This workshop will be presented in three sections: 

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Section A: Physical warm-up
A one hour African-contemporary dance class, based on Southern and West-African dance signature.

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Section B: A movement workshop inspired by resourcefulness.

This workshop was developed during COVID-19 during whilst in lockdown in Namibia and still a registered post-graduate student at UCLA at the same time doing all my classes online and in isolation. The embodied research question at the time was what resources I hold in my body and how to use these resources to create new dance work. During this dance workshop we will explore ideas of memory and habit, that relies on deep self-awareness and observation.

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Section C: Dance as play

Creating choreography on bodies with little or no dance training background.
Working with children has been the biggest learning curve of my career, they have taught me patience, grace as well as commitment and a lot of times to myself. Creating dance work for a cast of dancers with a big range in dance skills and different dance background has assisted me in developing my approach to decolonize practice. During this workshop we will explore ways of developing dance vocabulary that centers the dancer’s physical awareness above that of technique and use play as a way to develop dance material. 

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Haymich Olivier is a Namibian choreographer, educator and performer, who graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Diploma in Dance Teaching and an Honors degree in Choreography in 2008. Since then, he prepared numerous choreographic work for the National Theatre of Namibia, Bank Windhoek Arts Festival and the College of the Arts (Windhoek, Namibia). In 2010 along with fellow Namibian Dancers he started First Rain Dance Theatre (FRDT), while fully operational FRDT did community outreach work by training young dancers and employing them on a freelance basis. He was assistant choreographer for the Namibian Annual Music Awards for 3 years and won Best Supporting Actor in a Theatre Play during the 2012 Namibia National Film and Theatre Awards. From 2017 to 2018 he served on the Executive Committee of the Windhoek International Dance Festival, and in 2019 was selected to be the main choreographer for the Namibian Annual Music Awards. 

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In June 2023 he graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a M.F.A degree. He is currently employed as dance lecturer at the College of the Arts in Windhoek, Namibia where he teaches Contemporary Dance, Choreography and Dance Teaching Method. During his graduate studies Haymich developed his thesis choreography entitled: mask-Q-line: Der Tisch. 

 

This dance work is an inquiry into ideas of masculinity as experienced by the dancers and the choreographer and deeply influenced by the artist’s experience of growing up in the Apartheid era of the Namibian and South African history Furthermore Haymich is interested in the body’s response to trauma, ways to develop movement dynamic that are not based on traditional technique training as well as the movement language developed by older more mature dancing bodies.