PANDA LABS 2025
This summer PANDA LABS return for 2 immersions into performance and dance development!
PANDA [Performance And New Dance Arrivals] are some of the longest programs offered at the Field Center and they are deep dives into living with one another as artists while training daily with established teachers in the field. Daily classes are punctuated by swims in the river, saunas, fresh food from our gardens, long naps in the library, field trips and performances at night.
PANDA LAB I: KEITH HENNESSY + ISHMAEL HOUSTON-JONES | MAY 16 - 23
Closer
A workshop, laboratory, test test for dancers, performance makers, and you
The laboratory will attempt to generate a precarious and curious space between engagement and refuge, being present with queerness, the ongoing impact of political-health-ecological crises, and the importance of shared dance and inquiry. We will hang out in playful and non-productive spaces, being in a contagious relationship to past and future, ghosts and desire. We will approach queer and decolonial futurities through practices of opening to the unknown. We seek a soft experience where political crises and dancing bodies can be woven into a single conversation. Where bodies are energies, always entangled within the ecologies from which they emerge. There will be time for performance making, showing, and discussing.
Ishmael and Keith’s work does not always focus on their subjectivities as racialized, queered, aged, or gendered bodies but these issues, identities, privileges and harms are always present, always available materials for improvising and other practices of less conscious or mysterious action. Play is risky and revealing.
REGISTRATION IS OPEN NOW!
PANDA LAB II: PAUL SINGH + JESSE ZARITT | JULY 17 - 27
JESSE ZARITT: No end of detail
During our time together, we will move through three different modes of study:
1. Studio Practice:
Sessions will begin with guided research practices that examine relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, organizations of effort/force and ideology/aesthetics: practices of critical physicality! Phrase-work will be shared as a portal to play. Choreographed material will act as a set of coordinates that anchor an exploration of exaggeration and sensation. We’ll fall into and out of lush, decadent movement experiences.
2. Drawing Lab
Sessions will engage drawing as a physical and visual practice linked to dreaming, drafting, and materializing futures. Elements of drawing such as line, tone, texture, edge, fluidity, atmosphere, and spatial planning will be collectively explored and discussed. By studying how drawing moves and movement draws, we will critically re-imagine how and what we observe, and how our making might intervene within and beyond the present moment.
3. Insistence/Persistence:
" IF YOU USED TO PAINT, PAINT AGAIN... THEN PLEASE ENCOURAGE OTHERS! IF YOU USED TO WRITE, WRITE AGAIN... THEN PLEASE ENCOURAGE OTHERS! THE POTENTIAL MAGIC OF THIS WORLD REQUIRES OUR PARTICIPATION!" CAConrad, TRIPLE JUPITER HUMANIFESTO: A (Soma)tic Poetry Entrance, http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/
Organized as a series of durational practice loops of dancing, writing and drawing, Insistence/Persistence sessions invite participants to create materials and exchange practices for immediate use. Focusing on unsolicited performance and the limits of the solo, sessions will explore theatrical encounters with peers, objects and environments. Spectacularly fleeting events, or micro-theaters, will be designed, inhabited and shared.
PAUL SINGH:
Classes will be structured in three separate modules:
1. Floorwork: This class begins with a series of softening exercises designed to shift the body from vertical
standing and walking to low, horizontal movement. From there, we transition into a 30–40-minute
warm-up phrase that explores key movement principles: folding and expanding, internal and
external rotation, foot supination and pronation, forward and backward rolling over the neck, spirals
and twists, shoulder stands, and more.
Parts of this warm-up phrase are reimagined into a “puzzle combination,” seamlessly transitioning
foundational exercises into dynamic dance material. We’ll set aside time for discussion to explore
how different body types approach the work, encourage improvisation, and even co-teaching.
Next, we move into across-the-floor sequences, focusing on fluid momentum, inversions, stamina,
and complexity. We’ll conclude with a longer dance phrase, repeating it at varying speeds—from
slow and deliberate to fast and energetic—balancing precise technique with thrilling, powerful
movement.
2. Contemporary: This class begins by awakening the body with a series of softening exercises, transforming our everyday
physicality into the magical, animalistic energy of our dancing selves. From there, we dive into five
unique exercises, each its own mini-dance: The Knee Softeners, The Foot Stretches, The Runaround,
The Swing-Through-Space, and The Dives-Through-Space. These carefully designed sequences
warm, prepare, strengthen, and challenge the body in equal measure.
We’ll conclude with a long-form phrase that puts it all together, inviting us to explore memory, directional
shifts, changes in quality, and the playful eruption of oscillating personalities. At the core of this class is
the spine—how we engage it through homolateral, contralateral, and sequential pathways. Once the
spine is activated and expressive from its proximal center, the distal edges—knees, elbows, hands, feet,
and head—respond with artistry and intention.
This class is a celebration complex precision and wild release, offering space to explore and refine the
body's innate potential.
3. Contact Improvisation (CI): Movers with varying levels of CI training, from limited/beginner level all the way to advanced, are
welcome to join. However, it is required that participants have had years of movement practice at the
ready. This can be from personal study in movement forms (martial arts, fitness classes, sports, etc.) or
from formal dance training. This is not a class for those entirely new to movement exploration.
This class is crafted specifically for professional dancers who want better training in empathic
partnering. We’ll take the skill sets from the array of personal practices in the room, and use them to aid
in contact improvisation exercises. We’ll begin with solo warm-ups to prepare the body for connection,
then progress through exercises, thought experiments, and movement explorations designed to help
participants move and be moved with greater intention.
The ultimate goal is to foster meaningful connections while encouraging dancers to take risks in a safe
and supportive environment. These skills are invaluable for enhancing rehearsal processes and creative
collaborations.
SCHOLARSHIP | WORK TRADE | PAYMENT PLAN
We offer 3 full scholarships for Black, Indigenous and People of Color [BIPOC] folks in each session. As well as 3 Work Trade spots in each session. If interested please select 'BIPOC Scholarship' ticket OR 'Work Trade' ticket when registering via the link below. For more information about the work trade exchange, please see Work Exchange.
CLICK HERE to register with a Payment Plan.
REFUND POLICY: Full refunds available up to 10 days prior to the event. Please inform us if you cannot attend an event up to 10 days prior [including Scholars and Work Traders]! Refunds within the 10 days prior to the event may be available on a case-by case basis, please reach out to communications@thefieldcenter.com
ABOUT THE FACULTY
Ishmael Houston-Jones is an award winning choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation.
Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third “Bessie” for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd. In 2020 he recieved a fourth "Bessie" for Service to the Field of Dance. Houston-Jones is the DraftWork curator for works-in-progress at Danspace Project in New York. He has curated Platform 2012: Parallels which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now both at Danspace Project.
Keith Hennessy dances in and around performance. Born in northern Ontario, he lives in San Francisco since 1982 and tours internationally. His performances engage improvisation, ritual, collaboration, and protest as tools for investigating political realities. Practices inspired by anarchism, critical whiteness, post/Modern dance, activist art, the Bay Area, wicca, punk, contact improvisation, indigeneity, and queer-feminist performance motivate and mobilize Hennessy’s work. Keith’s 2016-17 collaborators include Peaches, Meg Stuart, Scott Wells, Jassem Hindi, J Jha, Annie Danger, Gerald Casel, and the collaboratives Blank Map and Turbulence. Keith's recent teaching in universities, independent studios, and festivals includes Ponderosa (Germany), FRESH (SF), HZT (Berlin), Movement Research (NYC), Impulstanz (Vienna), Portland State University, Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam), St. Mary's, VAC Foundation (Moscow), and Warsaw Flow International CI Festival. Awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, United States Artist Fellowship, a NY Bessie, multiple Isadora Duncan Awards, and a Bay Area Goldie. Keith's writings have been published in Contact Quarterly, Movement Research Journal, Performance Research (UK), Society of Dance History Scholars Journal, Dance Theatre Journal (UK), Itch, Front, and In Dance. Hennessy directs Circo Zero and was a member of Contraband with Sara Shelton Mann. Hennessy is a co-founder of CounterPULSE (formerly 848 Community Space) a thriving performance space in San Francisco. He earned an MFA and PhD from UC Davis.
Photo by Andrew Jordan
Paul Singh holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois, USA. He has performed with a diverse range of choreographers and companies, including Gerald Casel, Risa Jaroslow, Phantom Limb Company, Stephanie Batten Bland, Douglas Dunn, Christopher Williams, Kathy Westwater, and Faye Driscoll. Notably, he was part of the inaugural cast of Punchdrunk’s American debut of Sleep No More.
Internationally, Paul has performed in Peter Sellars’ opera The Indian Queen (Madrid) and Peter Pleyer’s large-scale improvisation work Visible Undercurrent (Berlin). His choreographic works have been presented in venues across NYC and Berlin, with a highlight being the presentation of his solo piece Stutter at the Kennedy Center in 2004. Most recently, he premiered two new works for A.I.M by Kyle Abraham in 2024. An experienced educator in contact improvisation (CI), Paul teaches intensives and workshops globally, focusing on both teacher training and beginner studies. He is currently a faculty member at The Juilliard School, where he teaches various technique classes, including CI, floor work, contemporary, and partnering. From 2021 to 2023, he served as Program Manager at Baryshnikov Arts Center.
Jesse Zaritt's work engages drawing as dancing - a visual and physical practice linked to dreaming, drafting, and materializing futures. His choreographic, performance and teaching practices research the ways in which excessive, contemplative and resistive dance practices change how movement arises in the world and how dancing participates in processes of social transformation. A series of solo works made between 2008 and 2025 interrogate attachments to Jewish ritual and community, seeking to queer dominant paradigms of familial/national belonging, religion, gender and sexuality.
Jesse has performed his solo work in Taiwan, Uruguay, Korea, Germany, Japan, Mexico and throughout the United States. He has performed with Shen Wei Dance Arts and in the work of Netta Yerushalmy and Faye Driscoll; he worked as an artistic adviser for Driscoll's projects through April 2023. Jesse is a faculty member of the newly formed Bennington BFA Dance Lab and worked as an Associate Professor at the University of the Arts through the spring of 2024. He currently works in creative dialogue with Sara Shelton Mann.