Cameron McKinney

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 from smoothly 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.

Cameron McKinney’s biography:

With more than 19 years of Japanese language study, Cameron McKinney created Kizuna Dance to create dance works that connect the American and Japanese cultures. 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 Japan. He has been a Choreography Fellow at The School at Jacob’s Pillow, a Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence at Princeton University, an Alvin Ailey Foundation New Directions Choreography Lab Fellow, and an Asian Cultural Council Individual Grantee. His work has been supported by the MidAtlantic Arts Foundation, the New York City Artists Corps, Brooklyn Arts Council, and the Rader Young Artists Foundation.

Through Kizuna Dance, Cameron has also presented work and taught in twenty states and in Mexico, Germany, Belgium, France, the UK. In 2019, his choreography had its French premier at the International Choreographic Festival of Blois on the National Stage, “La Halle aux Grains” in Blois, France. In 2020, Cameron performed his original choreography alongside Sayo Homma (Dance Barbizon) in Tokyo, Japan in the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence. In 2024, his company Kizuna Dance celebrated its 10th anniversary season with the world premiere of the evening-length work FATHER ABSENCE | MOTHER MA, presented by CUNY Dance Initiative at John Jay College. He also co-choreographed SAFE HARBOR, a performance collaboration between five American dancers, Toru Shimazaki, and five Japanese dancers from Kobe College’s in Japan. His commissions include The Ailey School, Marymount Manhattan College, Princeton University, Montclair University, three times from the Let’s Dance International Frontiers Festival (UK), Slippery Rock University, Swarthmore College, and Brigham Young University, among numerous others. He currently teaches on faculty at Montclair State University and NYU Tisch. Each year, he organizes Kizuna Dance’s Open Intensive, a week of day-long intensives made entirely free for all participants.

Dates and times:
February 10 – 14
Monday to Friday
14:30 – 17:30

Price:
50 € registration fee
180 € total

Package deal:
In the same week Lewis Cooke is teaching a two weeks workshop in the mornings. You get a 15% discount for registering to both workshops