration policies in full. For questions, contact us at the front desk.
Description: Interdiscipline: Channeling Impulse Into Form is a series of workshops that invites participants to explore the body as a lens for understanding connection—between ourselves, the people around us, and the world we move through. Interdiscipline refers to the meeting of movement with other creative practices, while channeling impulse into form describes a simple human process: we feel something, we respond, and that response takes shape through the body.
How it Works: This is a series of three workshops, you may register for one, two, or all three. Each workshop will be arranged in three parts: arriving and warming up, exploration of the theme, and creating, sharing, and reflecting. This is an intergenerational, accessible environment that welcomes non-trained movers while encouraging a genuine willingness to physically engage. Bring your body as it is, along with curiosity, focus, and care.
About each Workshop:
Workshop One: Space: Friday, February 27, 2026, 5:00 - 8:00pm
We will begin with a gentle, somatic-based warm-up to heighten physical awareness and attune perception, helping the self move more responsively within the world around us. Space will be explored in multiple ways: as a geometric idea (point, line, plane), as the experience of the space within and around us, and as an architectural investigation—how edges, boundaries, and the spaces between bodies define us. Participants will learn to feel space as a material to move through, shape, and be shaped by. These exercises will lead into dance scores: loosely held instructions that guide improvisation and creative exploration.
Workshop Two: Sound: Friday, March 27, 2026, 5:00 - 8:00pm
Sound will be explored through listening and response. We will begin by distinguishing between passive listening and active responding, noticing how sound shapes attention, timing, and choice. Participants will make sound, move as music, and explore how movement can organize itself through time—a quality in dance often called musicality. We will also work with different types of music as inspiration. These tools will culminate in dance scores that support improvisation, collaboration, and creative discovery.
Workshop Three: Visual Art: Friday, April 24, 2026, 5:00 - 8:00pm
Visual art will be explored through movement and mark-making. We will consider drawing as a form of human expression—from cave paintings and calligraphy, where a mark carries intention, to gestural painting like Jackson Pollock, where full-body gestures record the artist’s movement and emotion. Participants will engage in guided drawing exercises, mark-making, musical/timing-based practices, and experiments with drawing the body, interpreting others’ marks, and “tracing” in space what we see and feel. Movement becomes a form of “body drawing,” translating perception into expressive form.
Level: Ages 12+, All Levels
Please note: Registration for each session will close 5 days before the workshop date.
Students should bring:
- Wear comfortable clothes that allow a full range of movement and can get dirty.
- Footwear will vary between barefoot, socks, and sneakers.
- Water and a snack
Background: Movement is central to this work. Dance here is not understood as something presentational or spectacular, but as a description of all human movement. Everyday actions—breathing, walking, reaching, yielding—already carry expressive and poetic potential. In this sense, all bodies are capable of dance, regardless of age or physical ability.
Through guided practices, participants will explore how natural impulses such as weight, touch, attention, and rhythm can be shaped through interaction with materials, images, sound, and space. By shaping our impulses into movement, they become tangible and shareable, expanding our awareness and expressive possibilities.
Together, the series invites participants to explore space, sound, and visual art through movement, using the body as a lens for connection, creativity, and discovery—while challenging what dance can be and who can be a dancer.
About the Artist: We are glad to welcome artist and dancer Christian Burns for a six-month artist residency at the Donkey Mill Art Center. Throughout his time with us, Christian will lead a series of community activations—from site-specific movement explorations to collaborative art and reflection sessions—designed to bridge the worlds of visual art, movement, and embodied awareness.
An interdisciplinary dance artist, choreographer, performer, and educator with over 30 years of experience, Burns’ work merges classical ballet training with improvisation and somatic practice. His inquiry often centers on how we move, perceive, and connect through presence, exploring the intersection of choreography, improvisation, and lived experience. He has performed with leading companies including Alonzo King LINES Ballet, James Sewell Ballet, and The Forsythe Company, and co-founded influential spaces for experimentation such as The Foundry and Parsons Hall Project Space.
About Our Programs: As a place of convergence, the Mill serves as both a community and a physical place–celebrating the power of the arts, bringing people, ideas and perspectives together. We are proud to offer adult and youth programs that focus on awareness of one’s individuality in the contexts of family, community and the natural world. Our exhibitions provide a space to reflect, share perspectives and grow as a community. Our classes & workshops are designed to inspire creativity, foster connections, and provide enriching experiences for all participants. We invite you to step into the studio.
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