Lydia Johnson Dance will teach Guest Classes at Peridance Capezio Center on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 10-11:30am, from May 16-June 1. 

The Company:

Lydia Johnson Dance has been consistently praised for its distinctive choreography, which uses components of ballet woven seamlessly into a contemporary dance vocabulary, as well as for the emotionally resonant performances of its dancers. LJD holds an annual NY Season, and this year, the company will perform at New York Live Arts June 21, 22 and 23 2017. LJD has performed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Downtown Dance Festival and Great Friends Dance Festival in Newport, RI. Most recently, the company was invited to perform in Moving Forward: Women Ballet Choreographers East and West at the 92nd Street Y. 

The Classes:

Each class will begin with a barre warm-up and progress to working on the techniques used in Ms. Johnson's vocabulary, which is ballet-based and fused with drop and release modern dance components. 

The class will conclude with a phrase from the LJD Company Repertory. Taught by LJD Company dancers, each class will emphasize individual interpretations of combinations and phrases with special focus on linking the movement to the music.

LJD’s focus in performance is on the ability of each dancer to express the choreography with an individual, musically intelligent voice. Rather than working to attain a uniform quality, LJD dancers strive to bring their own personal vision into the phrases Ms. Johnson choreographs. Works used in the classes are set to composers Osvaldo Golijov, Marc Mellitts, JS Bach, Mozart, Brad Mehldau and Handel.