Who are we?

UMA – Urban Move Academy – is an educational and artistic project. UMA, a school, a creative space, and a place for exploration, is part of the current trend of urban cultures, most notably in their performance aspect such as ride, parkour and dance.

In a single location, UMA combines the teaching of movement in interaction with digital and visual arts. UMA is inventing a new kind of project to meet the ambitions and practices of today’s youth.

With an open vision of the world, UMA boosts creativity, helps cultivate one’s curiosity and draws from the diversity of languages and from interculturality to offer a favorable and challenging environment for learning and sharing. With one foot in teaching and the other in the professional world, UMA is a stepping stone for passionate young people that allows them to express their identity and achieve their potential.

UMA offers a comprehensive range of educational and cultural activities centered around urban cultures, within a single space for expression that’s unique in Geneva.

UMA stems from 8 years’ experience sharing with young urban artists and performers and bringing forward alterity. A laboratory where creativity is imagined, experimented and lived out in a different way, off the beaten track. A school revolving around innovation, emancipation, trust, the senses, and what makes sense.

Youth is a time for experimenting, for learning, a time when anything is possible. Young people need to be listened to and supported to find answers to their doubts and their questions relating to their future and their upcoming projects. Transmitting art is a challenge, a huge opportunity if teaching can be handled as a creative activity rather than transmitting established knowledge. It is therefore for and thanks to artistic creation, resonating with the challenges and innovations of the professional world, that young students, teachers and guest artists are developing UMA and are fueling its activity through their diverse talent, experience and aesthetics.

The training courses, workshops, master classes, performances and shows offered at UMA are all material available for everyone to enjoy artistic creation.

Welcome to UMA!

Nicolas Musin

Pedagogy

UMA’s teaching methods are state-of-the-art and its educational approach and artistic universe are based on the core values of urban cultures: freedom, exploring, taking risks, breaking the rules, and transformation.

Experimenting these concepts in a contained, supported way while discovering how they can be interpreted in an artistic manner is part of the educational purpose of UMA. The school is involved in a comprehensive artistic education project that acknowledges the singularity of urban creation from the start and throughout the learning process. Our objective is to develop technical and artistic skills and to promote cross-over.

The positive and inclusive educational approach encourages and develops individual uniqueness while highlighting collective values.  At their own pace, each individual can pull out their own artistic expression and build their learning journey, while at the same time developing the fundamental spirit and way of life of a group.

Access to Culture

UMA focuses specifically on artistic and cultural education, a vector for equal opportunity and social integration.

Because it allows us to open up to ourselves and to others, we consider art as a necessity. We believe every individual, whatever their social background and origins, should feel at home in a theater or a museum, and we believe in providing the young generation with the space and the means to flourish, as a way for them to develop civic awareness. UMA offers to live an experience which fosters creativity, self-confidence, individual and collective engagement, open-mindedness and tolerance, initiative, civic engagement and a feeling of belonging.

Thanks to the diversity of actions implemented, UMA is working on spreading every form of urban creation towards wider, more diverse populations and increasing awareness of urban art and sport. Throughout the year, UMA offers an activity program and artistic synergies reflecting its desire for openness:

  • Frequent public rehearsals, performances and lectures; 
  • Workshops and master classes open to all;
  • School outreach in local schools. 

Team

Management

Nicolas Musin began his career at the Paris Opera Ballet before joining the Monte-Carlo Ballet and the Hamburg Ballet – John Neumeier, as a principal soloist. During that same time, he created numerous choreographic works produced throughout the world. In 2000 he founded his own dance company in Vienna, which he directed and toured for more than 10 years, while multiplying collaborations and experiments in other creative fields such as fashion, design or architecture.

Later based in Geneva, he collaborated with Flux Laboratory artistic space and with the School of Art and Design HEAD – Genève, before co-founding La compagnie Urbaine in 2014 and becoming its artistic director. The show ZUP, first encounter of its kind between arts, urban sports and digital arts, saw the day of light in 2017 on the Plainpalais Skatepark in Geneva and lead to further creations, notably for the Youth Olympic Games, Lausanne 2020, or at the Théâtre National Populaire in Villeurbanne (Lyon, France) in 2021.

A pure product of classical choreographic education, Nicolas Musin has never stopped looking for other ways of expression as for him, the choreographic field goes beyond that of dance. Transversality is an essential component in the construction of his pedagogical and creative projects.

Secretary: Geena Théraulaz / Cassia Kaiser
info@urbanmoveacademy.ch

Graphic designer : Lucie Pittet
luciepittet@icloud.com


Educational Team

A parkour athlete and coach for 10 years, Maxime has collaborated with Nicolas Musin in multi-discipline productions.

Chany Jeanguenin is a professional skateboarder, master skateboarding coach, international competition judge, sports event producer, photographer, as well as a master of Kung Fu (second dan black belt and red belt) and Tai-Chi.  During his sports career, he has traveled to over 30 countries to promote his successive sponsors through demonstrations, competitions and commercial events. He has been featured in over 20 international videos and has been featured on the front page of major sports media titles such as Transworld Skateboarder, Slap, Thrasher, Big Brother, Skateboard Mag and The Berricks Website. He has earned numerous Skateboarding Championship titles: 

  • 2nd place best trick contest Skatepark of Tampa Pro (2001) 
  • 1st place, Amateur Houston Texas Shut up and skate half- pipe (1993) 
  • 1st place at Europe Amateur Championship, half-pipe Antwerp (1992) 
  • 4th place World Cup of Pro Munster (1992) 
  • 1st place at the Swiss Skateboard Championship in half-pipe, 2nd in mini-ramp and 3rd in street (1991) 
  • 1st place at the Swiss Skateboard Championship in half-pipe and 3rd in street (1990) 

Since 2019, he is Skateboard coach and Tour Manager at Alaïa Chalet (Crans-Montana). 

Since he first started out, Imad Nefti has been bringing poetry and simplicity to hip hop dancing, composing spaces, substance and rhythm, all in the name of the very essence of the dancer.

He defined himself very early on as an artistic director organizing human experiences for the hip hop community. He developed the ability to direct performance dancers and pilot creative processes.

Imad Nefti stands out, having created his own teaching method based on a multi-discipline, flexible, open structure. It defies traditional conventions with the use of raw, simple tools and techniques, revealing hip hop’s true educational assets.

Lorenzo Vayssière aka “Sweet” is a performing dancer-poet who was born in the Val d’Oise department, in Eaubonne, where he started out at age 15. He is mainly inspired by bboying, a common practice from which he freely draws to achieve singularity and fulfill himself completely as an artist. This makes his dancing pure, based on impactful expertise between the appropriation of opposite states and energies, the quality of movement execution and the art of letting it breathe, dancing life and its ups and downs with passion.

Since 2007, he has been an active member of Bad Trip, one of the most unconventional French dance groups of all styles. In 2010 he also integrated the group Sans Limite, which distinguishes itself by its activism in battles and which features bboys from Paris and Troyes. In keeping with his will to constantly raise the bar, in 2013 Lorenzo joined urban / contemporary dance company Black Sheep, founded by Saïdo “Darwin” Lehlouh and Johanna Faye. He was featured in production Wild Cat and more recently in Apaches.

In 2016, he was a member of Philippe “Physs” Almeida’s teaching team Mouvmatik, where he teached bboying at the A.I.D. (Académie Internationale de la Danse, International Dance Academy, Paris). Lorenzo is also the co-founder of The Art Way movement with Cedric “Stylez C” Borges.

Lorenzo’s creativity and strong identity enabled him to be affiliated to Anne Nguyen’s company Par Terre in 2017, with whom he took part in the creative process of the play Kata and undertook a number of cultural actions.

In the search for a new artistic drive, he founded Selected View in 2019 with Rowdi Legove Lewing: a platform uniting bboys defending the same artistic vision and in search of state of grace through approaching the unknown and the magic of the present moment.

Degen Tesfaldet alias Blood met Krump at the age of 14 in the streets of Geneva through the founders of the Krump movement in Switzerland, the “Warriorz”.   

While still a student, he was quickly caught up in this urban dance that he had never heard of before. Passionate, he learns the basics, the codes, the vocabulary and everything that encompasses the Krump culture.  

He joined the “Warriorz Fam” and made his mark among some of the best krumpers in Europe. His thirst for knowledge and curiosity allow him to evolve and develop his own style. Recognized for his technique and creativity, Degen stands out and never stops deepening his art and knowledge.  

Tyler was born and raised in Annecy. Since birth, he has been 100% immersed in Funk and Hip-Hop music, a passion passed on by his father. As a logical consequence of his childhood love of music, he fell in love with Popping, this culture and its battles (KOD, OldSchoolNight, Last One Stands, Feel The Funk…).

Self-taught, he taught himself the basics of popping and perfected the art of movement, thanks in particular to the support of Imad Nefti, and worked with a view to taking part in the competitions that so inspired him. He learns from his greatest inspirations (Mr.Wiggles, Popin Pete, Junior Boogaloo, Walid, Slim Boogie…) and and develops a complete, unique, free dance.

In 2012, he met Dickson Mbi (Still by Russel Maliphant, BBC Young Dancer, Olivier Award: Outstanding Achievement in Dance) and Brooke Milliner (Summer Dance Forever Popping Finalist), who would become important mentors in his journey. He joined their group Fiya-House (London) and has been a member for over 10 years.

He took part in a large number of competitions, progressing continually through hard work and, despite being far from the nerve centres of the popping culture, he managed to rise to an international level.
Despite being a long way from the nerve centres of popping culture, he managed to raise himself to an international level, so much so that his dance took him all over the world from the age of 16 (Winner MSB Battle Gloucester, Double Winner Battle P.O.P Paris, Semi-Finalist Battle BAD Paris, Finalist Pop City London, Top 4 Funkology Hong Kong, Top 8 Groove’n’Move Geneva…).

Léonilde Torrini is a Swiss dancer, performer and teacher whose personal style draws on the disciplines of hip hop, contemporary and acrobatics.
He has trained and been trained in various disciplines such as tap dance, circus, parkour and hip hop dance in Switzerland and abroad.
He has taken part in a number of TV shows, including “La France à un Incroyable Talent” with his partner Yera Moreno, “Stadt Land Talent” and “Alors, on danse” as a soloist.
Léonilde doesn’t stop at just one discipline, winning several competitions and battles.

Wayne Kiappy ALCIDE, the man who started dancing before he could walk, in a world where dancing is a way of life.
Born in Saint Lucia, an English island in the Caribbean Sea, his adventure is that of a man who chooses, through travel, to enrich himself with the customs and cultures along the way.

Wayne is considered by his peers to be a purist, with encyclopaedic knowledge of his discipline: DANCEHALL.
His fluid dancing style is instantly recognisable.

Dancehall is a way of life that originated in Kingston, Jamaica. It’s all about feeling and interpretation.
The moves are created according to precise situations which, by dint of repetition, have elevated this dance to the rank of culture. Dancehall is about inner strength and mastery of the body to make the moves flow.

This has enabled him to have to his credit a victory and two times finalist at Dancehall Master World, finalist at Mad Connexion, 1⁄4 finalist Juste Debout Dancehall, 1⁄4 finalist at DHI (Dancehall International), but also to give Dancehall courses, workshops and training at national and international conventions, such as Dancehall Master World, Dancehall Intensive, Dancehall evolution, LeaderFit, Aquitaine Fitness, Alpes et D’Huez, ASF, New Way etc….

Facilities

Maison des Compagnies – Meyrin

UMA is based in La Maison des Compagnies in Meyrin (Geneva). This culture-dedicated center is ideally located and accessible by public transport. Its modern, flexible and welcoming infrastructures provide all necessary services for UMA’s educational and artistic activities.

Virtual tour of La Maison des Compagnies

West-Park – Vernier

Training area for Parkour and ride. 
The parkour setup was custom designed by professionals to ensure user safety and develop series of movements combining fluidity and potency.

UMA is equipped with a great ramp for Skateboarding, BMX, Inline Skating and Scooter. It is accessible to UMA students throughout the year, whatever the weather. From time to time, it is used for performances designed as part of cross-over projects.

Désolé

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