ARTiculating Presence:

The Geometry of Attention  

Creative acts of the embodied mind are the means by which dancers non-verbally interrogate borders, enter other bodies, and define the dimensions of internal and external space. Working with the mind of the dance and the dance of the mind, this highly physical workshop will take us to the edge of our boundary definitions as it engages and trains attentional skills, informs creative knowing and encourages bold acts of physical and mental extension. Building movement vocabularies that encompass the physicality of mind, this workshop trains creative action in ensemble dance improvisation and Contact Improvisation. Strongly geared toward interpersonal interactions within an ecological understanding of space, it will ask that dancers identify imagination within their physical awareness. Here, we will learn to act with the kind of creative support that clarifies our purpose and our presence, bringing the world and the dance to life. We will reach to find the materials of interpersonal non-verbal communication as we explore the agency of presence, the speed of awareness, unconscious cognition, and the conditions of environmental imagination. This workshop bridges full physicality with changing states of awareness. We will move within a spectral array of movement possibilities as we balance the softening of physical release with the clarity of directed action. The purpose of this workshop is to inform your dance research by challenging binary ideologies as we expose the mindbody to new potentialities.

 

Each day will be spent in theoretical discussion and physical/mental training as well as composition and practice. In this work we will investigate the resonant webs of awareness derived from movement scores that direct and modulate attention as the bases for compositional structures.

 

 

 

 

 

choreographs, performs, teaches and writes about improvisational dance and theories of embodiment in action. She participated with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and others, in the explorations that became Contact Improvisation in 1972 and has been significant in its emergence. Her work on the embodied mind and the “meaning” of attention dates back to the early 80s when she initiated a curriculum, The Mind in Motion. This work explores the range of experiential states of the embodied mind and reveals principles that define Contact Improvisation as well as ensemble dancing. She collaborated in numerous performing companies introducing Contact Improvisation throughout the United States and then initiated a number of performance groups. Her performance practice is a mix of both formal and improvisational choreography that utilizes scores.
 Nita has received funding and support through the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the NEA/Dance USA National College Choreography Initiative. Her San Francisco based ensemble company, Divisadero Dance Research investigates the resonant webs of awareness derived from movement scores that direct and modulate attention as the bases for compositional structures.

 

Fee: 150 EUR

schwelle7 members: 100 EUR

  

registration:

 

 SLEEPING: We can host workshop participants in our Guestrooms or in special sleeping cocoons in the studio. The cost is from 10 EUR a night per person.