Modern Dance: Horton Technique with Melvin Sutton

Developed by pioneering American dancer and choreographer Lester Horton, Horton technique is a codified modern dance practice designed to strengthen, stretch, and awaken the entire body. Its vocabulary emphasizes anatomical alignment, flexibility, balance, coordination, lateral movement, spatial clarity, and full-bodied physical expression.

During this 90-minute workshop, Sutton will guide participants through a structured Horton-based practice that connects technical discipline with musicality, groundedness, physicality, and authentic artistic expression. Dancers will explore how the technique builds the strength and versatility required across modern, contemporary, and concert dance practices.

Melvin Sutton is a professional dancer, choreographer, and educator whose career spans concert dance, commercial performance, professional sports entertainment, and international stages. His credits include Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Norwegian Cruise Line, and the Carolina Panthers TopCats. Sutton currently serves as Resident Choreographer for the North Carolina Central University Dance Company.

His teaching practice draws from movement traditions influenced by Lester Horton, Katherine Dunham, Martha Graham, and African Diasporic practices. His choreography is rooted in the continuum of Black dance and explores identity, spirituality, memory, grief, resilience, and the Black lived experience.

Sutton is also the featured guest choreographer for Empower’s Mapping the Movement: Where Black Durham Built, presented during the Durham Fringe Festival on November 7 at Provident1898.

Participants should wear fitted clothing that allows the instructor to observe alignment and bring water. The workshop will be taught barefoot.