Jennifer Mascall Bio

Over the past 31 years Jennifer Mascall has developed, created and refined techniques in dance and body movement. She began her teaching career by teaching dance to children while she was training at York University. On an OFY grant she helped run a summer camp for the arts in 1973-1974, and was the first dance artist in the Ontario Arts Council teaching dance mapping and Laban-based work in schools throughout Ontario. Since her time in Ontario, Jennifer has planted her roots in the Vancouver dance community by founding Mascall Dance, which began in 1982. As a teacher and Artistic Director, Jennifer Mascall is the only fully certified BMC® practitioner in Vancouver. She teaches classes that inform dancers in new ways that actively help their dancing technically and their performance range. She is also researching ways of adapting the teaching of BMC® to align it more closely with the professional dancer©ˆs technical training. This year Jennifer is training an improvisational ensemble called the Nijinsky Gibber Jazz Club, which performs in bars and other unexpected venues. She has also taught BodyMindCentering® as a tool for research, and trained as a yoga teacher.

Class description

The class will use BodyMindCentering® ideas and principles to warm up the body through the structure of a traditional contemporary technique class. The explorations will be to music in repeatable formats. The body will be warmed up through the fluids, ligaments, muscles, and the support of the organs. The class is the development of three research groups over 12 months. It is not fixed, and the feedback of the students will determine its evolution.