Workshops
Class + Repertory Workshop
with Tere Mathern
Sun, July 20, 2025
12:00Pm to 2:00pm
New Expressive Works
(810 SE Belmont St.)
Workshop: $25
This two-hour workshop will dive into phrase work from Tere Mathern’s Evidence of Division (1999) to be performed by the Shaun Keylock Company at the Vancouver Arts & Music Festival this August. Designed for intermediate and advanced dancers, the workshop will begin with a floor warm-up utilizing Bartenieff-based organizing patterns, skeletal landmarks, weight, flow and breath. As we transition to verticality, we will learn phrase work that involves spilling off-center, finding freedom through counter-tension and connection to the ground, sequential complexity, and partnering with relational points of interaction, support and connection.
About Tere
Tere Mathern has been an educator, choreographer, and performer of contemporary/modern dance for over 25 years. She has received support from the Oregon Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts (as part of The Company We Keep/PSU), from the former Metropolitan Arts Commission, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. She is an Oregon Arts Commission Fellow (2009), and was artist in residence at Reed Arts Week (2002) and N.E.W. (2018) and was featured on OPB Art Beat (2010). Mathern was artistic director of Conduit Dance 2005-2015 (co-director with Mary Oslund 2005-2010), a nonprofit that supported contemporary dance through education, creative practice and performance opportunities, including producing a regional dance series, Dance+ (2010-2015). In 2014, Mathern and Oslund received a White Bird Dance community achievement award as directors of Conduit.
Mathern began her career in dance as a founding member of The Company We Keep, a resident company at Portland State Univ. She has performed as a company member of Oslund+Co, Minh Tran & Company and in works of numerous choreographers. She holds an M.A. from NYU in Contemporary Dance and Performance, and is a Certified Movement Analyst (C.M.A.) in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies from the Laban Institute of Movement Studies in NYC. Her project-based company Tere Mathern Dance, formed in 2002, was commissioned by White Bird Dance for the inaugural Uncaged Series (2010), Notably among copious dance creations are her full-length works: Elements (2005), Show Me The Body (2007), Gather (2012) and Edge Effects (2016), and a commissioned site-specific work at the Keller Fountain for The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin, co-curated by Linda K. Johnson, Randy Gragg, and Ron Blessinger/Third Angle for the PICA TBA:08 festival
Past Workshops
3-day countertechnique workshop
with Charles Slender-White
Fri-Sun, Oct 25-27, 2024
10:00am to 2:00pm
New Expressive Works
(810 SE Belmont St.)
Tuition: $275
Over 3 days, dancers will be offered a comprehensive introduction to Countertechnique with FACT/SF Artistic Director and long-time Countertechnique teacher, Charles Slender-White. Developed by Anouk van Dijk, Countertechnique is a contemporary dance technique that integrates intellectual intention with physical activity, strengthens and stretches the body, and enables dancers to move bigger, more fluidly, and more spatially. In addition to daily Countertechnique classes, the workshop will include discussions about and physical investigations of the Countertechnique Toolbox. Each of these sessions will help dancers deepen their Countertechnique practice while facilitating the application of Countertechnique to other dance forms and modalities. The day will include a short break.
Photo by Robbie Sweeny
About Charles
Charles Slender-White (he/him/any) is a contemporary dance artist, educator, instigator, organizer, and the Artistic Director of FACT/SF. He believes that artists deserve a living wage and that artists’ labor should be recognized, and he utilizes FACT/SF as a framework to realize these values, make art, and engage community. Slender-White is one of 50 Countertechnique Teachers worldwide, on faculty at the American Dance Festival, and recently served as a Guest Curator and Resident Strategist at ODC Theater from 2021-2023. He has worked as a dance artist throughout North America, Europe, and Russia, and in Hong Kong and Australia. Slender-White began his career with Provincial Dances Theatre in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and graduated with honors from UC Berkeley with degrees in Dance & Performance Studies and English Literature.
About Countertechnique
By continuously and sequentially directing and counter directing parts of the body through space, Countertechnique allows the moving dancer to work with an ever-changing dynamic balance. This dynamic balance reduces the pressure on the overall body structure and can be changed at any given moment. The consistent use of the counter direction in all movements is key to the technique; both the awareness and application of this principle is trained throughout the Countertechnique class. The Countertechnique theory is organized around two principal notions: the ‘toolbox’ and ‘scanning’. The toolbox is the systematically organized collection of tools for body and mind with which Countertechnique works, often visualized as a virtual map that dancers carry with them. Scanning defines the process of dancers continuously and actively observing their mindset and body in order to choose the most appropriate tool(s) from the toolbox for the situation they find themselves in. Scanning allows dancers to make active use of the toolbox in their daily practice of training, rehearsing and performing. Countertechnique was developed by Anouk van Dijk throughout her twenty-five year career as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. Over the last fifteen years, the knowledge and experience she gained – in constant dialogue with her dancers – was gradually transformed into a detailed theoretical system and a teaching method, which now together form the Countertechnique system.