Come join Kestrels for All of us, a creative workshop for freelance dancers facilitated by Molly Poerstel to celebrate the magick of our craft through the fulcrum of the contemporary dancer as somatic archivist. Through experimentation, improvisation, and writing, we will explore the inner topography of our past memories, lineages, and rebellions through experimentation and somatic intellect, and stay watchful for how these threads show up in our dancing.

All of us will be broken up into two sections: the first two hours will compose of improvisation of the voice and body, as well as somatic writing while the last two hours will be centered around an individual creative practice. What develops could be a spell, a prayer, a manifesto, a poem or a dance which honors the heft, wisdom, and trajectories which swirl within our bodies. 

All of us aims to create a bodily incantation to cull our somatic recollections while also dreaming up new sustainable paradigms for our bodies to interact with emerging choreographic idioms.

Cost: $50
To sign up email: Mollypoerstel@gmail.com
Venmo: @Molly-Poerstel-1

Molly Poerstel is a dance artist whose career spans over twenty years. A powerful performer, she has gained recognition over the years for her work with Mark Jarecke, David Dorfman Dance Company, Alex Escalante, Susan Rethorst, Larissa Valez-Jackson, Hilary Clark, Ivy Baldwin, Juliana F. May, Roseanne Spradlin, and Jeanine Durning. Poerstel was nominated for a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Sustained Achievement in Dance Performance in 2019.

Poerstel’s choreographic works have been presented in New York City by New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks (2012), Movement Research Spring Festival (2013), Brooklyn Arts Exchange Upstart Festival (2014), Fridays at Noon 92Y (2014), Danspace Project’s Food for Thought (2014) curated by Ben Kimitch, Gibney Dance Center’s Double Plus, curated by Donna Uchizono (2014), and Making Space (2016). Her current body of work has been a trilogy of even length dances which consider the potency of somatic memory, writing, and interconnection. These works include: I am Also – Monte (2021) was commissioned by Abrons Art Center and features Richmond Virginia native and acclaimed house dancer Monte Jones, and Flesh House (2023) a trio for herself, Monte Jones, and Eleanor Smith which premiered at Kestrels in Brooklyn, Her next work, Galactic Ash (working title) is the third in this series and considers the in-between spaces of our past and future identities through the complicated binds of grief, ancestry, and lineage. Poerstel was a 2015 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2018 BAX Parent Space Grant Recipient. She has taught at The Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School,  SUNY Purchase Dance Conservatory, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, Dalton School, and the Nanyang School of the Fine Arts in Singapore.  Poerstel graduated as a Distinguished Honors Student Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee where she completed her MFA in 2024.

photo credits: Flesh House, photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki
Performers: Monte Jones, Eleanor Smith, Molly Poerstel