Workshop Intensive for Dancers, Performers, and Choreographers
Alejandro will share exclusive insights into the upcoming work at the BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity and valuable programming opportunities for dancers, collectives, and choreographers. This is an exciting chance to gain an insider’s look at what’s coming up at one of the leading creative hubs and potentially position yourself as a candidate for future programming, whether you’re looking to deepen your artistic practice or explore new collaborative opportunities.
In this workshop, we will explore:
- Translating research from intellect to body
- The choreographer’s eye—how to shape and frame a story
- Acknowledging and involving the audience from the start
- Activating the performer—bridging the gap between process and performance
- Conceptual approaches to dance creation
- Tools of dance dramaturgy—structuring content and material in the body
- The narrative of light and space—utilizing them as storytelling tools
Through guided exercises, discussions, and movement exploration, we will discover new ways to process, articulate, and perform with clarity and intention. Whether you are creating a new work or refining your artistic voice, this workshop will offer you practical tools to enrich your practice.
Are you a dancer, choreographer, or movement artist eager to enhance your storytelling skills? Join us for an immersive workshop that delves into the dramaturgy of the performer—a journey from research to embodiment and from inner exploration to public performance.
The Power of Dance Storytelling: A Workshop on Dramaturgy and Performance
Young Lungs Dance Exchange is presenting Toronto-based Choreographer, Dramaturge, and Teacher Alejandro Ronceria, Director of Dance Training at The Banff Centre for the Arts, for a week-long workshop intensive over Spring Break.
When: Monday, March 31 – Friday, April 4, 2025, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Where: School of Contemporary Dancers, 204-211 Bannatyne Avenue
Price:
5 days: $250
4 days: $200
3 days: $150
2 days: $100
1 day: $50
½ day: $25
To register, please click here. If these prices are a financial barrier for you, please email [email protected] to make alternative arrangements.
Can’t make it to the workshop? You’re invited to join us for a free community gathering with Alejandro on Friday, April 4th, from 6:00–8:00 PM, during First Fridays at Salsa Explosion, 200-388 Donald Street. This is a wonderful opportunity to bring together artists from different disciplines in a casual, welcoming space—sharing conversations about art, dance, and how dance is everywhere. An evening of meaningful artistic dialogue and dance!
About the workshop:
This workshop allows emerging to established dancers, performers, and choreographers focused on conception and development to gain creative and performing tools and learn to use space, time, dimension, musicality, and narrative elements. The participants engage in movements and exercises to discover their relationship with space, sound and the physical environment.
Workshop overview:
Morning:
Ronceria´s movement class
Choreographic Lab (individual & group work)
Lunch Break
Afternoon:
Choreographic Lab continues (individual & group work)
About Alejandro Ronceria:
Alejandro Ronceria (he/him) is a Toronto-based Artistic Director, Choreographer, Producer and Educator with a career that spans over 30 years of experience in Canada and abroad. Internationally acclaimed for the creation and direction of original cultural experiences in dance, he has helmed the artistic direction of significant national and international cultural productions including choreographer for the Welcome from the Indigenous segment, for the official opening of the 2010 Canadian Winter Olympic Games. Recent projects include “Amalgama” City of Toronto dance commission for the Pan-American Games (2015), artistic director “Adaka Festival Gala” in the Yukon (2019) as well as director/dance dramaturge for “Kateri Tekakwitha”, a multidisciplinary production with composer Barbara Croall and the McGill Chamber Orchestra in Montreal (2019).
Recognized as a pioneer in Indigenous dance worldwide, Ronceria was Program Director of the first Aboriginal dance program in North America, at The Banff Centre for the Arts from 1996- 2000. The ground-breaking program brought together diverse Indigenous/Inuit dancers from across Canada, the USA, Mexico, New Zealand and Greenland, an incubator that developed a bold new generation of Indigenous dance artists and served as a model for various schools for Indigenous dance internationally. One of the program’s productions included “Bones” the first Canadian Aboriginal Dance Opera (2001), in collaboration with Sadie Buck and choreographed by Ronceria. Recently Ronceria returned to the Banff Centre and developed and directed the “Intercultural Indigenous Choreographers Creation Lab”, an intensive creation lab for choreographers.
As well as directing, Ronceria is an inspired educator, experimenting with new methodologies, guest teaching and leading master classes in choreography and movement. Very active also as a Dance Dramaturge, he has worked with numerous independent choreographers. Ronceria is the first recipient of York University’s MFA in Dance Dramaturgy and the first to hold this degree from a Canadian university. Ronceria was also an early pioneer in dance and new media in Canada and directed several dance and performing arts films including “A Hunter Called Memory” which world premiered at TIFF 1996, followed by an international premiere at Sundance.
He continues to explore the intersection of dance and new media and often incorporates new technologies in his productions. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Ronceria is classically trained and danced for the National Ballet of Colombia and National Opera Company of Bogota. He continued his classical training in the Soviet Union, New York and Montreal and moved to Canada in 1984. He danced for Canadian contemporary choreographers like Jean-Pierre Perreault and Karen Jamieson before premiering his first major solo work “The Jaguar Project” at the DuMaurier World Stage Festival in 1991. With the Jaguar Project, Ronceria began to explore his mixed race heritage (Indigenous/Spanish) as an artist, leading to a lifelong passion for new forms of dance, pushing boundaries of traditional Western dance frameworks and creating space for emerging diverse artists.