By Lookout Staff

February 16, 2011 -- Dancers of all styles – from low-down punking/wacking to disciples of modern-dance icon Bella Lewitzky – will get a chance to pick up some new chops and learn more about the art form in a series of three monthly master classes and lectures beginning March at Santa Monica College.

Thursday, March 3, the Dance Master Class series kicks off with Articulating Bodies: Language, Motion, Meaning.

Independent dance artist/scholar L. Martina Young will lead this lecture/movement/writing workshop in which dancers will explore the body as image-maker and the poetic relationships between gesture and language.

Then, on Thursday, April 28, it’s time to get down with Punking/Wacking acclaimed street dancer Anna Sanchez.

A Los Angeles street dance with roots that go back as far as the 1940s in Harlem, punking/wacking has just got to be fun.

The series concludes Thursday, May 5 with the Lewitzky Technique Master Class.

Led by Diana MacNeil, former principal dancer of the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company,

this workshop will introduce dancers to the basic concepts in movement central to the Lewitzky technique and explore the history and perspective of her work.

All sessions in the Dance Master Class Series are free and begin at 10:30 a.m. in Gym 104 on the SMC main campus, 1900 Pico Boulevard. Seating is on a first-come basis.

For information call (310) 434-3467 or go to www.smc.edu/dance