Greg will lead workshops in his approach to movement generation called Flow Space and share repertory from his company The Dash Ensemble based in Dallas, TX.

Flow Space
This workshop builds an atmosphere that allows for the act of “pure play” to help dance artists use more capacity, intellect, sense, courage, and imagination in their movement styles. Conducted by director of The DASH Ensemble, Gregory Dolbashian, the class is a highly developed series of improvisational tools and games that warms and pushes both the mind and the body to break habits and fulfill more presence. These exercises are all methods that Gregory has developed and utilized to create movement with The DASH. The artists learn confidence not just in themselves but also in the environment that they are a part of. Games and tasks work both on the individual and in tandem, so that Flow Space creates a community for progress, inspiration, and most of all, discovery.

Bios

Gregory Dolbashian
Born and raised in New York City, Gregory received his dance training at the Alvin Ailey School, then graduated cum laude from SUNY Purchase Dance Conservatory. He debuted The DASH Ensemble in December 2010. DASH performance credits include The JOYCE Theater, BAC, New York Live Arts, and Guggenheim Works and Process Series, as well as national touring. Gregory, with dance education specialist Lindsey Morgan, is the co-founder of The DASH Academy. Ballet commissions include Atlanta Ballet, St. Louis Ballet, Hamptons Dance Project, Cirio Collective, and Ballet Austin. Festivals include American Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, and DanceNOW. Commissions also by Daniil Simkin’s Intensio and ABT principal Hee Seo. Choreography Awards include Hubbard Street 2 International Competition, and NWDP’s Pretty Creatives. Contemporary/Rep companies include Dallas Black Dance Theater, LA Contemporary Dance Co., Owen/Cox, Dark Circles CD, TU Dance and Northwest Dance Project. College and Training Program commissions include Juilliard, Princeton, Point Park, UNCSA Summer Study, LINES Ballet, MOVENYC YP & S.W.E.A.T programs, NYU, SUNY Purchase, Earl Mosely’s Diversity of Dance, and Fordham/Ailey. Educationally, Gregory has served in many roles, including as choreographic mentor for American Ballet Theater’s Incubator and MOVENYC’s SWEAT LAB. Faculty positions include Broadway Dance Center, Peridance Center, Gibney Dance, STEPS on Broadway, The Martha Graham School, Ballet Hispanico, and Peridance Capezio Center. Adjunct faculty at SUNY Purchase and The Hartt School. Gregory, alongside Loni Landon, is the co-founder of The PlaygroundNYC, which was voted “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine.

The DASH Ensemble
Founded in New York City, The DASH Ensemble has been independently operated and owned by movement director Gregory Dolbashian since its debut in 2010. A professional movement and theater organization widely recognized in the industry of dance and theater, the company’s work has been performed at major dance venues across NYC including The JOYCE Theater, Guggenheim Works and Process, The Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Central Park Summer Stage. National touring has included Jacob’s Pillow, American Dance Festival, and performance runs in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago. Our work in film has been seen at The Tribeca Film Festival and Film at Lincoln Center. DASH Ensemble Repertory has been re-staged for training programs, universities, and professional dance artists across the country, including Juilliard, LINES Training Program and members of American Ballet Theater. Since March of 2020 The DASH Ensemble has created an additional home base of operations in Dallas, TX. The expansion was featured in Dance Magazine specifically highlighting the creation and launch of our DASH Academy pre-professional arts and education day time program, which is in close affiliation with the professional DASH Ensemble. Currently, our Ensemble is breaking new ground in the Dallas Arts Community with their newest production The Power of Collision. Combining elements of dynamic contemporary dance forms, with practices in visual magic and illusionistic effect, The Power of Collision is meant to engage, excite, and emotionally stir its audience  Handpicked by the leadership of The Dallas Arts District and The AT&T performing Arts Center, The Power of Collision and The DASH was selected as a featured production in the 2023 Elevator Project Season presented by ATTPAC and was recognized by TACA as one of Dallas’ most innovative productions of 2023.

Laja’s workshops will explore three pillars of her work as an internationally sought after educator and choreographer—advanced floorwork, partnering, and physical theater.

FloorworkFlow
is a dynamic movement experience designed to cultivate strength, fluidity, and spatial awareness. The practice explores seamless transitions—launching, gliding, and landing with precision—while deepening the connection to movement and musicality.

Beginning with a focused warm-up to awaken mobility in the joints, the session progresses into strength-building exercises that establish a foundation for more advanced physicality. Confidence builds through navigating momentum, refining dynamic textures, and moving with efficiency and control.

Through group movement and an adaptive approach to space, perception sharpens, and responsiveness heightens, fostering a deep sense of connection and collective energy. Rooted in community-centered dance practices, FloorworkFlow transforms movement into a shared experience—one that celebrates rhythm, expression, and the pure joy of moving together.

Partnering
Expand your ability to ride momentum as you hone the most efficient ways to move dynamically through space individually in partners and as a whole. Building off basic weight sharing skills, learn partnering material and practice the improvisational aspect of listening to the opportunities of connection, flow and flight.

Dance Theater
Take a full body deep dive into the realm of physical dance theater. Unlock the portals between the real world and the surreal. Access your physical prowess, uncover new ways of moving, deepen your own unique style while exploring the spectrum of theatricality of different characters. Utilizing movement material in various configurations alongside text, lip syncing, sound and improvised speech - the realm of possibilities are endless and open to your individual curiosity.

Bio
Laja Field is an internationally recognized dance-theater creator, performer, and educator, known for her hyperphysical movement language and cinematic storytelling. As the Director of Laja Danse Theatre (LDT), she brings her bold and immersive approach to platforms across the U.S., Canada, Central America, and Europe. Her work has premiered at Dock 11 for Berlin’s b12 festival, Kingsbury Hall with Utah Presents, NYLA with GibneyPro, and the KnJ Theater in NYC. She has been commissioned by Project InTandem in Calgary, NYU’s Second Avenue Dance Company, and universities across North America. Laja was also an inaugural artist for The Space_LA’s Performance Lab at L.A. Dance Project. Originally from Salt Lake City, she earned her BFA magna cum laude from the University of Utah before performing with Johannes Wieland’s company at Staatstheater Kassel. A dedicated educator, she has taught in 18 countries and serves on the MA Dance Performance admissions panel at The Place | London Contemporary Dance School. Through LDT, she continues to explore the fusion of raw physicality, theatrical nuance, and dreamlike landscapes, fostering a joyful and inspiring environment for creative exploration.

Cameron leads a three-day workshop in Nagare Technique, advanced floorwork, and his approach to creative process with his company Kizuna Dance.

Nagare Technique: Contemporary Floorwork

This contemporary floorwork-based class combines the grace of modern with the speed and fluidity of streetdance, capoeira, and house dance. The class activates oppositional forces and contrasting sensations to achieve fluid transitions in and out of the floor. Phrases will involve every part of the body--whether in the air or on the ground. The class focuses on how to move smoothly from high to low, and on how to rediscover "the down" through the floorwork-oriented aspects of house dance, capoeira, and contemporary dance. By shifting the focus from an internal dialogue to creating movement that, in its own physicality, can tell a story by itself, the class will delve deeper into the cathartic potential of sweat and exhaustion, while offering a new and active method of expression.

Bios

With more than 19 years of Japanese language study, Cameron McKinney created Kizuna Dance with the mission of using contemporary floorwork to create dance works for those who want to connect, and for those who feel we are all already connected, using both the similarities and divergences – linguistic, historical, aesthetic – between the American and Japanese cultures as primary drivers.

He was selected as a 2019-20 U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellow to collaborate with renowned Japanese choreographer Toru Shimazaki and present work in showcases in Japan. He has been a Choreography Fellow at The School at Jacob’s Pillow, an Alvin Ailey Foundation New Directions Choreography Lab Fellow, a Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence at Princeton University, and an Asian Cultural Council Individual Grantee.

His work has been supported through grants from the MidAtlantic Arts Foundation, New York City Artists Corps, the Rader Young Artists Foundation, DanceNYC, and Brooklyn Arts Council. His recent projects include HIDDEN BLISS, a dance and film collaboration with filmmaker Cayla Mae Simpson that premiered in Leicester, UK for Serendipity UK's Black Digital Dance Revolution; SAFE HARBOR, a collaboration with Japanese choreographer Toru Shimazkai; MOONTIDES, an evening-length commission from Swarthmore College that featured live taiko drummers; and numerous college commissions. 

Through Kizuna Dance, Cameron has also presented work and taught in twenty states and in Mexico, France, Germany, Belgium, and the UK, as well as in Japan at the U.S. Ambassador's Residence and at Morishita Studios. He has received over 30 commissions from institutions across the country and abroad, including The Ailey School, Princeton University, twice from the Joffrey Ballet School, three times by Serendipity UK, Marymount Manhattan College, Montclair University, Brigham Young University, San Jose State University, Slippery Rock University, The Dance Gallery Festival, Indiana University, and Bates College, among numerous others. He is currently on faculty at Montclair University and NYU Tisch, and his teaching credits include Adjunct & Visiting Lecturer positions at Princeton University, Bard College, and Queensborough Community College. He currently teaches on faculty at Peridance Center and Dance Lab Studios, taught on faculty at Gibney Dance from 2016-2024, and has taught for festivals nationally and internationally.

He is currently building Nagare Technique, a training module that blends streetdance styles, butoh, and contemporary floorwork. In 2023, his first formal paper on the construction of Nagare Technique, titled The Physicalization of Rebellion, was published by Serendipity UK in October 2023.

In 2021, he launched the inaugural Open Intensive, a week of day-long intensives made entirely free for all participants, featuring high-quality dance education provided by the company artists of Kizuna Dance. Each year, the intensive provides around 150 students with completely free dancing training in New York City. 

Keerati leads workshops in the contemporary practices that inform her creative process.

“As a creator, my approach to working in dance revolves around the idea of community and connectivity. As an Asian-American artist, being present in two cultures simultaneously has ingrained in me the invaluable connection of family and heritage while being empowered in my own individuality.

My mission is to embrace my Thai-American heritage in explorations of high physicality that draws inspiration from film, literature, visual art, sports and more in the struggle for harmonious relationships in a divisive world. The goal of creating work on multiple platforms requires continued work of trusting, listening, investigating and collaboration to organize the discovery of connecting who we are and what we can be.”

Contemporary Phrase Work & Creative Process

With the intention of preparing, organizing, and freeing our bodies, Keerati's class begins with connecting to our awareness and sense of self. The class uses the floor to discover tactility, circularity, and shifts of weight to warm up. With this sense of groundedness, the class shifts to exploring different planes and finding new ways to move across the room. Choreography, musicality and individuality are all emphasized as phrase work comes into play. Keerati's class focuses on how we can stay present as we take up and share space with each other.

Reflecting her choreographic process, Keerati’s workshops look to develop intertwining, dynamic relationships between individuals that can create relatability, evoke interpretation, and stimulate. In understanding the power of diversity and identity, play is emphasized to find new ways of unique movement translation and invention. In sharing space and exchanging energy together, the movement vocabulary investigates a communal groundedness and connectivity between individuals. The process prioritizes the work of trusting, listening, investigating and collaboration to organize the discovery of connecting who we are and who we can be to each other.

Bio

Keerati Jinakunwiphat, originally from Chicago, IL., received her BFA from the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase and was a recipient of the Adopt-A-Dancer Scholarship. She has additionally studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and Springboard Danse Montreal. She has worked with and performed works of artists such as Kyle Abraham, Nicole von Arx, Trisha Brown, Jasmine Ellis, Hannah Garner, Shannon Gillen, Paul Singh, Kevin Wynn, Doug Varone and more. Keerati began working with A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham in 2016.

Keerati has presented her own choreographic works at the Joyce Theater, New Victory Theater, MASS MoCA, Lincoln Center, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Chelsea Factory and more. She has been commissioned to set and create works on A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, New York Choreographic Institute, Houston Contemporary Dance Company, Purchase College, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Bang On A Can, Princeton University, PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, Whim W’him Seattle Contemporary Dance, Rutgers University, Fire Island Dance Festival and more. Keerati has graced the cover as one of Dance Magazine’s ‘25 to Watch’ in 2021. In 2023, she had the honor of becoming the first Asian American woman to be commissioned to choreograph for the New York City Ballet. Additionally, Keerati has been awarded with the Jadin Wong Fellowship Artist of Exceptional Merit by the Asian American Arts Alliance and is a 2023 Princess Grace Award winner in choreography. Keerati is a 2024 Artist in Residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.