Nia with JAG Returns to Seattle

Starting January 8, 2017, JAG will be teaching Nia classes in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Classes will be held at

Velocity Dance Center
1621 12th Ave  (between Pine and Olive)
Sundays
8:45 am - 9:45 am

Classes at Velocity Dance Center cost $15 each for drop ins, or you could purchase a VIP card and get classes for only $12.

This series of classic Nia classes will include some routines from the vault, like Miracle, Yulunga, Fantasia and Moodfood as well as the latest routines like Sacred, Dragon, Deep Dive and Bring It! JAG will also be presenting his original work; old routines like Goldfinger, Orchestra, Amazing and Frankie Say Nia and routines yet to be created but sure to be lots of fun. There is an all disco routine in the works and a new routine using world and pop music inspired by the old routines of Nia co-creator Carlos Rosas.

In early 1996, there was no Nia going on in Seattle until Jason Alan Griffin (a practicing massage therapist / aerobics/step instructor / personal trainer) went to Portland and got his Nia White Belt. The training ended on a Friday, and on Saturday morning, the next day, JAG asked his aerobics class students to trust him and remove their shoes for the last half of class. This was Seattle's first taste of Nia and as JAG likes to say, "We never put our shoes back on."

In 2000, JAG left Seattle to pursue an acting and modeling career in NYC, leaving behind some his passionate Nia students. Some of them became teachers themselves and carried the Nia torch in JAG's absence.  Upon his return to Seattle in 2011, JAG was delighted to find a flourishing Nia community with several teachers, a couple of trainers and classes offered on every day in every neighborhood.

Rather than actually settling down in Seattle, at this time, JAG took to the road and spend the next five years as a vagabond Nia teacher. He created his own original routines and took them around to share with all of the USA.

And now, in 2017, JAG made the choice to stay home and to get a Nia class going in Seattle. It took a while to find the right venue, but through patience and persistence, found a great room in a great time slot.

This series of classes is scheduled for the spring semester at Velocity Dance Center. Classes begin Jan 8 and continue until June. At that time, we will assess the popularity of the class and from there we will either keep it going, add more classes or end the class.

Here are some peeks at some of the routines that JAG has taken on tour in the past.

2013 GOLDFINGER

2014 ROCKIN

2015 FRANKIE SAY NIA

2016 ORCHESTRA

2016 AMAZING

2016 WOODSTOCK

So we hope you can join Seattle's first Nia teacher and only male Nia teacher, First Degree Black Belt, JAG, in this exciting new offering.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nude Stretching

Image
I never thought I’d do something like this. But over the years many people have suggested that I make a Nude Stretching Video.  I guess the fact that I’m comfortable with nudity and with my body and that I’m a fitness pro with a passion for helping people made it seem like a no-brainer that I create something like this.  But I’ve been resistant to doing it for a long time; for fear (I guess) of what the more conservative people might think.  Now, finally, I’ve succumbed to the requests and put something together.  You conservative people will just have to look the other way. :) Now, I haven’t made an X-rated video here; I'm just nude and I'm stretching.  It's completely natural. This video blends a smart, educational stretching session with  “Warhol-like” video interludes accentuating an eroticized appreciation of the male form.  My intention was that it could be enjoyed on two levels. The free-style, hand-held segments demonstrate the positi...
Read more

Routines From the Vault

Image
I’ve been teaching Nia for 16 years now. And most of those years, I’ve gotten four new routines from Nia. That comes out to over 60 routines over the years. I’ve also created quite a few of my own routines. And along the way, certain routines have fallen out of favor for one reason or another.  For example, a great routine called Commitments, which uses the music from the soundtrack to the movie of the same name, is one of my first ones. I learned that routine so long ago that I have the music on cassette tape and I watched the routine on VHS. It has been retired “To the Vault” for many years. Ditto for routines called Genesis, Roots and Adagio. Some routines have been taken apart and used to build other routines. For example I took all of the Angelique Kidjo songs from the classic, Agolo, and put together a routine using only songs from her album, Aye (which means "LIFE" and is the name of the routine as well.)  I split up the songs from the repetitive routine Fi...
Read more

Food Purist

Image
I tell people I’m a food purist. And I say I’m gastronomically conservative.  Sometimes these terms are misunderstood. These terms that, as far as I know, I’ve made up; I don’t see them commonly used this way, but I could easily have picked them up subconsciously and adopted them. When something is so universally true, as I think food purism is, you often see the same or similar permutations of the concept showing up in different places. Anyway, being a food purist doesn’t mean that I only eat the foods that offer the best nutrition per calorie, or the foods with the highest antioxidant levels or the most enzymes or the least fat or the lowest glycemic index, etc. etc. That’s all popular science and I don’t get bogged down in it. All of that is changing constantly, anyway: One day eggs are good for you, the next day, you can only have whites, then they’re good for you again, then you find out they’re bad for you. Not that I’m saying anything about eggs right now, but this...
Read more