Class Descriptions
Classes at a glance:
Pulse: Ruth Douthwright (Canada)
rhythms, steps, gestures, sounds, songs, senses
Abieié: Irineu Nogueira (Brazil / Germany)
regeneration, perception, internal, external, ancestors
Ecological Bodying: Kevin O'Connor (Canada)
fascia, biomatrix, sensorium, somatic practice
Musicality of Movement: Alysson Bruno (Brazil)
Orixás, symbology, music, dance, story
Togethering - Sweet Labour Art Practices: Kevin & Ruth (Canada)
improvisation, listening, entanglement, eco-somatic imaginaries
Dynamic Experiences: Camila Seeger (Chile / Brazil)
perception, space-time, play, dynamic motion
We are gathering to explore new and old ways of being in relation with self, community and our surroundings.
Common threads throughout the retreat include movement sequences, improvisational scores, dance and rhythm lineages, and co-creative processes.
All faculty members are highly experienced at working with groups that have a wide range of skills and backgrounds. Each class is experiential, body-based, and sensitive to the needs of both the group and the individual.
This is more than training, although we will certainly learn new skills. It is about perceiving and creating connections between elements; the relationship of parts to a messy, prolific whole; and a synergetic meeting offering a transformative and elevating experience.
Pulse
Ruth Douthwright
In this workshop we practice a wide range of rhythms, steps, gestures, movement qualities, sounds, songs and spatial formations inspired by Eastern European folk dances Ruth has learned over many years. These dances can offer numerous ways of engaging our senses, time and space, entangling differently and together. The process of learning and practising dances and songs from other times and places provides a multitude of new experiences and other ways of coming to know these particular dance and world making practices.
Abieié
Irineu Nogueira
For more than 15 years Irineu has developed his own dance language worldwide. Abieié means regeneration in the Yorùbá language of Nigeria. Irineu experiments in a contemporary form, Brazilian dance styles with expressions of African rhythms. Through movements and music vocabulary, accompanied by live percussion with Alysson Bruno, Irineu intends to awaken a dialogue in the experience between internal perception (ancestral) and external (current world) through dance, mixing traditional forms of African movement with modern styles of dance. This happens through listening, through attention and perception - generating a connection between the internal and the external world. Spreading good vibrations where we explore different stories. Then, the perception of the internal dance becomes an impulse for the external and therefore visible movement. Lastly, this connection is strengthened through listening to the music and rhythm and that becomes the expression of the dance - the potential to develop into a choreography.
Ecological Bodying
Kevin O'Connor
In this workshop we dance with fascia, moving with and being made different by its generative possibilities. Fascia is often referred to as connective tissue and seen as simply wrapping muscles. But it is also an active, intelligent and communicative sensory organ enveloping, permeating and constituting the body. As the “fabric” of our form it shifts our perspective from a body made up of parts to the wholeness of the architecture holding them together. Fascia can be described as a biomatrix that surrounds everything in our bodies, connects everything, and yet paradoxically cleaves and separates everything. Fascia is not one thing. The emergent set of anatomical claims about fascia stretches between communities of biologists, massage therapists, doctors, anatomists and pathologists as well as somatic practitioners and dancers. We will dance and be moved by metaphors, images, models, scientific research and somatic practices cultivated in relation to fascia. We explore how what I call “scoring fascia” changes our sensorium and potentially moves us in new ways. We try out, experiment, and place ourselves in the midst of this new form of experimental embodiment being made.
Musicality of Movement
Alysson Bruno
A body practice with the purpose of connecting the symbology of the dances of the Orixás with their musicality, creating a communication between music and dance to tell a story with the movements.
Togethering: Sweet Labour Art Practices
Ruth & Kevin
This class may include: dancing with fascia, social and folkloric dances, dance improvisation, crafting eco-somatic imaginaries, working with objects, dancing with ancestors, situating storytelling practices, and not only, woven together into a messy whole. These practices emerge from 15-years of community art collaborations along the polluted D’eshkin zibi river in what is now called London, Ontario, Canada. How might these collaborative rehearsal experiments allow us to practice "togethering" across radically different sense-abilities. One key component of this work will ask how dance improvisation practices can offer different methods for listening without understanding, and cultivating response-ability to our ecological entanglements with others.
Dynamic Experiences
Camila Seeger
A somatic experience into dynamic motion. The body into space presents movement and opens the perception of the body into space. A class to observe and practice connections between the parasympathetic nervous system and the dynamic motion that offers us space-time and a huge spectrum of intensities to play with. How do we move dynamically without losing relaxation?
Sample Schedule
subject to change
Daily classes offer improvisation, somatic practices, cultural exchange, and creative process. This is a time and space to connect with self, others and our natural environment.
9:00am -
9:15 am
Daily opening
9:15am - 11:15am
Class in studio
11:15am - 2:30pm
Lunch & break
2:30pm - 4:00pm
Class in nature
4:00pm - 4:15pm
Break & snack
4:15pm - 6:15pm
Co-creation session
6:15pm - 6:30pm
Daily closing
6:30pm -
Dinner & free time