Gina Buntz Dance

About

Gina presents her work throughout the U.S. and overseas at such venues as the American Dance Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, CNDC Angers among many others. As a much sought after teacher with a unique pedagogical style for training dancers for contemporary and traditional modern movement, Gina has guested at the Ailey/Fordham School, New York University, Gibney Dance Center, Dance Theatre of Harlem School, the New World School of the Arts, and the Los Angles County School for the Arts where she chaired the dance department from 2007–2015. In Los Angeles, Gina was a crucial part of the burgeoning Los Angeles dance scene and taught company classes for BODYTRAFFIC and the Lula Washington Dance Company.

A recipient of five NEA Choreographer's Fellowships, Ms. Buntz teaches and has choreographed throughout the United States with international sponsorship from the United States Information Agency's Arts America Program, the National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer's Exchange Program in France, and the Olympic Arts Festival in Korea.

For people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, Gina has developed danceflow a guided movement workshop that celebrates personal expression through movement within a dynamic and supportive community environment that can take place anywhere.

Technique

Cooperative Opposition

Cooperative Opposition, means two opposing forces working in concert to cultivate and sustain kinesthetic momentum that sustains the movement system in a "cooperative act."

When I teach this modality, I draw attention to the oppositional stretch inherent in the extremities working in counterpoint to the torso as a means of sustaining energy building upon an ever-engaging system of kinetic impulses that is at the heart of this movement language.

Modern Dance Movement Methodology

Within the context of contemporary dance technique, I developed a movement methodology "cooperative opposition" where the torso works in a constant state of flux: shoulders and hips maintain a vertical relationship to each other where the sternum/upper body softens, tail bone lengthens and stretches simultaneously, thereby creating an ebb and flow articulation throughout the torso.

Unlike the yin/yang systems such as the contraction-release in Graham or the fall and recovery in Limon, where the body is in a moment of suspended animation, here the torso sustains a perpetual motion of "precision and flow" in the vertical undulation that radiates out to the arms and legs. The process is created to foster a cyclical rhythm in the body where the legs 'buoy' the torso as the arms respond in counter-stretch to this metrical propulsion.

The realization is that authentic movement has no beginning or end... it is continuous. Kinetic impulse flows and transfers from one part of the body to the other. Energy and alignment work in concert to create an evolution of shapes that feed into the next moment with each gesture, shape and dynamic.

Traditional Systems

Traditional systems in modern dance are coupled with the pure geometry of classical ballet: the body defined as a stretched canvas on which the landscape of the dancer's physicality casts a unique terrain of contrasts that show both a dancer's uniqueness and universal way of moving through various dance idioms.

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Noteworthy

MR. GAGA, a compelling and thought-provoking documentary film directed by Tomer Heymann, delves into the life and artistic influences of choreographer Ohad Naharin.

Ms. Buntz, who appears in MR. GAGA was interviewed extensively about her own work as well as her formative influence on Ohad. The clips below have been made available for posting by Tomer Heymann.

Beautiful moment (above) from Special Features on the recently released DVD of MR. GAGA where Ohad talks about Gina's seminal influence on his own development as a choreographer.

Gina speaks about her own methodology (above) as it relates to the craft and art of choregraphy.

Noted

"Ms. Buntz has been called a virtuoso performer and is obviously a dancers' choreographer — the possessor of a virtuoso mind whose inventiveness is of keen interest to other dancers. This is rare."
— Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times