Serouj “Midus” Aprahamian

Threading the Needle

Threading is a concept that involves creating openings with one’s limbs and having other body parts pass through them like a thread through a needle. Although rooted most extensively in hip-hop and underground dance styles (popping, breaking, freestyling, voguing, etc.), elements of the concept can be seen in certain martial arts and folk dance traditions, as well.

This workshop will explore threading and associated practices such as framing, tracing, fixed point, and connects. Common codes and approaches to these practices will be offered as frameworks for experimenting with new movement pathways. Exercises involving rhythm, improvisatory exchange, and moving in and out of the floor will be utilized to search for further connections within and among bodily architectures. A central theme will be embracing constraint as an aid, not an impediment, to expressive possibility.

Participants should wear whatever they feel comfortable moving in. Knee pads are not required but highly encouraged.

Midus’s biography:

Serouj “Midus” Aprahamian is a longtime practitioner and scholar of breaking, popping and underground hip-hop dance forms. As a member of Style Elements Crew, a group widely credited for adding a new vocabulary to breaking in the 1990s, he has gained notoriety for his unique choreography and traveled throughout the world teaching, performing, and judging hip-hop dance events. In 2001, together with three other dancers, he produced a globally influential experimental dance video called Detours. Aprahamian is also Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA, and the author of The Birth of Breaking: Hip-Hop History from the Floor Up (Bloomsbury 2023).

Dates and times:
July 28 – August 1
Monday to Friday
14:30 – 17:30

Price:
50 € registration fee
180 € total

Package deal:
In the same week Jennifer Monson is teaching in the mornings. You get a 15% discount for registering to both workshops.