Exhausted workshop/ Danscentrum Stockholm
The proposed class is dealing with physical endurance and exhaustion in a contemporary dance class. Starting with an intense tempo warm up, proceeds to push the sense of endurance while dancing in a non-stop, continuous mode.The concentration lies on “channeling” the long-endurance muscles while learning choreographies and combining floor work with quick upper-plane multidirectional moving. In the end, the class concludes with performing long dance phrases in different textures and speeds and assists the sensible coordinating of the body in risk situations.
The main aim of this proposal has two main axes: a. to allow professional dancers to observe their patterns of dealing with physical exhaustion, b. to allow the finding of a more “organic” approach of dealing with our energy systems.
As it is known, the long endurance muscles “burn on” in a very different system than the short term ones. Knowing and reflecting on how to utilize them in efficient manners has good effects both on fatigue levels but also to the bodily perception and experience of a dance class. Many times the experience of exhaustion is also related with psyhcological impact or body memory of specific patterns. My intension with this class is to analyze the complexity of this situation and generate personally based tools for professionals dancers to manage in “demanding” situations.
I am very interested on observing how different dancers organize and structure their bodies when put in a continous moving constellation and what tools to escape it. I have been using a variety of techniques which include “overexposure” (offering a lot of material and quickly), “overflow” (demanding an exponentially quicker tempo) and “excess” (asking for a release of excessive energy). This potentializes the dancers to arrive in an exhaustive situation where they need to decide on strategies to deal with.
The attached video is an extract of the class in which dancers have to repeat the same choreography for many times while being “pulled” by other dancers to extend and intensify sensations in different parts of their body. This allows the searching for a personal “flow” but also an extraction of “exessive” energy to process the information externally given in a continous tempo.
Twist Fold workshop with Nefeli Oikonomou and Mikael Kristiansen
Our class integrates principles from soft acrobatics and hand balancing with different textures ofdance movement. We will see how the concept of balance can help us explore different qualities and alternative ways to go to and from the floor. Also we will experiment how it could be a playground for interesting dynamics and intensities that can offer us dance versatility. Besides the floor and choreography work, the class will be flexible to address acrobatic and pair work in different levels of progression.
The Twist-fold workshop refers to people interested and experienced in the arts of dance and/or contemporary circus.In this workshop of contemporary dance and softacrobatics, we will work dynamically and un-conventionally to widen our abilities. Beginning from self- awareness and respect to our body and movement, we will test combinations of these fields and go out of comfort zones. The focus will be on efficient ways of learning hand balancing, choreographies and acrobatic moves and how to use these as a playground for enriching our movement experience. How can we, through dynamic threedimensional twists and folds, expand our creative potentials and the qualitative perception of our anatomy? Furthermore in this workshop, we will use new and old tools to dive deeper in creative processes and generate our own performative material. We will work through different layers: exchange, feedback, collaboration and display.
At the end of the week the participants will have generated their own creations/presentations, which will emerge through different processes of adding layers to their work. This workshop is a dialogue of core principles from acrobatics and dance and most welcome for those that would like to try new, unexpected combinations.
Affectual Sensibility with Aleksandar Georgiev and Nefeli Oikonomou
The workshop explores the threshold of affectual sensibility activating the physical body in different constellations. In this co-teaching practice based workshop we explore sensations and we are trying to find moments of eruption that re-inhabit the coding of this sensual threshold. It is created as relational practice thereof needing two or more bodies to be executed.
Different affections of the body (e.g. pain, pleasure, touch) are used as abasis to unravel (explore) their generativity, shift possible perceptions of them and de-construct their meaning. Diving into the singnification and interpretation of sensations it offers a complexified plane of experience for the physical body outside the realm of normativity.
For example,one of them- the wrestling practice- it’s a body practice where two bodies enter in a constant bi-directional pull and push relation which requires the body to adapt in different constellations of forces. The related bodies function as one organism operating through the negotiative push pull force. Another example is the exploration of physical pain -testing points of pain in the body and the social signification of it and re-directing it’s use and energy. As a dancer is important to be able to relate with physical pain in different ways and approaches and also use it as a generative tool.
Foreground/Danscentrum Väst
The proposed class is using as foreground Forsythe’s improvisation technologies and release techniques and moves further to challenge movement patterns and “direct” creativity.We start with warming up and expanding the notion of space within immediate directives and we move to more concrete exercises of exaggerating and testing the limits of territories in the body.We will concentrate on triggering the body in different tempos/textures and expanding our creative bodily capabilities with practical tools.We will direct the perception and sensibility through putting the body in risk situations and challenging moment to moment creativity.