Workshops
Time to Switch
Workshop in choreography @ Oslo National Academy of the Arts
15-26.08.2011
Format: Body Storming, brain storming, field trips, lectures and presentations
From an historical perspective dance has not followed the general order of things. To cut a long story short, there was modern dance which was not at all “modernist”. Then came the first surge of post-modern dance in the 1960s – early 70s, rebelling against classical ballet and classical modern dance. Imagining what a new dance could look like in the future, post-modern dance quickly became more outwardly “post-modernist”. Let’s imagine that for two weeks we are the choreographers of the first post-modern period and that it is happening to us now, in 2011. We are not yet very cool or analytical, but playfully rebellious, urgently reconsidering dance as a medium today. We are interested in the medium’s functional relationship to context; in exploring “natural movement”, collaboration and participation; in working with simple scores that can be performed in the city by almost anybody’s body with a minimum of prior instruction.
The workshop will start by re-visiting the score of Steve Paxton’s “Satisfyin’ Lover” (1967) and consider how it could function as a computer as code, modifiable and distributive. Then we will play with some smart phone apps that to some extend answer to the call of a dance improvisation. Working in between the one and the others we will sex things up a bit, devising a prototype game using cellphones, sound cues and the sites and surfaces of the city.
URL: workshop blog
Ladies and Gentlemen. the Toilets of Tbilisi
Workshop @ Europe House, Tbilisi
24.02.2011
Format: Presentation and field trip
Requirements: any kind of digital photography camera
Public toilets, far from being banal or simply functional, are highly charged spaces, shaped by notions of propriety, hygiene and the binary gender division. Indeed, public toilets are among the very few openly segregated spaces in contemporary Western culture, and the physical differences between “gentlemen” and “ladies” remains central to (and is further naturalized by) their design. As such, they provide a fertile ground for critical work interrogating how conventional assumptions about the body, sexuality, privacy, and technology can be formed in public space and inscribed through design.
(Olga Gershenson, Barbara Penner, 2009)
The workshop explores and reflects on the issues described above by capturing the aesthetics of toilets in Tbilisi. Starting with a short presentation of the topic, the group divide to move out into the city and take as many photographs as possible of toilets that are available for public use, also mapping their location. The workshop ends with a final gathering to collect and look at the results of the field trip.
URL: Flickr set of toliet photos
Desert Walker. The Other side of “o”
23- 24.08.2010
Experimental geography workshop/performance event
3km from Art Villa Garikula, Akhalkalaki, Shida Qartli region, Georgia
Touch the tip of one index finger to the other. Do the same with your thumbs. With these fingertips connected, open the space between them, to form an O. Now separate your hands. What remains is the other side of O. This absence of boundary is the choreographed site for The Other Side of O.
(Deborah Hay, 1998)
This workshop explored the idea of commemorating landscape of forgotten or obscure events by combining practices of ritual, choreography and experimental geography. It takes the choreographic score of “Quad” (1981), Samuel Beckett’s experimental TV drama for four silent walkers, off the screen and places it in real space. Exactly what is to be commemorated is decided through group discussions during the process of learning and performing the score. The participants are artists and cultural workers from Georgia and France.