Saturday, May 22, 2021 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Location: Fort Worden State Park, Port Townsend, WA
Ages 13+
FREE
STG’s DANCE This: Pop-Up Workshops are a mixture of in-person
and zoom classes offered in a variety of dance styles!
This outdoor workshop will offer the opportunity to safely explore dance within the beautiful landscape of Fort Worden State Park. Through Afro Contemporary Dance and improvisation, participants will be guided through the process of growth, through movement… planting the seeds for a rooted foundation to discover creative development. This class is open to movers of all kinds and no dance experience is required. Every body is welcome.
Learn more below:
Meet the Artists
Etienne Cakpo (he/him) is an award-winning professional dancer, choreographer and musician from Benin, West Africa. He is specialized in instruction and performance of traditional African dance from Benin as well as contemporary African dance styles, and has been building his dance repertoire for nearly thirty years. He is director of Gansango Music & Dance, a dance company registered in Washington State. Gansango works closely with public libraries, schools and independent arts agencies locally and nationally to make performance of dance and music from Africa available to a wide range of audiences, including young children. This year Etienne was honored with the 2020 Dance Educator of the Year Award from DEAW (Dance Educators Association of Washington).
Ellie Sandstrom, a Seattle Magazine “Spotlight Award Winner” and Velocity Dance Center’s “2016 Dance Champion”, is originally from Minneapolis, where she began her movement training with Minnesota Dance Theater and later BalletArts Minnesota. She has studied various forms of dance technique, body conditioning, composition, improvisation and performance at dance festivals and schools across the country including Cornish College of the Arts, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance.
Ellie worked and toured with dance companies locust and Scott/Powell Performance from 2000- 2010. Her choreography, under the name SANDSTROMMOVEMENT, has received funding from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and from Artist Trust. Her work has been produced locally and nationally by organizations such as On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center and Perpich Center for the Arts, and commissioned by Seattle Dance Project, Creative Dance Center and Washington Ensemble Theater, among others. She has been teaching contemporary styles and dance performance to middle school and high school students at The Northwest School in Seattle since 2006 and was the Dance Department Chair from 2013-2018. She has been a Teaching Artist for STG’s Dance This programming since 2007.