W I N T E R
I N T E N S I V E
2 0 2 7
JANUARY 4 - 8
Monday - Friday
Centennial Performing Arts Studios
211 27th Ave N
Nashville, TN
Designed for advanced & professional dance artists ages 18+
Join our founding artistic director + resident choreographer, Banning Bouldin, and members of New Dialect in a weeklong contemporary movement exploration rooted in community building, collaboration, and experimental interdisciplinary creative process.
Each day begins with a group circle, where participants and New Dialect team members connect with each other in the round before warming up with an hour-long movement practice in Gyrokinesis® guided by longtime New Dialect collaborator, Phylicia Roybal.
Warm up is followed by a two-hour workshop, Communal Research Practice, where Banning guides dancers in the improvisation modalities, movement generation games, and nonbinary partnering skills they use to create new works.
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts. (photo: Tanja Kuic)
Dancers who register for full days or the full intensive spend the afternoon with Banning in a creative process workshop
based on her latest work Echo Mother.
Building on the tools from Communal Research Practice dancers will explore the lighting design elements and nonbinary partnering skills used to create the choreography for Echo Mother.
Participants will learn phrase work and partnering from the choreography, and engage in the creative process games New Dialect used to create the duet.
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts
photo: Tanja Kuic
Echo Mother
A new duet by Banning Bouldin/New Dialect
in collaboration with Madison Brott and Phylicia Roybal
Performed by Banning Bouldin and Phylicia Roybal
Echo Mother is the latest work by acclaimed choreographer and founder of New Dialect, Banning Bouldin. Inspired by Banning’s lived experience as a parent living with a disability and the death of a loved one, Echo Mother builds a world where two femmes move as if they are both builders and inhabitants of the same body. Their actions—washing, folding, lifting, soothing—recur like unfinished tasks, accumulating until movement dissolves into abstraction. The duet conjures a dwelling made not of walls but of gestures, where every touch leaves an imprint and every task multiplies. At times the dancers mirror one another; at others, they fuse into a multi-limbed creature, a body with too many hands, too many legs—simultaneously tender, burdened, and uncanny. Moving through sculptural tableaus, they evoke the physical tropes of caregiving while reshaping them into a private, almost subconscious vocabulary. The work traces the blurred line between self and other, labor and love, exhaustion and resilience, unfolding as a dialogue between presence and memory, between what is voiced and what remains unsaid. In Echo Mother, caregiving emerges not only as labor but as language: a tongue carried in muscle, a grammar written in hands, an inheritance both intimate and haunting.
Echo Mother premiered with support from South Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Stewart/Owen Dance at Wortham Center for the Performing Arts in May 2026. The work will be presented at Kennesaw State University and OZ Arts Nashville in 2027.
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts
photo: Tanja Kuic
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts
photo: Tanja Kuic
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts
photo: Tanja Kuic
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts
photo: Tanja Kuic
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts
photo: Tanja Kuic
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts
photo: Tanja Kuic
W O R K S H O P S
Gyrokinesis®
9:30 - 10:30am
January 4 - 8
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts (photo: Tanja Kuic)
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The Gyrokinesis® Method is the movement method that New Dialect uses as its company warm-up.
The practice addresses the entire body, opening energy pathways, stimulating the nervous system, increasing range of motion, and creating functional strength through rhythmic, flowing movement sequences.
It is an original and unique method, which coordinates movement, breath, and mental focus. Postures are not held for long periods of time. Instead, postures are smoothly, harmoniously connected through the use of breath, making exercises feel and appear more like a dance than traditional yoga.
The Gyrokinesis® Method is practiced on a mat and chair , without equipment.
Gyrokinesis® is a registered trademark of Gyrotonic® Sales Corp and is used with their permission.
communal research practice
10:45am - 12:45pm
January 4 - 8
Banning with Whim W’Him
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Communal Research practice
10:45am - 12:45pm
In this class we will think together with our whole bodies—collectively expanding toward unknowns in our shared movement practice. We will write, we will talk, and we will move through various improvisation modalities to generate immediate self portraits, explore nonbinary partnering skills, and deconstruct contemporary phrase work to reveal new possibilities.
creative process
Echo Mother
1:45 - 3:45pm
January 4 - 8
Phylicia Roybal & Banning Bouldin performing Echo Mother at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts (photo: Tanja Kuic)
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Echo Mother
Creative Process Workshop
1:45-3:45pm
Register for full week or full days and engage with Banning in a daily, two-hour creative process workshop based on her latest work Echo Mother.Building on the tools from Communal Research Practice we will explore the elements used to create the intimate choreography for Echo Mother.
Workshop participants will practice sculpture building, nonbinary partnering, and soloing within the theatrical framework of the piece.
ABOUT BANNING
by Andrea Behrends
Banning is a choreographer, educator, community organizer, and published scholar with over two decades of international dance experience.
A graduate of the Juilliard School, she is the founder and artistic director of New Dialect, where she has created several works beloved by audiences and hailed by critics, such as The Triangle and 21 Yeses, in addition to choreographic commissions for Whim W’Him, Gibney Dance Company, Northwest Dance Project, Groundworks Dance Theatre, Visceral Dance Chicago, and many others.
Banning’s research explores adaptive choreographic structures and community-driven practices that are informed by her lived experience with disability, femme empowerment, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her essay “Causing A Scene” wherein she tells the story of founding New Dialect in Nashville was recently published by the National Center for Choreography, as part of their new collection of essays Artists on Creative Administration.
ABOUT PHYLICIA
Phylicia Roybal is a movement artist originally from Santa Fe, NM. She earned her BFA from the University of Arizona in 2011, receiving the Gertrude Shurr Memorial Award for excellence in modern dance. Upon graduation she danced with Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Cocodaco Dance Project, and others before moving to Nashville in 2017 to join New Dialect.
Phylicia is a certified Gyrokinesis® and Gyrotonic® instructor, having practiced the method since childhood. She is also the co-founder of Nashville-based duo MauveTaupe and the creator/producer of BACKSTAGE outdoor performance space.
Over the past decade Phylicia has collaborated with New Dialect on the creation and presentation of numerous productions, including the US premiere of Roy Assaf's Girls and Banning Bouldin's HEAP, Echo Mother, and 21 Yeses.
Sign up for unlimited access to the full intensive
or join for individual classes/workshops
R E G I S T E R
Full Week
5 days | 9am - 4pm
includes everything + the complete Echo Mother Creative Process experience
Full Day
Drop in for any combination of single days
9am - 4pm
includes group circle + Gyrokinesis + Communal Research Practice + Echo Mother Creative Process workshop
Half Day
Drop in for the first half of the day
9am - 12:45pm
includes group circle + warm up + Communal Research Practice
Warm up
9am - 10:30am
includes group circle + Gyrokinesis
WORK STUDY AND TUITION ASSISTANCE THROUGH NEW DIALECT’S ACCESS FUND ARE AVAILABLE.
PLEASE EMAIL newdialect@newdialect.org FOR DETAILS.
C A L E N D A R
<<<< ALL TIMES ARE CDT >>>>
PHYSICAL THERAPY
P3 - Precision Physical Therapy & Pilates has been taking care of New Dialect since the beginning.
Should you need care, we highly recommend Heather Herod Cole and her staff.
Their office is located within walking distance of our studio.
Click here for general info about P3 or visit p3nashville.com
Winter Intensive 2027 is made possible through the generous grant support of
Echo Mother was commissioned By
Grace French
and was originally conceived as an installation at
<< Bastion >>
The proscenium iteration of Echo Mother
was produced with funding and presentation support from
South Arts, Stewart/Owen Dance, and Wortham Center for the Performing Arts
