Summer_Solstice_2026 - Countertechnique

SUMMER SOLSTICE NEW YORK 2026

June 9-12, 10am-4pm at Mark Morris Dance Center, Brooklyn NY

Anouk van Dijk returns to New York!

Following our annually sold-out Winter Warming, we will delve deeper with the four-day mini-intensive Summer Solstice — a mid-year reboot: time and space to unfold the body and open up to new perspectives.

Our ever-changing bodies need different care and stimulation every day — and in this workshop, we’ll explore how to sustain a positive, creative work ethic while adapting to varying, sometimes challenging, circumstances.

Discover how space can become a creative partner in dance, how awareness can be broken down into practical tasks, and how this can fuel both daily training and the creative process.

Each day begins with a 2-hour Countertechnique class, followed by a Practical Tools session introducing a new focus daily. After lunch, we’ll bring these realisations into creation and performance, with as the special Summer Solstice focus on two categories from the Countertechnique Toolbox: Space and Awareness.

Building on Anouk’s choreographic practice, we’ll explore different entry points into making and performing — combining tasks and emotional states, the imagined and what’s in front of us, and weaving improvisation into set composition. How can a simple idea grow into a rich, layered embodiment, and communicate meaning back to us?

Dance your heart out, meet like-minded dance artists, and add fresh perspectives to your dancing!

Anouk van Dijk will be assisted by Countertechnique Teacher Griffin Massey.

Who it is for

Countertechnique Summer Solstice welcomes dance artists and advanced dance students seeking inspiration to contribute to the creative process and to keep dancing engaging while fostering a healthy, joyful work ethic. Be prepared to work proactively, think creatively, and perform at a high physical level.

DATES

Tuesday June 9 – Friday June 12
All days: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
To fully benefit from the build-up of the program, we ask participants to attend the entire period.

PROGRAM FEES

The full cost for the workshop is 480 USD. Late cancellation options are available. Limited availability. Participation on a first-come, first-serve basis.

HOW TO REGISTER

Please register your personal details here: https://form.jotform.com/260606947682366. No registration fee is required. Registration will remain open until all spots have been filled.

LOCATION

Summer Solstice will be held at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, NY. We will be working in the spacious Duffy Performance Space!

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Dancers need to declare fitness to participate in the training, waive all liability for the organiser, respect house rules of the venue, agree for their image to be captured and agree to refund conditions. All payments are non-refundable and non-transferable. See full terms and conditions here.

SUMMER SOLSTICE 2026 FACULTY

Anouk van Dijk

Anouk van Dijk is a choreographer, artistic director and the creator of the movement system, Countertechnique. From 2012 - 2019, she was the Artistic Director of renowned contemporary dance company Chunky Move in Melbourne, Australia. Currently Anouk van Dijk works internationally as a freelance choreographer and is the Artistic Director of Countertechnique.

Anouk van Dijk spent the first ten years of her career as a lead soloist for Rotterdam Dance Company and Amanda Miller’s Pretty Ugly Dance Company. From early on, she was attracted to choreography and from the late nineties committed herself exclusively to the conception, creation and performance of her own work. In 1999, Van Dijk founded her own company, anoukvandijk dc, dedicated to creating work that sought to provide an insight into the many facets of the human experience through the lens of contemporary dance.

During her tenure of Artistic Director of Chunky Move in Melbourne, Australia, she created several large scale productions, amongst others An Act of Now (2012), Complexity of Belonging (2014, with writer/director Falk Richter), Depth of Field (2015), Rule of Thirds (2016), Common Ground (2018). In recent years, she created amongst other Distant Matter for Staatsballet Berlin, followed by the multi-disciplinary show TOUCH (with Falk Richter) at the Münchner Kammerspiele, and Out of the Blue for Skånes Dansteater / Malmö Opera in Sweden, a large-scale work on music from Bach to Björk with the Malmö Opera Orchestra and Children's Choir (currently again on repertory). Recently, Anouk has created works for the Hessische Staatsballett, Theater Münster, and the cross-disciplinary collaboration A Perfect Sky (with Falk Richter), for SchauSpielhaus Hamburg.

In her career, Anouk van Dijk has created more than thirty-five full-length works that toured to the world’s leading festivals and venues including Adelaide Festival, Sydney Opera House, Schaubuehne Berlin, Dance Triennale Tokyo, American Dance Festival, Theater der Welt (Hamburg), SPRING International Performing Arts Festival and Festival d'Avignon.

Griffin Massey (Assistant Teacher)

Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Griffin Massey (He/They) is currently based in New York City. He was first introduced to Countertechnique in 2019, and then later in 2023, trained intensively in university at The Juilliard School. Since then, Griffin has attended two One Body, One Career intensives as well as open classes and workshops. In 2024, he successfully completed the Countertechnique Teacher Training program (CTTT).

Trained at The Juilliard School, Griffin studied many apporaches to classical, modern, and contemporary techniques. He also developed his choreographic, leadership, and stagecraft skills, and had the opportunity to work with many great artists, such as Aszure Barton, Spenser Theberge, and Jermaine Spivey as well as performing works by Crystal Pite and Hofesh Schecter. Since graduating with a BFA in May of 2023, he has worked with the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Metropolitan Opera. He is currently working as a freelance artist, teacher, and model.

Photography by Kim Doeleman or others / Video footage Anouk van Dijk, Corneliu Ganea