morning dance classes
From February 19 to May 14, 2025, Espace Ouvert will offer morning contemporary dance training classes from 9 to 10:30 AM for intermediate level and from 10:30 AM to 12PM for advanced level. This sessions will alternate between classes led by Nicole Jacobs and Stéphanie Decourteille.
You can register as a drop-in or you can choose to purchase a multi-class card with 6 or 13 class credits. You will be able to use your class credits during this session or during the following session.
Registration process:
1 - Fill out the registration form below
2 - Make your payment
3 - An email of confirmation will be sent to you
Fees:
Drop-in = 22$
Card of 6 classes = 120$
Card of 13 classes = 215$
Calendar:
February 19 - Stéphanie
February 26 - Nicole
March 5 - Nicole
March 12 - Stéphanie
March 19 - Stéphanie
March 26 - Stéphanie
April 2 - Nicole
April 9 - Nicole
April 16 - Stéphanie
April 23 - Stéphanie
April 30 - Stéphanie
May 7 - Nicole
May 14 - Nicole
About Stephanie
The artist and educator Stéphanie Decourteille founded the Big Bang contemporary dance and creation program in Montreal in 2018 and co-founded Espace Ouvert, a support organization for movement artists, a year later. Professionally trained in ballet and contemporary dance, and driven by over twenty-five years of experience as a performer, choreographer, and trainer on both local and international stages, Stéphanie is dedicated to fostering the growth of professional and pre-professional artists in dance, circus, theater, and performance. In her roles as artistic director, creation advisor, and movement teacher, Stéphanie Decourteille strives to ensure that artistic endeavors are valued, skills are honed, and all forms of expression are encouraged.
About Stephanie's contemporary dance classes
Class warm ups are structured to awaken the body precisely and globally through a gradual flow, eventually leading the body to disassociate and isolate during accelerated movement. Travelling diagonals, jumps and turns are often included in the exercises that follow. Classes either end with a choreographic combination that varies in complexity or an explorative session and outlook on partnering.
In constant motion, minuscule, even when frozen, for Stephanie Decourteille, bodies explore oppositions. Between tension and release, between elongation and compression, the dynamic of mixing and sorting the body’s adventures is omnipresent. She believes each dancer possesses a connection to their center of gravity located around their belly button. This theory leads young choreographers to challenge their center by constantly moving it throughout the entire body where one can discover new sensations, new movements and textures of movement that have not yet been tamed.
Stephanie Decourteille conducts her research through a complex development of an evident ease with execution. Facing the challenges of our body’s daily movements, surpassing what is only natural all the while transforming this new “unnatural” movement into something that is yet very nature.
About Nicole
Member of Curve Lake First Nation and Tiohtià:ke/Montréal based dance artist, Nicole Jacobs trained in ballet, jazz, tap, acrobatics, and musical theater prior to graduating from Concordia University with a BFA in contemporary dance, and a minor in psychology. Nicole is an experienced contact improvisation dancer and facilitator, having studied the dance form intensely through traveling, teaching, and assisting in the organization of contact improvisation festivals in India, Thailand, Portugal, and Germany. Nicole has participated in numerous projects both as a performer and facilitator throughout Quebec with Theatre Junction, St. Ambroise Montréal Fringe Festival, Take Up Space Dance, Chantiers Jeunesse, and Le Gros Orteil. Her teaching repertoire includes developing workshops that she has facilitated at BIGBANG, Extravadanse studio, Collège Sainte Anne, and private training. She also develops accessible dance classes for neuro-diverse populations that she has shared across Canada and England. Nicole’s current research is focused on the meeting points between contemporary dance, floorwork, acrobatics, and interpretation. She is interested in the merging of disciplines and drawing from her training in theater and circus arts to create work that is experiential and poetic in nature.
Registration form