About the practice
A practice shaped by this valley
Cruz Yen is a modern dance practice in Durango, Colorado, serving Durango and La Plata County. Classes are built on body awareness, musicality and individual expression, from first steps to phrase work and improvisation, in a studio where every body is welcome.
Why this studio exists
Plenty of movement, little craft
This valley is full of people who move. They hike, climb, ski, run, ride and bounce through every room they enter. What has been harder to find is a place to study movement as a craft: slowly, repeatedly, with someone watching and correcting, and with room left over for the mover's own ideas.
Cruz Yen exists to be that place. One room, an open floor, and material that adapts to whoever walks in. The practice starts with attention to the body, adds rhythm and shape, and ends with the person in front of you doing something only they could do.
That is not a slogan, it is a working method. A class holds the person returning after twenty years away, the beginner who has never counted music in their life, and the experienced mover who wants structure without being told what to feel. The same material is scaled three ways in the same hour, and the room gets something out of the mix.
Movement practice in an open studio
Who you will meet
Raymond Joseph
Teacher and contact person
Raymond Joseph teaches the classes at Cruz Yen and answers the email and the phone. He sets the material, then adjusts it to the room in front of him: the injuries people are carrying, the energy the week left behind, the one person who needs a harder variation and the one who needs the floor explained again.
Corrections here are specific and unhurried. You will be told what your body did, what it could do instead, and given the repetition to find out. Questions during class are welcome; the answer usually helps everybody else in the room too.
How we work
Four things that do not change
-
Every body is welcome
There is no audition, no ideal shape and no wrong starting point. Age, background and time away from the studio are facts about you, not barriers to entry.
-
Structure and freedom are one discipline
Technique gives the body options; improvisation teaches it to choose. The practice works on both, because either one alone gets thin after a while.
-
The room decides the pace
Material is scaled to the people who showed up. Progress is measured against your own last month, not against the person next to you.
-
Honest work over spectacle
Nothing here is performed to impress. When the ensemble stands in front of an audience, it is with something they built and believe.
Where we are
Durango, Colorado
The studio sits at 3281 E 5th Ave in Durango, with the San Juan Mountains on one side and a town full of people who already like using their bodies on the other. Cruz Yen serves Durango and La Plata County, and most of the room comes from within a short drive.
Office hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Mountain Time, which is when the phone and the email are answered. Class times sit outside those hours; ask and Raymond will tell you what the current week looks like.
