COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Tell your story through dance. Take a class, start a series, build a workshop with Invertigo. We’re ready.
Our work is a conversation, an exchange.
Invertigo passionately champions community engagement as an inherent part of the creative process, the very heartbeat of each dance theatre piece. We embrace and develops artistic works born from a call and response to community, site specificity, and social realities. Beyond the rehearsal studio and stage, we offer a range of dynamic community engagement programs that are designed to be customized to align with your community’s unique vision and requests.
We create programs that are intrinsically inclusive and accessible to communities across cultural lines, from the historically excluded and under-resourced to the land of plenty. Embodying our commitments to cultural inquiry and community interactivity, Invertigo cultivates safe spaces for youth and elders, students and teachers, dancers and non-dancers, leaders and followers of all backgrounds to explore their own expression and creativity.
Want to learn more?
“This vital program [Dancing Through Parkinson’s] brings joy to the participants and builds a strong sense of community and connection.”
— Mark Slavkin, Past Director of Education, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Recent Community Engagement Highlights
Dancing Through Parkinson’s
Our longest-standing community engagement program hosts weekly classes throughout LA! Join our incredible DTP community for weekly classes in Venice, Tarzana, and Crenshaw/Culver City (starting in Fall 2023!). Lively and accessible movement, warm and talented teachers, this program is designed to uplift your well-being, physical strength, and sense of community.
Director’s Lab West Convo
Directors Lab West – Each year, Founder Laura Karlin teaches a Storytelling Through Movement workshop for 50+ directors that focuses on shifting perspectives on bodies and storytelling, inhabiting characters from a place of gut-deep, skin-alive sensations. In 2020, DLW re-imagined its programming to a series of conversations between artists. During dialogue with Sabra Williams, the Executive Director of Creative Acts, Laura noted, “As culture workers, we can play a significant role in addressing the grief and emotional effects of the pandemic. Hear from two artists who have been doing this work and how they see the potential impact we can have.”
Their conversation, along with the rest of the illuminating dialogues, are archived and available here.
Hope Street Family Center
In Summer 2022, Invertigo was honored to be Hope Street’s guest artist for their Family Play Time. Teaching Artist Rosa Navarrete teamed up with Hope Street’s Virginia Escamilla to share bilingual storytelling, dance and body connectivity with families on Zoom. It was a true celebration of togetherness, where joy and learning intertwined and left everyone breathless for more!
Interested in booking a Community Engagement program with Invertigo?
A one-off workshop? A series on a theme? A residency? A combination? Click through our menu.
Dance Theatre Workshops
Invertigo Artists infuse their creative practices into vibrant collaborations with participants, as they explore how to tell story through movement. Together, their imaginations develop narratives and vignettes through music and dance. From cathartic personal reflection to crowd-sourced dreamscapes, anyone with a story can benefit from Invertigo’s Dance Theatre Workshops.
Adaptable, fun and empowering for all demographics.
Invertigo has experience in working with people from four months-old to 92 years-old. We create a culture that is warm, inclusive, inspiring, and fun.
Our programs are based on the people with whom we will be working, as this informs the scope of the program – be it a one-day workshop, or a series. They all include a warm-up and movement/theatre exercises that build community, trust and storytelling skills. We often facilitate the creation of a dance theatre piece (in one large group or several smaller groups) that give people space to share and interpret their own stories.
Often, Invertigo Dance Theatre invites a live music component. Diana Lynn, our company’s musician who participates in many of our workshops, creates soundscapes with beautiful vocals and percussion instruments from all over the world.
Past partnerships include: Descanso Gardens, World Refugee Day/Refugee Forum of Los Angeles, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Directors Lab West.
Options include two-hour workshops, one-day workshops and a more in-depth series.
Panels, Lectures, Public Dialogues
Interactive discussion formats tailored to align with your community’s deepest interests, pressing challenges, or timely topic that intersects the themes of an Invertigo work.
Venue: Lecture halls, auditoriums or theaters.
Duration: 30 mins – 2 hours
Salons
Small-scale, intimate opportunities for community dialogue through lively, inventive prompts and activities for post-show engagement or afternoon campus activity.
Venue: Lobbies, theaters, community rooms.
Duration: 30 mins – 1.5 hours
Engagement Possibilities
Dive in with us to co-create the program of your organisation’s dreams.
Or book us for a quick plug & play — we have engagement activities at the ready.
Invertigo offers a range of creative engagement possibilities for all ages and contexts.
All current programming is innovatively adapted to virtual formats.
- Small or large groups
- One-offs or ongoing programming
- Open formats or specialized on cultural, social, artistic themes
The following can be offered as ongoing intensives, one-offs, or residencies with a combination of activities:
- Dance Theatre Workshops – focus on craft, technique or dance as story
- Dialogues, Panels & Forums – lively, rigorous community discussions
- Post-Show Salons – games and interactive elements engaging a show’s themes
We love teaming up with new and existing partners to dream and scheme.
Build the engagement with us. Or give us your specs and needs, and we’ll create it and bring it to you.