body/material is a dramaturgy of dances, where dance is intended primarily as a movement of attention and a technology of ecstasy, done both “alone together” and “together together”. The work invites the participants to look and treat the body as material, addressing its organic functions and spiritual potential as well as its cultural implications, holding bodies as biographies affected in different ways by power-over systems.
body/material invites the participants to tune into the subtle body, through breathing and slow activations, drawn from functional anatomy and Qi circulation techniques. The approach to anatomy is not essentialist, rather acknowledges more science fiction than scientific facts, departing yet splitting from a bio-mechanical model, landing deeply in the felt sense. Every day the focus is brought to a system (e. g. connective tissue, bones, technology of breath, heart center, gravity dynamics) to allow for this to grow into explorations or dances.
The class dynamic evolves from somatic tuning and awareness into a playground for a polymorphous and joyful dance experience. Often touch is involved, especially in dialogue with the hands-on work and puzzles by Sara Shelton Mann.
Part of the curriculum offered is a brief embodied framework on consent, as we gather as temporary collaborators in a “brave” space, where through dancing as a form of non-normative or ordinary behaviour, we take risks as we open and re-shape our body/mind.
If the group is large, affinity groups are established to work/reflect/report to.
This workshop is assisted by Auro Orso.
Auro Orso is a Berlin based dancer, choreographer, performer and activist who identifies as Trans and Two-Spirit. He has presented his work in many different venues in Berlin such as Dock11, HAU, Sophiensäle, Ballhaus Naunynstraße and performed in several other countries around the globe. His art is inevitably linked to his lived experience as a racialised person and his political activism and tunes into Indigenous knowledge and world-views.
His artistic research includes exploring decolonising practices in all aspects of life as well as questioning the Western/colonial ilusion of universality, binaries and “the apropiate“.
In his workshops and performances movement material can be informed by somatics, perreo, consent and physical theatre.
His performances include a spectrum of topics along care, Indigenous futurism and imaginative gender-riots. Reclaiming/remembering/redoing/relearning as well as gentleness, humor and political pleasure are omnipresent in his sharings.
