Juliet Shelley BA (Laban Centre, UK), UK STAT Cert, PI Cert (Aus)

Founder and director of   Pineapple Productions and MMMDance, she has taught and performed in the UK, Holland, NZ, USA and Australia. Juliet was born in Tanzania and is a citizen of Europe and New Zealand.

Practising teacher of the Alexander Technique - studied with Elizabeth Walker, Oxford, UK 1991 - 1994

Practising teacher of Pilates Matwork - certified with Pilates International (Sydney) 2003.

She was a dancer with Jointwork Dance Group (UK) from 1987- 1991. Jointwork commissioned work by Jos Houben of Theatre de Complicite, Katie Duck, Kirstie Simson and created four co-devised pieces in that time.

Juliet moved to NZ in 1994 and has worked freelance since that time.

International performances:

• Animal Baby - King James College, Oxfordshire, UK 1984
• Between the Lines, Move Closer and Tuba Sea - CNDD, Amsterdam 1986
• Instant Catastrophe - Dartington College of Arts and Pegasus Theatre, Oxford 1988
• Platform Souls - London Chisenhale Dance Space 1989
• Death of a Fairy - choreography and direction by Katie Duck, London, Amsterdam, Oxford 1990
• Here She Comes - Movement Research, New York, USA 1997
• Ready - Dancers Group, San Fransisco 1998
• Action Fantasy - New Zealand School of Dance, Wellington 1998
• Conundrum - Melbourne, Australia 1999
• The Dance Card - Dancehouse, Melbourne, Aus. April 2006

New Zealand performances:

• The Changing Room 2003 - Te Whaea Studio Theatre, Wellington
• Roll Baby Roll 2003 - Wellington Performing Arts Centre
• Magpie Music Dance Company 2004 - TAPAC, Auckland
• Libella Fa 2004 - Bats Theatre, Wellington,
• Glimpse 2005 - Bats Theatre, Wellington
• Sensomotion 2005 and 2006 - Webb Street Studios, Wellington
• The Seeds of Love 2006 - Bats Theatre, Wellington
• Sukinature 2007 - City Gallery, Wellington & TAPAC, Auckland, Tempo Dance Festival
• In Living Memory 2008 - Bats Theatre, Wellington
• Duet with Andrew Marcus (USA) 2008 - Waikato University Dance Department and Kenneth Myers Centre, Auckland University
• The Settlement 2008 - The Print Factory, Wellington

Performance work :

Purusha: The Liminal Field (working title)

Solo piece performed by Juliet Shelley.  Available from June 2011.  Bookings are now being taken for performances in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, USA, UK, Ireland and Europe.

This piece is available individually or as a package along with any workshops.

For further information and enquiries email: jshell@clear.net.nz phone: +64 4 569 1664 cell: +64 21 236 9614

Classes and Workshops

Juliet Shelley has taught dance workshops and classes in schools and dance communities in Oxford, Reading and London, England, at Dancehouse in Melbourne Australia, at UNITEC School of Performing and Screen Arts, Auckland, at the NZ School of Dance, Wellington, at SOUL in Auckland, for IndepenDance, Auckland, at Prana Festivals in the Coromandel, at Hot Yoga, Wellington and at the Australian Contact Improvisation Convergance in Byron Bay.  She has taught private classes in the Alexander Technique in Hamilton at Clarence Street Medical Centre and in Wellington at Ghuznee Heath Associates. She teaches mat and equipment work at The Pilates Studio in Wellington and in Petone, Lower Hutt.

The Dancing Self: The Sentient Body
This is an artistic and holistic approach to the body that has been developed over ten years. It exists to support dancers being present and sentient in themselves, in relationship to other dancers, to the environment and what they are seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling and sensing in the act of dancing. These elements are observed as they occur in real time, as part of the dancer's technique, their compositional choices and their performance work. Dancers are artists, composers, technicians and performers. Their ability to make informed, creative choices and decisions within the context of their art form is based on how present they are as people and what they bring of themselves to their dancing, their composition and their performance work.

Contemporary Dance Technique
This class offers the dancer ways to perform dance technique without physical tension. Class vocabulary is drawn from contemporary, contact improvisation, ballet, anatomy, muscle and bone, and Klein based exercises. Attention is given to the balance between physicality, musicality, timing, spatial awareness, visual and auditory information. Movement phrases progress from being simple to complex and include phrases from performance repertory. Dancers learn about physical technique and its applications to a broad compositional and theatrical framework that includes sound, space, lighting, other performers and the audience.

Real Time Dance Technique
This workshop addresses the processes and techniques by which dancers are able to perform choreographed material whilst remaining open, receptive and available to their environment. The workshop explores states of embodied physical awareness and presence in dancing. The dancer learns how to perform dance technique from a place of being open to the actual conditions of their present moment. This transforms the way they inhabit dance phrases and how they communicate to an audience. In Real Time dance technique, dancers are able to make compositional choices from within the dance material or choreography itself. They are thus are able to successfully and effectively compose within a performance environment in relation to music or sound, lighting, fellow performers, the audience and the architecture of the performance space.

The Body Garden Dance Scores
These are movement and dance scores that have been devised to develop and expand the dancer's physical, sensory, perceptual and compositional range. These scores can be employed for solo, duet and ensemble dancing. The dance scores include: This Time, Earbody Eyebody, Signature Movement, And So..., Intention, Sensation, Presence (I.S.P), The Sentient Body, Living Timepiece, Nature Score, Da Sein, Star Shine, Daily Dances in Earthspace, Earth Eyes, Action Fantasy and Embodying the Senses. Other compositional strategies include making a dance phrase up in ten moves, composing from text, working in pairs and groups, observing each other, using written and visual scores and choreographing duet forms including contact duets. Dancers are given help to develop their own movement ideas, how to direct others and with staging or performing their own work.

Real Time Composition and Performance   
These workshops introduce dancers to performance improvisation or real time composition. Following on from what they have learned in their technique classes, students learn to bring clarity, fullness and presence to their performance work by developing the confidence to make decisions and choices within dance material or choreography in performance. They learn how to become comfortable with the vulnerability that comes with public and exposed decision making in performance and how to be choreographers and performers as one. Dancers practice balancing the use of the eye and the ear, intelligent use of the performance space, listening to each other, observing each other and incorporating the presence of chance and unpredictable elements into the compositional and performance environment. They work in solo, duet and ensemble forms, and learn the use of exit, flow, duration and musicality in real time composition.

Back to Earth: The A, B, C of Contact Improvisation
In this class students learn the fundamentals of Contact Improvisation. Beginning by coming deeply into their own bodies and their relationship to the earth, students take that into developing skills in relation to each other and the physical forces of weight, gravity, momentum, counterbalance, velocity, rhythm and intertia. Technique exercises give students forms to become articulate with moving their weight, structure and physical mass in contact. They learn to roll, soften, slide, support, receive, ground, extend, release weight, take weight, direct, fold and flow. They learn to sequence and distribute energy and weight from the spine and centre to their limb and peripheries, out into space and along the floor. They learn to dance safely and to become confident with contact improvisation as a dance form. They explore being passive and active, learn to trust themselves physically and how to negotiate moving pathways with another person in lying, standing and being airborne.

Riding the Forces: Dancing in Contact

A shift takes place when contact improvisation as a form becomes a vehicle into dancing fully with another person. This workshop is about using the moves, the skills, the exercises, the training, to go beyond into dancing with another person. It explores how to cultivatea state of openness, relationship, trust, being finely tuned to all the senses,and being relaxed and responsive, all at the same time. We will explore how the form and language of Contact Improvisation itself can become a vehicle for communication and relationship with another person, their body and the physical forces as they exist in the moment. We will experience how the language of CI becomes transformed, like words to poetry or musical notes to music. At this place, something else can happen, and we can trust and engage with the forces within and without that support the dancing and the dance.

Embodying the Senses
In this class we will explore the relationship between visual, auditory and physical information in our moving and dancing of CI. We will move with an awareness of how the body and the senses interact with, balance and support each other and find new ways of moving. We will discover ways to release tension, increase choice and make more informed compositional decisions. We will develop responsiveness, flow, confidence and range in our dancing. We will experience the relationship between thinking, imaging, intention, sensation and physical pathways, relinquishing personal wilfullness or product oriented approaches to allow our bodies and the dance to reveal new patterns and possibilities of negotiation, engagement and fulfillment.

The Alexander Technique
The Alexander Technique is about moving with less effort, more ease and improving overall functioning. It is about experiencing the link between process and product and noticing our habits and the kinds of behaviours we adopt in order to achieve the results we desire. In this workshop students are offered ways of becoming more aware of their physical responses, habits and actions in relation to external stimuli or triggers. With insight and awareness come increased choices and options and as a result, an expanded range or repertoire of responses, behaviours, actions and outcomes. This can produce immediate changes in the way people from all backgrounds move and inhabit their bodies. The workshop also offers students tools to alleviate stress, tension and reduce performance anxiety to allow them to function at their best. www.alexandertechnique.org.nz

Pilates Mat Classes
These classes combine pilates principles with with postural awareness and core strengthening. Classes begin either standing or lying in semi supine. Core muscle and stabilising groups are identified and engaged. Following this, exercises that focus on breathing, stability and alignment are introduced. The limbs are used in varying degrees of extension to challenge and strengthen core stability and stretching and relaxation are central to the class. Pilates mat classes can improve deep abdominal toning and strengthening, reduce or eradicate back pain, improve spinal mobility, firm and strengthen glutes, thighs and arms, increase overall flexibility and coordination, improve pelvic floor tone and elasticity, reduce stress, and improve breathing and mind body function. Pilates is invaluable for people from all walks of life.

Weekly classes in Pilates, Contact Improvisation and The Alexander technique in Lower Hutt and Wellington.

Pilates Mat & Equipment Classes at The Pilates Studio, Courtney Place, Wellington
All levels including beginners
www.thepilatesstudio.co.nz
Private sessions by appointment only: $90 for 1.5 hours

Community Pilates Mat Classes
St Davids Multicultural Church Hall, Silbery Place, first left turn off Elizabeth Street, Petone.
Mondays at 6.15pm - intermediate level
Mondays at 7.30pm - beginner level
Eight week course: $145 or early bird: $135
Nine week course: $160 or earlybird: $150
Drop in classes: $20
Pre booking, registration and payment is essential and is due one week prior to courses starting.

Back to Earth : The A,B,C of Contact Improvisation
Workshops suitable for all levels including beginners
Saturdays Hot Yoga Studios, Level 1, 250 Wakefield Street, Wellington
$10 per person
1.30 - 3.30pm
2010 class dates:
16, 23 & 30 October
13 November
4 December
www.contactimprov.net

Contact:
Juliet Shelley
Email: jshell@clear.net.nz

phone +64 4 569 1664
cell : +64 21 236 9614

"My first taste of dancing Contact was in a workshop led by Juliet. It was a transformative experience."

"Her teaching style is inspiring and her depth of knowledge is extraordinary."

"My confidence has markedly improved."

"I've really enjoyed the gentleness...the laughter."

"Her skills are rare in New Zealand and of value to the arts community here."

"Her approach is aimed at supporting and enhancing the learning process, developing individual and group creativity, and providing a safe but challenging space for the growth of these techniques on an individual and group basis."

"I thoroughly enjoyed the session.  I found the class at just the right pace."

"It will be hard for me to find classes like these in the UK.  I have really enjoyed them."