This workshop explores what it is to sound, look, and be real on the stage. We’ll investigate different ways to combine the voice with dance and how to manipulate multiple meanings out of text using volume, tone, and rhythm as tools. We’ll work with and without microphones, use lists, film texts, novels, newspaper articles and improvisations to generate and inspire our own material. This workshop will guide you to build texts of content from your own interest and apply them to daily mini performances that mix contemporary dance with the voice. This week we’ll explore how to consciously reveal the person behind the performer and will ask for a minimal amount of work outside of the workshop to gather material to bring into the class.
In our contemporary performance world, performers are not only hired for their physical skill but for whom they are as people themselves. Pieces are built around the personalities of the performers and what they bring and propose during the rehearsal process. What do you propose if there is just a blank slate? How do you begin if a director/ choreographer just gives you one word to work on: Democracy, Resistance, Violence, Ghosts, Capitalism, Peace, Protest, Loss, Empowerment, the Future… Artists are looking for performers that can dance, act, and perform while pushing borders and going to extremes. During these this week I’ll be asking you to bring in your own concerns about the world at large. We’ll then constantly create situations and improvisations that will challenge your global artistic skills, which in turn can be used in your own work in the future.
*This class continues to develop and is for a group of 16 people working 4 hours a day. Variation of the class has been taught in ImpulzTanz for two years, both the 3rd and 4th year students of PARTS, SEADS , HZT in Berlin & the past three years at TIC TAC in Brussels.