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Fighting Monkey is a longevity practice that values variability, adaptability and finding resilience by understanding our inherent relative fragility. Through curated “play under pressure” situations, we investigate strategies of observation, communication and learning and, in this, expand our movement capacity. These classes will include Fighting Monkey Coordinations, Tools/Partnered training and Improvisation and will be specifically geared towards dancers. We work with task-based movement (rather than aesthetically based), and this is not a Fight practice - rather, we “fight our monkey minds.” In FM Coordinations, we use set movement sequences delivered via a full-complexity approach in order to gain insight into our learning strategies and help uncover our blindspots as movers and as humans. The coordinations also train our dynamic range and elastic capacity for power and mobility. With the FM Tools/partnered training, we work with instinctual/reactive movement and hone shared body empathy and communication skills necessary for partnered dancing. In the Improvisation work, we mine for variability, using the specificity of a task to tune our bodily self-awareness and expand our movement capacity as dancers.

Michalsky’s teaching philosophy draws on her knowledge of anatomy, release technique, floorwork, the Itcush method, and improvisation. Her classes will predominantly explore European floorwork and Limon-inspired standing work, as well as structured improvisations to train a distinct range of qualities. Throughout this workshop, she will offer cues that prompt more freedom in the pelvis and spine and overall less pain in the dancing body.

Individual classes: $25 per session