Alumna Christine Suarez to lead free Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions dance workshops in Hollywood

The word “experiment” may often evoke images of scholars in white coats bent over books and beakers, solving hypotheses in laboratories. For UCLA alumna Christine Suarez, movement is her scientific method.

This Sunday, Suarez will lead a free dance workshop at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, an organization that has resided in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame for more than 30 years.

Suarez said she’s curious to test how both dancers and nondancers will explore the use of their senses in dance by instructing them to improvise their reactions to the visual art in LACE through movement.

“It’s about taking something in a kinesthetic way. If I’m looking at a painting I may look at a color and see how it leads into another color, and trace with my nose, or trace with my elbow,” Suarez said.

The event will be held in LACE’s rear gallery, where Kim Schoenstadt’s “Painted Over/ Under Parts 1-4″ project will be on display. Schoenstadt will complete the work in four parts by inviting various artists to paint on the wall and then layering over their works with abstract shapes.

Already on the gallery’s walls is a torrent of stenciled lettering dripping black paint down to the floor, blue and pink pastels and a Hello Kitty character painted from cursive text. Carol Stakenas, the executive director of LACE, said the exhibition is inspired by the interplay between graffiti writers and maintenance people required to paint over the work.

“When you drive through the city, often because of not having the same colored paint or whatnot, you get these amazing abstract paintings that come out of that painting-over process,” Stakenas said.

Suarez’s workshop is part of the one-year residency Community Dance Series, presented by Portable City Projects. Each month, a guest instructor uses the LACE space to teach a dance class. Jules Rochielle, founder of the project, said that PCP’s prerogative is to convene different communities through art.

“LACE has a strong history of experimentation in artistic practice. We wanted to look at how creating an open dance space or workshop would have an impact on the community of Hollywood. It’s a center for experimentation,” Rochielle said.

According to Rochielle, Suarez is a perfect fit. Though Suarez began her dance career in a theatrical setting, leaving her company in New York to attend the world arts and cultures graduate program for dance pushed her to explore movement in different spaces.

Her first choreography class at UCLA pressed her creativity in buildings, outside and even on Bruin Walk. By the time her final project came to fruition, Suarez led audience members to three cottages on Venice Beach, where she performed pieces in various rooms.

“The cottages were very carefully decorated. … Each room really influenced what dance was being made there. One of the dances happened in a bed, and it was really important that it happened in a bed,” Suarez said.

The bed was integral to telling the dance’s story, something Suarez said she tries to incorporate in each of her pieces. In the kitchen of one of the cottages, Suarez timed an egg-shaped timer to ring as she completed her dance.

Suarez said she hopes to bring the same experiences to her Sunday workshop participants. Workshop attendees will dance in the gallery and also outside on the sidewalk. For Suarez and Rochielle, the event is a place to explore public space and one’s own mindset.

“Movement will be challenging, deeply revealing, and a whole new perception of yourself can happen after you open up and go with it,” Rochielle said.