MOLLIE WOLF
"Mollie always creates such a safe space for risk taking and experimentation
that is so fun to be a part of, not to mention her inspired ideas and images
to play with, push boundaries and find newness..."
-JULIA DILLARD
(professional dancer & movement therapist, Colorado Springs)
teaching statement
I plan my classes with an emphasis on flow—I intentionally craft each class I teach to prepare the students for what is to come. So that while we may explore many diverse concepts, approaches, and physicalities in one class, the students never feel lost, instead finding themselves prepared; physically and mentally ready to tackle the next experiment, be it a new somatic concept, an unfamiliar improvisational approach, a difficult exercise of physical technique, or a nuanced repertory phrase. My classes usually start quietly—I build a safe container for exploration in the room by providing the students with a bit of internal, personal exploration time, so that as we move forward and they are prompted to bring their full selves to the table, they have already tapped-in to what may be inside today and can approach the rest of the class with an underlying layer of self-trust.
Goals of every class:
To unlock your inner artist.
To get your brain out of your body’s way.
To think about your body in completely new ways.
To develop the ability to be captivated by your exploration within improvisation.
To treat the dance studio as a laboratory.
And most importantly…
To research through PLAY.
Concepts that I am ever exploring:
Floor Work - The swoopy, the slidey, the chewy, the gooey, the gummy, and the spiraly.
The practice of floor work creates in the bodies of its practitioners a unique, thick, viscous body state that exists somewhere between release-based technique, and strength-based techniques like gymnastics and b-boying/b-girling. I am attracted to floor work because of its ‘in-between’ existence—in-between succumbing to gravity and fighting against it, in-between relaxed flow and powered momentum, in-between released vulnerability and guttural strength.
Release Technique - The way I approach release technique is as an exploration of the way you can control weight to manipulate momentum: releasing the weight of your pelvis and capturing it again, allowing the weight of your limbs to build momentum and sometimes to slow you down, utilizing your weight as tethers and pendulums to redirect and guide your momentum in order to create continuous flow. Release technique requires an intimate knowledge of your individual body and the way that your weight is organized, as well as a curiosity about physics and the way that you can use your weight and energy to interact with gravity, friction and inertia.
Dimensionalities of Space - A topic I consistently return to is space. Space in all imaginable dimensions: ranging from obvious spatial arrangements of and relational proximity to people and objects; to conceptual micro-inter-molecular space; as well as large-scale, hardly fathomable outer-space distances. I like to think of myself of a collection of molecules—no bones, no muscles, no organs, nor even even cells—just simply a grouping of molecules that can dance around in the space between one another, and can interact with the outside molecules close and far.