Vanessa loves to exchange with people through facilitating workshops and classes. She has taught professional, pre-professional and community classes locally, nationally and internationally. She has recently taught at Simon Fraser University, Modus Operandi, The Vancouver Training Society and Lamon Dance. She has also facilitated for the Roundhouse Community Dancers, Trinity Laban’s Co-Lab (UK) and been on faculty at The Banff Centre for the Arts (Alberta).

Open to all levels and multi-generational

Workshop/class description:
Throwing Bones, Sheading Salt
Exploring what is real and imagined, my class plays with the possibility of the body's capacity. Working with generative systems, we will work through anatomical organisation and curiosity of state. This class begins with guided self-TLC to ground us before moving into folding, softening, sliding bones, expanding and compressing. Using scale and architecture to explore inner and outer landscapes, we will move through concave and convex systems to uncover different layers of ease and effort.

Vanessa can also offer a one week creation project with the local community that will culminate in 25min site-specific free showing for the public.

The work is called Murmurations:
Murmurations are enormous groups of starlings that twist and swirl across the sky in shape-shifting clouds. This inspiring idea of collective responsibility is an underlying value of Action at a Distance, directly leading to this new tour-ready work. "Murmurations" (approx 25-30 mins) is a task-based composition with original music created to a highly structured score designed for a large group of dance artists. Ultimately about social responsibility, the movement score works with text surrounding sensory proprioception in the body and asks the performers to find a collective sense of time while reacting to their environment. Working with headphones, the dance artists respond to a text composed by Goodman and the group that only they can hear. The audience witnesses a work of spontaneous eruptions, compositions and delights, alternating between collective unison and individual focus. The result is highly collaborative and creates a sense of anticipation from moment to moment. "Murmurations" employs slow touring as a model for creation and dissemination, collaborating with a local group of artists and organizations in each location to create and perform the work. Each iteration is completed in approximately seven days and can be performed for a live audience in a traditional venue or at a site-specific location (inside or outside).