San Francisco/ Bay Area Horton Classes
Copious Dance Theater brings a nurturing training environment to students who come from diverse dance backgrounds. Classes will strengthen the body as well as encourage each individual's creative expression. Kat loves teaching Horton Technique because it helps create long and strong dancers.
Kat is available for master classes, workshops, lecture demonstrations and private instruction. Please contact info@copiousdance.org for rates and availability.
Copyright © 2011 Copious Dance Theater
Open Horton Technique Classes in San Francisco.
Instructor: Katharina (Kat) Worthington
Monday 7:30 pm - 9pm intermediate level
Wednesday 6pm - 7:30pm intermediate level
Saturday 11:30am - 1pm intermediate/ advanced level
Class Location:
Alonzo King Lines Dance Center
26 Seventh St, 5th floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415)863-3040
Open Horton Technique Classes in Berkeley (East Bay)
NEW CLASS: (starting March 2012)
Tuesday 7.30pm - 9pm Beg/Intermediate Level taught by Kat Worthington
Thursday 6pm - 7:30pm Beginning Level taught by Katherine Nauman
Class Location:
Shawl -Anderson Dance Center
2404 Alcatraz Ave
Berkeley, CA 94705
(510)654 - 5921
What is Kat Worthington's Horton Class like?
"Enthusiastic teacher, great work out and true to the Horton form" -Robin Anderson, Director Alonzo King Lines Dance Center
Kat Worthington's Modern Dance Class is based on the principles of the Lester Horton Technique, as taught at the Ailey School in NYC. A typical class begins standing, rather than sitting, like some other modern techniques. It progresses across the floor with movement phrases, turns, and jumps. Horton Technique is designed to correct and improve a dancer's physical limitations so that they might pursue any form of dance. The class is dynamic and dramatic, develops both strength and flexibility, and works with an energy that is constantly in motion. The primary focus of many Horton studies is to create length in the spine and hamstrings. There is also a strong emphasis on developing musicality and performance qualities. As students progress, exercises become longer and more complex. Kat loves teaching this particular technique because it helps create dancers who are long and strong.
Who is Lester Horton?
(1906–53) American modern dancer, choreographer, and teacher, born in Indianapolis. Moving to California in 1928, Horton formed his own company in Los Angeles and also performed in theater, films, and nightclubs. He became one of the country's most influential choreographers, incorporating such diverse elements as Native American dances and modern jazz into works of striking originality and drama. His influence is reflected in the work of his pupil Alvin Ailey. Other well-known dancers who worked in his company include Carmen deLavallade, Arthur Mitchell, and James Truitte. Horton's company continued to perform after his death until 1960.
All valid organizations are built around a valid idea. Lester Horton was a creative genius who devoted his entire life to the belief that dance properly nurtured in the magic environs of a true theater could contribute profoundly to the development of everyday enjoyment of life by those participating in a sincere manner.
In short, Mr. Horton saw dance as an art, a part of a richer way of life, within the reach of all and touching our body movements, our daily rhythms, our esthetic reflexes.
The Lester Horton Dance Theater and Dance Theater School were a dual monument to that belief, founded on sacrifice, love and just ‘plain blood, sweat and tears…’ They were not commercial projects to amass legal tender, not were they arbitrary expressions of ego.
They were founded and remained until their closing December 31, 1960, in the conviction that a dance theater and school could strive to maintain an atmosphere of cooperative creativity, creative theater production, but never closed to change or sympathy. After all, instruction is a vital need both in our community and our individual lives.
The Dance Theater and School actually reached back to the early thirties, when Mr. Horton started his first theater-dance group, subsequently embarking on more than a full-score of years choreographing, teaching and pioneering in contemporary dance.
From his 1931 production of Oscar Wile’s Salome and the Little Theater of the Verdugos through his various dance companies and many teaching years at his Beverly Boulevard academy, Mr. Horton in 1946 fully realized his dream of a theater and school on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, his company’s final permanent home.
Unlike those who subscribed but could not create, Mr. Horton implemented his beliefs in unparalleled creative productivity for the concert stage, films, night clubs, television and stage. There was no Horton clique despite the existence of countless numbers of credited an uncredited offshoots.
In his lifetime Mr. Horton created in excess of 50 full-length choreographies and over a score at the Dance Theater alone. The works ranged from the epic spectacles of his earlier years at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium, the furor-raising 1937 Hollywood Bowl production of Stravinsky’s Le Scare du Printemps, to staging opera, ethnic dances and commercial works for some eighteen films.
The Lester Horton Dance Theater and School stood as the only such institution in the entire nation, possibly in the western hemisphere, where a resident professional dance company reformed original dance compositions to original musical compositions and décor on a regular seasonal and repertory basis before a growing audience of dance lovers.
Students in the Dance Theater School, adult or child, participated directly in this milieu, knowingly or otherwise, since the student was taught by those directly participating, and even more profoundly because the training provided by the school was the very lifeblood from which performing talent was drawn.
Professional students were well aware of the profound psychological basis of the Horton Technique, which equipped the dancer for almost any kind of work short of the specific alphabet of classical ballet.
What is Horton Technique?
Horton developed his own approach to dance that incorporated diverse elements including Native American dances and modern Jazz dance. Horton's dance technique, which is now commonly known as Horton Technique, emphasizes a whole body, anatomical approach to dance that includes flexibility, strength, coordination and body and spacial awareness to enable unrestricted, dramatic freedom of expression. For more inormation click here
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Lester Horton, 1952
Lester Horton conducting rehearsal in 1952
