PROJECTS\workshops

DEAR GRAVITY - INTENSIVE WORKSHOP

Dear Gravity, thanks to invite us to fall!

This intensive will be a detailed journey, researching together the body as a place where we are been living since we born, informed by reality, imagination, forces, culture, beliefs, dreams

We will approach the material as no end research, no end transmission, no end practice, no end study of us and the relations that we create with everything. Realtions that we choose to engage with, realtions that are around us and we are finding ourselves in, relations that happens. We are, because we are relations and this is affecting the way we move and the way we think. A body-mind- anthropological-imaginative journey where to study the weight of our sensations, to study our reflexes, to study our attention and how moves and is being moved. We will investigate how is to be this little thing in between the earth and the space up, around, in.

We will focus on some principles of Material for the Spine (MFS,Steve Paxton), studying our skeleton , the relations between parts that can allow movements and dance. Dancing from internal and small perturbations and growing smaller or bigger.

Exploring the space as a spherical place where all directions are imaginable and possible, we will research our way to be round , our way to adapt with plasure to this planet earth supporting us, our weight, our steps. We will investigate, spirals, puzzles, walking as foundation and center as initiator. We will research the principles of CI in their technical, philosophical, social and political aspects.

We dance the dance of any now, are we aware of the present we are dancing in?

We will study touch as a way to communicate, researching fascia and how is adapting, responding and transmittimg informations, choices and directions. We will meet other people focusing in how we meet, how we are open to interdipendency, how we recive the imoact of any encounters.

We will practice readiness, availability for changes, possibilities to re-direct, transformation and disorientation as a way to multiply horizons.

Through this dancing journey the invitation is to create new practices for collaborative spaces of growth and relational knowledge.

Can we imagine to create the future we are dreaming about?

SHAPING CHANGES

Contact Improvisation as collective process to cultivate

(un)-imaginable future-s

Shaping Change is a concept that comes from an amzing book Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Mareee Brown.

This book will be present during our body research, will inspire us and we will use it as a collective tools to imagine together .

In this intensive we will explore Contact Improvisation as a collective and collaborative practice where to shape change, cultivating agency, awareness and radical softness.

We will approach aur body as universe informed by sensations, perceptions, habits, cultures, beliefs. We will dance who we are developing a dialogue to be together, exploring the web of relations that we are creating just because we are living in this planet.

Contact Improvisation as practice of awake awarness, readiness, transformation and solidarity.As a practice of being present in any now, opening space to encounter.

We will explore CI in its technical aspects, focuing on our skeleton, on our skin, on our breathing. We will research how does it means giving and supporting weight.We will cultivate strategies to be in this world, what does it means to collectively softly, radically shaping changes for a better imaginable unimaginable future?

Core themes:

Fractals – the relationship between the small and the large “How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale.” (A.M.Brown)

The Dance of Shifting Ground - Intentional adaptation “Change is constant. The only lasting truth is change.” (O. Butler)

In the Tangle of Us - Interdependence & Instability “We are not individuals. We are interdependent systems.” (A.M Brown)

The Spiral Doesn’t End - Non linear change- Trusting time, transformation, emergence. “The idea of constant linear progress is a lie.” (A.M. Brown)

SKINSHIP- INTENSIVE WORKSHOP

Skinship is a Contact Improvisation research space that focuses on the idea of the body as an organic-alive-breathing system, constantly in relation between the inner and the outer space.

The proposal is to dance with the bodies we have and as people we are, tuning our abilities.

Skinship is a concept that I've created to focus on the skin, its layers arriving to the Fascia as a place of communication and interconnections.

We will begin by placing a few keywords at the center of the research: listening, presence, deconstruction, decolonization, time and space.Seeking skills that support the inexorable will to remain within our dance.

Starting from a somatic approach that will make our perceptive system more active and alive we will investigate fascia related to the nervous system, how the density and the tone are connected with this organs and from the skin we will investigate gravity, falling, flying, resting, being togheter and being with.

Our dance will meet other bodies and we will research the meeting with others through Contact Improvisation, improvisation and Political Scores studying the technical, poetic, political aspects, relating with the idea that the Knowledge is relational, and we share it with everything we touch and everything touches us.

What does it means that our skin is the only organ that we can't close, which with we can't avoid to feel, perceive, sense,

We will open new space to meet surfaces and yeld into the gravity of the skin. We will open our spherical space, investigating breathing as a collective practice that give us the possibility to communicate.

We will bring our movement and our body into space, working with improvisation and improvisation vocabularies such as Tuning Score (L.Nelson).

Our dance will meet other bodies and we will analyze and research this meeting with others, how do we cooperate, how we build a space where to stay together. Is there togetherness just because we meet?

Can we build practice where together means no-one feels excluded?

Those and more question will arise from our research.

We will practice how dancing can change our states of being and how our states of being can change our dance.

SMALL DANCES//BIG IMPACTS - INTENSIVE WORKSHOP

Where can we feel the smallest perturbation? How can the smallest movement create a big impact on our dance? How does the smallest change affect the whole system? How does a big impact influence our sensations? These are some of the questions we will bring into the space to begin our research.

We will study the Small Dance (Steve Paxton) to find ways to queer our verticality. We will bring question about what verticality is in our history as humans what does it means to have the possibility to be vertical, and how historically verticality was connected with the idea of superiority or power.

Exploring the relation with the floor we will find ways to soften our skeleton, to open our joints and to feel that the endless support that we recive from the earth is a universe of possibilities.

We will research gravity as support in all direction. What cooperating with gravity can open in our dances, how we are creating a 'real' relation with this force.

We will focus on the skeletal system, studying joints and bones. We will analyze different joint chains to perceive our movement in a new dynamic way.

The Core of Material for the Spine will guide part of our researcg

We will fall and roll. We will breathe and sense. We will feel the impact of each steps. By researching relationships, we will practice what does it means staying human in this present. How be radical by softening our steps. How we can stand up in a new way to show up for what we want to be our future. We will practice radical readiness and many spaces and layers where to meet.

STEVE PAXTON OBSESSION

This is not a workshop.

It is an embodied research field.

A place where the mind does not lead the body,

but where perception generates movement.

I have chosen to obsess over Steve Paxton

because his hunger was not for form

but for the transformation of relationship.

With gravity,

with the floor,

with others, and with ourselves.

In this no-workshop the invitation is to research and work with solo-pair-group-improvisational scores regarding these Obsessions:

Pedestrian movement:

walking as practice, not trick.

Dance arises when the ordinary becomes the object of attention.

“I am interested in how ordinary movement becomes dance when attention is applied.”

— Steve Paxton

Walking is not preparation. It is already the practice.

the body knows how to move before it knows why.

Pedestrian movement is the refusal to decorate experience.

Anarchy:

not chaos, but non-hierarchy.

A structure that emerges from listening, not from rules.

“The small dance is the dance you are already doing while standing still.”

— Steve Paxton

Anarchy is not chaos.

It is the absence of imposed hierarchy.

“The small dance is the dance you are already doing while standing still.”

— Steve Paxton

Anarchy is not lack of form.

It is form without a ruler.

Balance is a political act inside the body.

The body organizes itself faster than the mind can command it.

Touch:

not gesture, but listening situation.

The skin as a thinking organ,

contact as data source.

“Touch is not an action.

It is a situation.”

In Contact Improvisation, touch is information before it is intention.

Touch is a way of listening.”

— Steve Paxton

Touch precedes intention.

Do not touch to move.

Touch to perceive.

Skin is a thinking organ.

Gravity:

the first partner.

Not a force to dominate,

but one to cooperate with,

yielding weight, not power.

“Gravity is the first partner.”

— Steve Paxton

Weight is not something you give.

It is something you allow.

Stillness:

not emptiness,

but a vibrating field of information.

First the internal silence, then the dance.

“Stillness is full of events.”

— Steve Paxton

Listening does not require movement,

but movement requires listening.

In this no-workshop we want questions, doubts and more obsession to arise. Is a space of listening, daring, being, improvising, waiting.

"Once upon a time, there was an earthly creature who believed it was possible to train oneself to be a little less than human: he called it "gravity" or "the fall after Newton" or "let's jump on each other and see what happens", and he turned it into a school, an asceticism and a game. Since then, many other creatures have been playing the same game every day: what if, instead of pre-knowing who we are, we played at being masses? Not humans, not everything that racial capitalism and the gender system say about us, but just: things that matter? And of course, we'll never quite get there, and of course, there'll always be the choreographies of species, and race, and class, and gender, coming back at a gallop, but all the same: what if, you, and me, here now, not so different...s from pebbles, windmills and lampposts, like all of them, we fell? What if, like all of them, we let ourselves be attracted...by the Earth and its gravity?"

in memoriam to Steve Paxton written by Emma Bigé ( full text in french --> http://lolm.eu/in-memoriam-steve-paxton/)