Join us July 7-12, 2026 in the beautiful Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts! Come train with renowned West Coast-based dance artists Abby Crain and Gizeh Muñiz along with local dance artist Jenna Riegel. During the week, you will have opportunities to train and take class twice a day, with time to enjoy hiking, swimming, hot-tub soaks, waterfall hunting, chef-prepared communal meals around the fire, and residency time to work on your creative projects/collaborations. Come train with other professional artists in Western Massachusetts this summer. Open to the first 25 participants who register. Lodging available with tiered options such as private rooms, shared rooms, and camping. 7 work-exchange positions are available which grants free meals during the festival ($175 value).

REGISTRATION & MORE INFO HERE >

T E A C H I N G A R T I S T S :

Abby Crain is an Oakland, California based artist who makes dances and other structures for performance. She additionally works in the field as a teacher, performer, writer, and curator. Her solo and collaborative work has been presented in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Liverpool, Chicago, Cork, Berlin, Portland and Los Angeles. She teaches annually at the FRESH festival in San Francisco, the Drop Your City Armor Retreat in Dos Rios California with Sara Shelton Mann, Ponderosa Tanzland in Stolzenhagen Germany, and has additionally taught in New York City through Movement Research. She is currently on adjunct Faculty at Mills College. As a performer, she has worked with Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People (2001-2009), Sara Shelton Mann (1999- present), and has has also worked with Jesse Hewit, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jess Curtis Gravity, Kathleen Hermesdorf, KJ Holmes, Nancy Stark Smith, and David Dorfman Dance. Her writing and interviews have been published by Itch Performance Journal (LA), PAPER FRONT (Portland), Critical Correspondence (NYC), and the Off Center (SF). Her curatorial projects include the NO THANK YOU SHOW, which asked artists to represent or stage work that has been rejected by granting organizations, theaters, collaborators, or the artist herself, the NON MAJOR SHOW, which asked artists to show work was not in their primary medium, as well as being on the curatorial panel of the FRESH festival. Her work is influenced by an ongoing polymorphous teaching and research project with Margit Galanter called Art Workouts, and a collaborative dialog around language and performances with Oakland poet, David Buuck. She was certified by Stephanie Skura to teach Open Source Forms in 2014. Her work has been nominated for a Bay Area Izzie four times.

Gizeh Muñiz is Mexicana, based in Chochenyo Ohlone Land. they are a movement, teaching and performing artist. They recreate body stories, through touch, relationship and movement, that attend to the need of exploring new paradigms of temporality, relationality and intimacy. Their dance lineage follows the work of Kathleen Hermesdorf, Sara Shelton Mann, somatic and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy studies, as well as ten year dance studies in different parts of Mexico, with teachers Ángel Arámbula, Briseida López, Octavio Dagnino, Ilse Meza and Humberto Vega, among many others Mexican artists.

Jenna Riegel, originally from Fairfield, IA, is a dance artist and educator. Jenna holds an M.F.A. in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa and a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Maharishi International University. During her eleven-year performing career in NYC, Jenna toured and performed nationally and internationally as a company member of David Dorfman Dance, Alexandra Beller/ Dances, Bill Young/ Colleen Thomas & Company, and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. She also danced with Daara Dance (choreographer Michel Kouakou), Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, Shaneeka Harrell, Tania Isaac Dance, and johannes weiland. Jenna taught classes in contemporary technique in New York City at Gina Gibney Dance Center, New York Live Arts, Mark Morris Dance Center, and 100 Grand Dance. She has been on faculty in the dance departments of Barnard College, The Juilliard School, and Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition, she has taught master classes at The Joffrey Ballet School, Columbia College, NYU, The New School, The Ohio State University, SUNY Purchase, Bard College, Connecticut College, Hollins University, Dartmouth College, Williams College, Skidmore College, University of Maryland, University of California-Berkeley, the Bates Dance Festival, the New Look Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Dance Isadora Festival in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. Jenna is currently an Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance at Amherst College.