Workshops & Master Classes for Dancers, Non-Dancers and Youth
"Every one of DeAnna's classes is a challenge, forcing me to push not only my dancing ability, but also my physical strength to new levels." -Kira Klapper, Boston University
"Simply the best -- she exposes her students to a wide variety of styles, as well as trains students to connect the entire body. She pushes students as much as possible, and places a strong emphasis on upper-body strengthening." -Student, Boston University
DeAnna Pellecchia has taught and been taught by movers of all kinds. She has worked with doctors, musicians,quadriplegics, the elderly, professional and pre-professional dancers, at-risk youth, and corporate business managers, proudly helping to reveal the dancer in each of them. She teaches Workshops and Master Classes at various levels in Modern Technique, Jazz Technique, Hip-Hop, Composition, Improvisation, Creative Movement, Performance Skills, Dance History, and Flexibility & Conditioning for Dancers. She has taught dance and movement at schools, universities and institutions throughout the country affording her the extraordinary opportunity to work amongst inquisitive, courageous young people on beautifying the world with movement.
Fees are inclusive of project specifics, travel and accommodations.Please e-mail info@deannapellecchia.comif you are interested in receiving more information.
CURRENT TEACHING POSITIONS
FACULTY - Boston University: DeAnna has resided on the dance faculty at Boston University since September, 2002. She teaches Jazz-Funk at the beginner, intermediate and advanced level. This class concentrates on the fast dynamic Jazz dance styles associated with Broadway, hip-hop and video dance. DeAnna covers a variety of styles within these categories and focuses on sound anatomical technique.
GUEST TEACHER - Cambridge School of Weston: DeAnna teaches high school students ranging in age from 13 - 18 at the Cambridge School. She instructs intermediate modern dance, jazz technique and Advanced Repertory. Admission into Advanced Repertory is by audition only. In this class DeAnna sets original choreography on the students which they perform in their annual spring concert.
GUEST TEACHER - Boston Conservatory & Roger Williams University: DeAnna is frequently a guest instructor at Boston Conservatory, where she teaches intermediate and advanced level Jazz, and at Roger Williams University where she teaches beginner, intermediate and advanced level modern. DeAnna's Modern Technique Class is extremely grounded in orientation. She emphasizes athleticism, strength and fluidity, and draws on her eclectic movement background to create seamless links between diverse movement forms.
MASTER CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS
for Professional and Pre-Professional Dancers
DeAnna teaches master classes and workshops for professional and pre-professional dancers, (beginner, intermediate and advanced levels) in Modern Technique, Jazz Technique, Performance Skills, Improvisation and Composition and has been featured as a guest artist at
PRIVATE LESSONS DeAnna teaches private lessons in any of the afore mentioned disciplines. She also teaches classes on achieving correct anatomical alignment, repatterning learned movement behavior, and conditioning & flexibility work geared specifically toward dancers. DeAnna designs each individual class curriculum according to student's specific needs and goals. Please CONTACT DEANNA for more information.
YOUTH CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS
for dancer, non-dancer and at-risk youth
DeAnna has experience working with dancer, non-dancer and at-risk youth ranging in age from 10 - 18.She teaches modern and jazz technique to teens and pre-teens, with emphasis on the understanding of basic movement vocabulary and the development of sound anatomical technique.While working with non-dancer and at-riskyouth, DeAnna bridges diverse disciplines, landscapes and mediums to expose youth to the unlimited possibilities of movement as art.She facilitates the generation of original material created directly by the youth themselves, including simple gestures, jumps, leaps and even partnered lifts, and spoken text shaped through individual reflection and group discussions.This material is streamlined into small "phrases" which are linked together to craft a "dance" adaptable to performance in landscapes varying from brick walls to lush green gardens to theater in the round.The final culmination derived from and with the youth is a personal expression of their community and a collaborative representation of the youth as their truest selves.
DeAnna has taught youth groups at
The Yard/Martha's Vineyard
The Cloud Foundation, Boston
The Huntington Theater, Boston
Boston Ballet "Taking Steps" Program, Boston
Boston Center for the Art's Teen Theater Program, Boston
Medicine Wheel Production's Youth Outreach Program, South Boston
Vine Street Community Center, Roxbury
YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS AND MENTOR PROGRAMS
THE CLOUD FOUNDATION
The Cloud Foundation believes in the transformative power of art to enrich the lives of urban youth. Through resident programs at Cloud Place located right in the heart of Boston on Boylston Street, the Cloud Foundation fosters strong mentor relationships between teens and professional artists and promotes artistic mastery in diverse artistic media. Seeking artists with strong teaching skills and a desire to create innovative work in partnership with young people and communities, the Cloud crafts workshops for teens that are interdisciplinary, guiding teen participants to view their relationships and the world around them in new ways. In collaboration with colleague Mary McCarthy, DeAnna has taught "Contemporary Dance and Composition", a workshop focused on exploring dance as a means of self-expression. Participants create movement inspired by specific dance styles and drawn from familiar everyday gestures, to explore the relationship between dance and sound, and to experiment with performance in a variety of public and private venues. Through improvisation, group work, and partner exercises students will get comfortable expressing their own ideas through movement, and making choreographic choices of their own to create a culminating performance piece that engages their audience in a variety of ways.
VINE STREET COMMUNITY CENTER
During the summer of 2007, DeAnna taught dance and creative movement at the Vine Street Community Center in connection with Bennett Dance Company. The work was funded by a Boston Community Grant from Mayor Menino’s office for BostonROCKS, a program focused on providing teens in-depth exposure to art. BDC members Nicole Dagesse and DeAnna Pellecchia traveled twice a week to Roxbury,MA to work with six teens in this summer-long program. The students created original movement while learning about the choreographic process. They developed two dances which were performed for younger students at the community center. One of the greatest rewards of this experience was watching the teens transform through their performance, putting aside their fear of judgment and completely engaging with the movement and the audience.
MEDICINE WHEEL PRODUCTIONS YOUTH OUTREACH PROGRAM
In 1996, with the help of neighbors, friends, and especially youth from the community, South Boston artist Michael Dowling began the process of reclaiming the unsightly, vandal-ridden slope behind South Boston High School with the goal of transforming it into a sacred space that all the diverse people who live there can regard as belonging to them. As part of the process Michael decided to collaborate with at-risk youth from South Boston on this sculptural and landscaping project now known as "No Man's Land". The program provides paid summer employment to ten teenagers each summer. Participants work 25 hours a week for 8 weeks on various individual and group projects that include gardening, landscaping, environmental works on the site, sculpture, drawing, poetry, bookmaking and creating a site-specific performance piece. This performance work is presented at the end of the summer at "No Man's Land"'s annual Community Day which draws the entire South Boston community together. The "No Man’s Land" project is an example of how artists can expand their role in society by involving their communities directly in the creation of public art and thereby improve the quality of life in their neighborhood. More specifically, the goal is to offer a sense of hope and wonderment to kids nearly forgotten. The aim is to nourish these children's souls, and to provide a safe setting for them to admit to having dreams, intuitions and a desire for life.
DeAnna co-directed the performance component for Medicine Wheel Productions' Youth Outreach Program from 2002-2004. Alongside Ingrid Schatz, she taught dance and performance skills to many talented teenagers who worked on No Man's Land each summer.
SPECIALTY WORKSHOPS
HERB LOVETT MEMORIAL FUND
DeAnna instructed a seminar for people with severe handicaps at the 2002 TASH Conference. TASH is the international association of people with disabilities, their family members, other advocates, and professionals fighting for a society in which inclusion of all people in all aspects of society is the norm. DeAnna, and long-time collaborator Ingrid Schatz, with the Herb Lovett Memorial Fund, worked to celebrate citizens of all abilities by abandoning the notion that individuals exist as either "able" or "disabled". Workshops encouraged participants to create their own movement through guided tasks and culminated in a performance uniting movers of all abilities.
