What is the naftali method?

The naftali method is an improvisational dance practice where softness and speed generate inquiry.

The practice invites both dancers and non-dancers to investigate how release reorganizes effort, attention, and momentum in the body. Through imagery and focused attention on the body’s major joints, participants explore softness not as passivity, but as a condition that allows movement to travel with clarity and ease.

From this state of release, speed is approached not as force or exertion, but as a form of attention. Movement becomes quicker and more responsive through softness, requiring minimal muscular effort and allowing momentum and impulse to lead.

Rather than emphasizing output, the practice questions dominant notions of productivity. It asks how efficiency, precision, and responsiveness might emerge through continuity, listening, and release rather than strain.

Within this framework, participants develop tools to generate their own movement language. Expression is shaped through the how of moving—through sensation, timing, and relational choice—rather than through predetermined forms.

Developed by Brianna Lopez in 2020 through self-directed case studies, the work was first piloted under the title Soft as a Cat, Quick as a Bird at ConnectArte Espacio Multidisciplinario in Tijuana, Mexico. It was later named the naftali method in 2024, when it was taught at the San Diego Dance Theatre Intensive.