Class Description:
Fusing elements of release technique, ballet, street dance, martial arts, and Japanese dance, Naganuma's students enjoy full-bodied movement that is at once aggressive, sensuous, virtuosic, and spirited. Approaching movement from a skeletal level, students are challenged to move with less tension and greater efficiency without losing the dynamic bite that has become Naganuma's trademark. Naganuma encourages a warm, friendly classroom community, where students feel comfortable taking risks and pushing themselves to their own outer limits. Her classroom is a place where solid technique and artistic invention exist in active interplay.

Note: Darcy is currently bicoastal, teaching at the University of California, San Diego during the academic year. New York City teaching credits include faculty positions at Dance New Amsterdam, Broadway Dance Center, Peridance, the school of the Westchester Ballet Company, and PMT Dance Studio. Darcy has conducted workshops and residencies across the U.S. and internationally. Email darcy@naganumadance.com for more info, as her teaching schedule fluctuates.

SUMMER 2013 TEACHING SCHEDULE:
Int/Adv Contemporary Fusion @ APA Studios -SATURDAYS, 11:30-1 pm (June 8, 22, & 29; July 6, 13, 20)
Ballet @ Southwestern College - MTWTh, 10:30-12:10 pm (June 17- July 25)
Vienna/Berlin - July 27-August 10, TBA
NYC - August 12-25, TBA

I BELIEVE IN GETTING TO KNOW MY STUDENTS. In a place like New York City, it is so refreshing to enter a space where people can count on moving, laughing, and being challenged amid familiar faces. I encourage a warm, friendly classroom community where people feel comfortable taking risks and pushing themselves to their own outer limits. I like to give the kind of class that leaves an afterglow � that feeling, moving from studio to street, that anything is possible.

CLASS IS NOT ABOUT ME. I provide students with continuous feedback, vivid images, and dynamic, inspiring movement of varied styles. I am committed to discovering the verbal and tactile cues that will benefit students of all levels, and I am constantly developing new strategies to push my students forward.

MY CLASSES ARE STRUCTURED WITH FORETHOUGHT. I use backwards design, tailoring my warm-up and across the floor combinations to prepare students for a larger, culminating phrase. In addition to priming the muscle groups necessary to safely accomplish the movement, I have found that this design promotes fuller artistic expression.

I ADVOCATE CLEAN TECHNIQUE, with an emphasis on dynamic alignment and clear pathways of movement. Engaging a movement vocabulary that is at once aggressive, sensuous, virtuosic, and spirited, a solid technical foundation is crucial. I teach with a strong kinesiological understanding, helping students of diverse body structures to reach their maximum potential.

I ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO TRY SOMETHING NEW IN CLASS. Growth springs not from stagnation, but from change. My classroom is a laboratory � a place where focus, energy, momentum, and phrasing can be explored within the structure of an exercise. Learning a sequence of movement is one task. Infusing that sequence with motivation and life is another. My ultimate hope is that the students I teach will find their own voices.

Darcy is available for private instruction/coaching. She has worked with students to expand their knowledge of alignment and movement efficiency, to prepare for auditions, to develop individual conditioning regimens, to prevent and work through injuries, and to meet the specific demands of a performance role or style of dance. Her students have gone on to dance in internationally acclaimed dance companies, Broadway musicals, music videos, and various college dance programs.

Email darcy@naganumadance.com for more information/scheduling inquiries.