Friday Master Class Workshop 2:00 - 5:00 pm

Presented by   Carmelina Martin and Catalina Moraga 

Type of Session:  Active Workshop (3 hours) 

Target: ALL Areas

 Broaden your movement repertoire and explore the joy of challenging yourself in new, playful and creative ways.

This Masterclass explores movement through the lens of Fighting Monkey (FM), a practice rooted in arts, athletics and movement research. It is an exploratory practice that values creativity, empathy, speculation and adaptability. It is a communication practice that explores how we communicate with ourselves, with others, and with the world at large.

Through curated movement situations, we investigate strategies of observation, communication, problem-solving and learning. These situations include solo and partnered movement tasks. We’ll also explore our creative relationship to tools/objects to investigate how we shape and are shaped by the material world.

This masterclass is all levels, open to dance and drama educators. The only pre-requisite is curiosity.

 Carmelina Martin

Carmelina Martin has dedicated decades to the field of education, with significant contributions to dance education in Ontario. Her work includes policy guidance, curriculum development, and the design and delivery of in-service teacher education courses.

She has presented her insights on dance and the arts at notable venues such as UNESCO, the National Roundtable for Teacher Education in the Arts, and daCi conferences in Taiwan (2011) and Slovenia (2024). These engagements highlight her commitment to advocating for the importance of dance and the arts in education.

Carmelina is the founder of Pulse Ontario Dance Conference and recipient of the Ontario Premier Teacher of the Year Award. She holds a Master’s in Education and works as a Program Officer at the Ontario College of Teachers, playing a key role in the province's teaching profession.

In her free time, Carmelina explores various movement modalities and embodied practices, with a particular interest in Fighting Monkey.

Catalina Morgana

Catalina is a movement educator with a life-long love affair with learning on the move. She is the co-founder and co-director of Spirit Loft, a movement centre in Toronto that celebrates and explores human movement and potential. Spirit Loft’s diverse and creative approach to physical practice and community building embraces the sciences of training, artistic expression and contemplative reflection for life rich in movement and meaning.

As a child, Catalina’s passion was competitive gymnastics. In young adulthood she immersed herself in yoga and athletics. Over the past two decades, she has dedicated her studies and practice towards a broad lens of physical disciplines and embodied arts including martial arts, dance, strength training, somatics, wisdom traditions, and creative forms of movement research and expression. She currently studies most closely with Fighting Monkey/Rootless Root, an applied practice for human development and longevity through movement, and is mentored by one of its founders, Jozef Frucek.