Melecio Estrella & Marcus van Duren

Tuning in Motion

This class is for the contact dancer who is curious to venture beyond the tyranny of the rolling point and see what it’s like to invite some space, travel and momentum into their dance. 
Tuning — First we explore the essential groundwork of tuning to the nervous system of the other, enabling us to sense a shared direction and make joint decisions in the moment.
Arms — Then we investigate the possibilities of our arms to guide, support, invite, and inspire. From here we begin to dance through space and find joy in being “off axis”
Space — We will look at ways to come in and out of contact without dropping the thread of the dance.
Spines — Lastly we will look at possibilities for suspensions (lifts) that travel and engage with moving support and rotational energy."

Melecio Estrella is a director, choreographer, and educator who has been with BANDALOOP since 2002. As Artistic Director, Melecio brings 2 decades of practice weaving vertical dance, dance theater, somatic facilitation. and ecological belonging to BANDALOOP’s dance making. Whether creating conditions for artists to thrive in his home community of Oakland, CA, or bringing vertical dance theater performances to massive audiences globally, all of Melecio’s work bridges the everyday personal/social body with the dream body, proposing expanded possibility and awe in our time of poly-crisis.

Recent BANDALOOP premieres include Momentum Curve (2022) with BMW in Munich Germany, Bird Strike (2023) at Santiago A Mil in Santiago, Chile, LOOM:FIELD (2021-2023) international tour, Resurgam (2023) at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Vertical Choreography for Tina Landau and Idina Menzel’s new musical Redwood (La Jolla Playhouse 2024, Broadway 2025), and Bird Strike (2024) at the Santiago Calatrava Sundial Bridge in Redding CA.

Melecio co-directs Fog Beast, a cross-disciplinary group that affirms ecological connectedness in landscape, live arts and education. He is a longtime member of the Joe Goode Performance Group. Passionate about creating space and sustainability for artists, Melecio sits on the advisory boards for the Artists Space Trust and for Arts in California State Parks. He was a Cultural Space Ambassador for the Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST), a Leadership Fellow for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP), and is currently a Lucas Artes Fellow at the Montalvo Center for the Arts.

Marcus van Duren is a dancer, teacher and community organizer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Marcus has intensively studied movement and dance since his discovery of contact improvisation in 2012. Shortly after, Marcus delved into contemporary dance and the information of The Axis Syllabus. Marcus has had the privilege of studying with Kira Kirsch, Frey Faust, Nuria Bowart, Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Martin Keogh, Ray Chung, Nita Little, James Graham, Sarah Shelton Mann and many others. Marcus has been teaching contact improvisation classes and workshops locally in California since 2015, and seasonally travels internationally to teach at festivals and study Axis Syllabus. Marcus is an Axis Syllabus Teacher Candidate. In his teaching, Marcus seeks to marry technique and play in a way that leaves students with a felt sense of essential principles and gives them jumping off points for further research. Marcus holds an interdisciplinary BA from UC Berkeley with a focus in Theater, Dance & Performance.

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