November Movement Labs with Colleen Snell

Join Frog in Hand’s Artistic Director Colleen Snell on Sundays in November from 12-4pm at The Art Shelter to grow your creative movement practice. Each day will begin with a contemporary technique class to warm us up, then a Movement Lab where we will play and create. Each Movement Lab will be a different theme, giving us time to learn movement tools, practice them and create something. You can join for just class, just the lab, or the full day!

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

AGENDA
11:30am-noon studio opens for optional self-warm up
noon-1:30 contemporary technique with Colleen
1:30-1:45 break
1:45-3:45 creative lab (see below, varies each week)
3:45-4pm talkback, feedback, cool down

Movement Labs
November 3rd – Frog in Hand Repertoire
We’ll learn excerpts from Frog in Hand’s 2021 work War of the Worlds Reimagined, dancing to recorded text.

November 10th – Let’s Create: Site Specific Choreography
We’ll look at site analysis and work outside (weather pending) to create a promenade-style work together.

November 17 – Partnering Tools + Improvisation
We’ll dive into lifts and end with a 20-minute dance jam.

November 24 – Stage Combat for Dancers (an introduction to unarmed techniques)
We’ll learn how to create the illusion of violence for the stage, looking at techniques that keep us safe and help us tell a compelling story. The class will culminate in short scene work and a chance to check out some stage combat from Frog in Hand’s 2023 work “Noir.”

ABOUT YOUR TEACHER – Colleen Snell
Colleen is obsessed with storytelling; it shows in her multidisciplinary practice. She’s an educator, dramaturge, world builder, placemaker, fight director, and sound designer – but she’s most passionate about movement and dance as a vehicle for human expression. Colleen is the Artistic Director of Frog in Hand, a dance company she cofounded. For over 10 years she has devised and performed with Frog in Hand, generating cultural capital in her hometown of Mississauga and advocating for contemporary dance in a suburban setting. Colleen’s choreography incorporates large, ensemble casts and themes inspired by science fiction. Her site-specific work has appeared in a brew pub, rowing club, arena, factory, sawmill, gym, and splash pad – as well as more “traditional” educational institutions and stages across Canada (like Springboard Danse, the Guelph Dance Festival, York and Metropolitan University).

Colleen completed her MA with Distinction at the London Contemporary Dance School in England, and her rare passion for grant writing has garnered support for Frog in Hand from the OAC, Canada Council, Mississauga Community Foundation, Trillium Foundation, Canada Summer Jobs, Federal Cultural Spaces and Mississauga Arts Council, among others. As a dancer, she most recently worked with TranscenDance Project on their 2024 immersive “Eve of Saint George” production, telling the story of Dracula across three entire floors of The Great Hall in Toronto.