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Indy Dance Exchange

Presented in partnership with BW Creative and Indy Movement Arts Collective

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Winter Dance Intensive + Works-In-Progress Sharing

January 10th-12th, 2025

Indy Dance Exchange is a confluence of global dance artists coming together in Indianapolis. Experience the intersection of exposure, cultivation and creative play at the 2025 Winter Intensive and Works-IN-Progress Sharing. Daily sessions will include improvisation and creative play, contemporary dance techniques, cultural and social dance forms, and partnering. 

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UPDATE: We have cancelled the Works-IN-Progress Sharing scheduled for Saturday, January 11th from 3:30-5:00pm due to lack of interest. 

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Winter Dance Intensive
January 10th-12th, 2025
Indy Movement Arts Collective

Friday, January 10th

  • 5:30-7:30pm: Breath, Momentum and Fullness of Movement with Brandon Welch​

Saturday, January 11th

  • 9:00-10:45am: Contemporary Movement with Brandon Welch

  • 11:00am-12:00pm: West African with Ronne Stone

  • 1:00-3:00pm: Guided Freestyle Session with Vivian Kim

Sunday, January 12th​​​​​

  • 9:00-10:45am: House Dance with Vivian Kim

  • 11:00am-12:00pm: Contemporary Partnering with Brandon Welch

  • 1-3pm: Landscapes of the Body with Lani Weissbach

Winter Intensive Packages

Save some cash by registering for one of our 2025 Indy Dance Exchange Winter Intensive package offerings: Full Winter Intensive Package and Creative Play Package. If you would like to register for individual classes, please click on the "REGISTER" buttons listed with each class offering below. Full and partial scholarships are available via the Movement Scholarship Fund. Applications are due by Sunday, January 9th. 

Class Offerings

Full and partial scholarships are available via the Movement Scholarship Fund. Applications are due by January 9th. 

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Brandon's class aims to create a safe space where dancers can explore authentic expression and engage in physical disciplines to increase mobility, strength and awareness. Through experiencing grounded movement, deep breathing and releasing tension in the body, students can partake in physical and mental renewal. Contemporary Movement will encourage students to take risks as well as move freely and confidently through floor work, partnering and contemporary phrase work.

Contemporary Movement with Brandon Welch

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Join Vivian for this open-level House Dance class. With the music originating in Chicago and the movement codifying in New York, House Dance continues to rise in popularity. With the movement inspiration drawing from different movement modalities such as Capoeira, vernacular Jazz, Breaking, and more, House Dance is a freeing, high-energy, aerobic class with a focus on footwork and freestyles.  Participants enrolling for this workshop do not need to have previous experience in House Dance or other Street/Club styles of dance.  It is highly recommended that participants bring clean sneakers, a sweat towel, and a water bottle.  

House Dance

with Vivian Kim

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This West African Dance community class, taught by Ronne Stone, is an open level dance class that explores traditional songs, dances, and rhythms from various cultures in West Africa. This high energy class is accompanied by live drumming.

West African

with Ronne Stone

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Dance is a vessel to know and be known by others. In our contemporary partnering class, we will share space, trust in a collaborative process and cultivate community. We will practice deep listening and response through counterbalance, weight sharing and contact improvisation.

 

All movement backgrounds are welcome, and please come with an open heart!

Contemporary Partnering

with Brandon Welch

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Landscapes of the Body is a rich, varied, and multilayered movement practice that links ancient and contemporary wisdom from East and West into a movement practice that is suitable for all levels and all people. At the heart of this practice is the intention to honor our biological need to move in organic and expressive ways, and to explore how our internal impulses can translate into authentic and vivid expression. Lani will guide participants through a variety of somatic and creative improvisational structures rich with imagery that aim to build a deeper awareness and connection to our inner and outer landscapes. Bring your beginners mind and come ready to dive into your own somatic experience while also relating to and supporting others.

Creative Play Offering:

Landscapes of the Body

with Lani Weissbach

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Looking for new ways to generate movement? Curious about different freestyle/improv exercises to refresh your freestyle/improv sessions? Then this creative play session is for you. Though this workshop has a focus on Hip Hop freestyle, dancers of ALL genres are encouraged to participate in our workshop.  Dancers will start together in a warm-up and be broken up into smaller cyphers with a prompt to explore.  The end of class will be an "open cypher" for dancers to continue exploring prompts or to simple dance. Clean sneakers, socks or barefoot is welcome in this workshop.

Creative Play Offering:

​Guided Freestyle Session

with Vivian Kim

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Our movement workshop will start with breath as the inception of all movement. We will embrace stillness and simplicity and from this place begin our movement journey. In an effort to bridge the simple and the complex, we will slowly and intentionally build to full-bodied expression and embrace the symbolism of movement as a metaphor for life. Open for all movers, this creative play session will explore the mission of my work and creative process: to see breath, groundedness, wholeness and momentum embodied. 

Creative Play Offering:

Breath, Momentum & Fullness of Movement

with Brandon Welch

Winter Dance Intensive Faculty

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Brandon Welch

Brandon Welch is a dancer, teaching artist and creator with a passion for utilizing movement as a catalyst for social change. He holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance with a semester on exchange at the Western Australian Academy of the Performing Arts. His performance career includes being a company member of Momix Dance Illusionists, Doug Varone and Dancers, Hannah Kahn Dance Company, Helanius J. Wilkins/SALT and Gibney Dance Company. During his time with Doug Varone, Brandon participated in Dance Motion USA’s cultural diplomacy program to South America and performed in Les Troyens at the Metropolitan Opera. As an Artistic Associate of Gibney Dance, Brandon facilitated movement workshops for survivors of Intimate Partner Violence with guidance from Clinical Advisor Beth Silverman-Yamm. In 2017, he began bringing his movement practices into public schools as a teaching artist with the 92nd Street Y, home of the Dance Education Laboratory, and Columbia College Chicago. In 2020, Brandon created Moving Meditations in collaboration with Abby Corrigan, which offered continuing education credits for incarcerated men through the Denver University's Prison Arts Initiative. 

 

Brandon currently resides in Fort Collins, Colorado and is a dancer, co-conspirator and community engagement coordinator for The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geo-Political Quilt to Re-Body Belonging with Helanius J. Wilkins. His guest artist teaching includes DOCH University (Stockholm), Mimar Sinan University (Istanbul), HIGHFest Masterclass (Yerevan), MuDa Africa (Dar Es Salaam) and Dance Ensemble Singapore. Recent creative commissions include the Lamont Opera Theatre, Mariposa Collective and Whitney Center for the Arts.

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Ronne Stone

For over three decades, I have dedicated my life to the art of dance. My journey began at the Orlando School of Cultural Dance, where I discovered the beauty of African dance in 1993. Since then, I have been a part of esteemed dance companies such as the Kuumba Dance Company and Adefua Dance Company, expanding my knowledge and skills in West African dance under the guidance of masters. My passion for connecting communities to their cultural roots led me to establish a thriving community class that has flourished for 24 years. I have collaborated with local art organizations as a choreographer and instructor throughout my career. In 2006, I founded Epiphany Dance Collective. They continue to perform throughout the state as a professional adult West African dance company. As a graduate of Indiana University with a degree in Fine Arts, I have been a teaching artist with Arts For Learning for over a decade. Currently, I serve as an adjunct professor at Butler University, while also teaching at Believe High School and Rooted High School. My dedication to the arts and commitment to nurturing young talent continues to drive me as I partner with various arts organizations.

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Vivian Kim

Vivian Kim, MFA, is currently based in Indiana where she is a full-time lecturer for the Dance Program in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Purdue University.  Vivian specialized in Modern dance in 2010. In 2017 she began training in House and Hip Hop with Rennie Harris in his Denver-based dance company Grass Roots Project, and then in 2021 Vivian added Popping to her rep. by training with Dassy Lee from Femme Fatale.  Prior to moving to Indiana, Vivian participated in the Denver and Boulder dance communities as a facilitator, dance educator, choreographer, and performer.  Most recently, she performed with New Breed Dance Company in 2023, taught at Front Range Community College, Mi Chantli Art and Movement Sanctuary, and Mayama Movement Studios.  Additionally, she is the former co-Founder and co-Artistic Director of VisKosity Dance Collective, an interdisciplinary dance collective that utilized Modern dance forms and concepts with Street Styles.  Vivian also sits on the Board of Directors for the Boulder Ballet and Mi Chantli Art and Movement Sanctuary.  Stay up-to-date with classes, workshops, and other news at www.vkdances.com or follow her on instagram @vivkimdances.

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Lani Weissbach

Lani Weissbach has had a rich and varied career as a director, teacher, choreographer and performer in the field of contemporary dance, somatics and yoga, and her ongoing investigation of the avant garde Japanese dance form butoh has deeply informed her work for over 30 years.  As a devoted educator of mindfulness and movement, Lani has worked in a variety of settings and with a wide range of students, from professional dancers and actors to the elderly.  As founder and artistic director of Shen & Bones Performance Group, Lani created and performed for 17 years in numerous works of “quiet introspection, raw power, evocative imagery and dark themes” (Steve Sucato, national dance writer/critic).   Her work has been presented throughout the U.S., including the Cleveland Public Theatre, The Vangeline Theater in NYC, The D.C. Arts Center in Washington, D.C., the BeBe Theater in Asheville, NC and Links Hall in Chicago.  Lani is the author of a chapter titled Decentering the Human through Butoh in the publication Geographies of Us:  Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages (Routledge Press, 2024.) She currently serves as the Director of Embodied Learning for the Indianapolis Movement Arts Collective and teaches for universities, studios, and organizations in the region and nationally.  In January 2025, Lani will graduate from a two-year mindfulness meditation teacher training with world-renowned psychologists and meditation teachers Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. Lani holds an MFA in dance from Arizona State University, is a Master Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist (MSME/T) with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA) and is a Registered Yoga Teacher (E-RYT 500) with Yoga Alliance.   For more information, please visit:  www.laniweissbach.com

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