Into Improvisation, Performance lab II
First part “Body in Performance” engaging through listening
Second part “Collective Narratives” reading between the lines

Taught by Alessandro Certini and Charlotte Zerbey
Open to professional and semi professional dancers.

Radialsystem V, Berlin

14 – 20 March 2015

Workshop fee: 150 €

Application via eMail up to 6 March: sdoering@sashawaltz.de

 

This workshop is the development of the first workshop Company Blu lead in Radialsystem in October 2014. The work was focused on enhancing readiness and building dialogue, by
developing faculties of perception and intuition in the practice of improvisation. The study will move forward on the themes of engaging through listening and reading/tracking the action of the improvisation. The work unites movement study and personal creativity to utilize physical and theatrical presence in performance. We propose to have an informal workshop showing on the last day, to which the students may invite friends and colleagues.

The first part is a gradual warm up of explorations to refine our skills of sensing in relationship to others and the physical experience of connection and being connected to ones creativity. We will use elements of gesture and voice, as well as touch and relationship to enable a more concrete perception of the immediate environment around us, of the space and the other dancers. In this way, we will learn how to track and utilize the weight and energy that travels through our bodies, using gravitational pull and the bodies nature of reflexive response.
Our main focus will continue to be: The integration of impulses in various contexts of
improvisation, continuous sourcing of movement material, and responses that tune into our innate nature of rooting and supporting. We will continue to explore presence, expression and
communication in movement, with a bit more practice through sound and word
within the improvised process.

The second part will continue to work on physical dialogue, improvising in small
and large groups to develop our personal skills and finding the moment when text
or even melody may enter, supporting the purely physical work without taking away
from the rich dialogue of the body. The guided sessions with feedback focus on dance
improvisation as a collective act, a way to create performances and dances by creating narratives that come from the group context, from which latent narratives may surface and come to the forefront, or may be utilized to support the others’. This practice refines the ability to develop group work within a living system in real time. While our dances become comprehensible through the perception of the senses, reaching beyond a linear story interpretation. This way of approaching movement, not structuring the future, can provoke in the dancer that wants to explore this art form, as well as in the audience, an initial sense of uncertainty, yet its this openness that releases a sense of joy and spontaneous clarity in thinking and action that is rarely achieved in more structured or choreographed performance.
Also, as the capacity to “play” is fundamental for the liveliness of compositional choices,
imagination, personal and collective, it is very important to practice and define a language
(theatrical, physical, spatial, musical), in order to “play” inside the dynamic system of improvised
performance.

The workshop is organized by Company Blu © Charlotte Zerbey & Alessandro Certini