The inflexibility of the established paralyzes the movement, dims the ingenuity, casts a shadow over surprise. But life force makes us adaptable, it gives us the opportunity to transform space and to translate energy into matter, matter into its own evolution. The outline of the spontaneous is blurred to disappear, the margins of the predictable are softened and we know the interrogation point those questions the automatic response. The body allows us to transcend.

Horacio proposes a highly physical work that demands attention, interest and intensity rather than a certain technique level, challenging the potentiality of each dancer to push the limits of body imagination and expression further to discover new and surprising possibilities.

The workshop evolves with what the group offers, as the ability to create and compose physically need training and attention as well as technique or style. Through the group process, the participants learn from each other through acceptance and transformation, collaboration and observation of their own dance and of the whole group.

Let’s dive into the work, get the engines started and let the imagination flow!

Let’s dance!

Akira Yoshida’s workshop focuses on the deeper understanding of the distribution and transfer of weight, the use of relaxation-tension, and the use of gravity, and how all of these actions work together to make for more efficient and free movement above ground level. It also explores the possibilities of creativity and freedom that spring from the control of weight and gravity. 

Much of the work is about the body’s function and its degrees of freedom, starting at the ground and moving upwards. The seminar also looks into how we can make so-called ‘tricks’ be like any other ‘movement’, by examining the stages of this transition.

There is a big focus on floorwork, in which all these principles will be applied, extrapolating things we understand when we are standing, in other situations.

Mafalda Deville explores improvisation concepts to get the participants to experiment physicality outside their comfort zone, by relating to different sensations and fragilities of others. She wants to get away from rigid structures, conceptual or formal, favouring a true opening, questioning the physical and psychological limits of the body, and exposing both strength and fragility.

Exploration of the body in different perspectives is one of the major points of research at this moment. The difference between the now and before, the body’s fragilities of different times, in different contexts, the body ageing, the body taken for granted, the body of the person and the artist. These are, at this point the areas of interest for research.

The workshops will explore creative tasks with focus on the body, by building text and working with visuals in order to question the ideas of literal, abstract and metaphor.

In this workshop we will be working on a new and ongoing research into Microbatics & Agility

These two themes will be split into segments but remain related as we progress through the days.

The acrobatic practice stems from a necessity of developing an approach to the world of inversions in a sustainable and somewhat holistic manner and is partially inspired by some earlier setbacks and injuries in education, which in turn required an adaptation and evolution for the working methodologies we will explore.                                                                                         

It forms the foundation of the practice and tries to present and invite the individual in integrating the acrobatic language seamlessly and precisely into their system. Through this approach perhaps the eventual aim being the ability of blurring the edges between what separates acrobatics and your personal movement approach. 

This workshop’s second topic is agility; Where we look at understanding how to cultivate and explore different training scenarios orchestrated around the sub chapters of balance, coordination, endurance, speed, meditation and strength. While exploring these themes we will be drawing particular focus on ‘the relationship’ between learning and failure; Purposely inviting the exposure of failure in order to rediscover and recognise its function.

What we are interested in is to create an environment to build up an all-round adaptive mover. With this as an aim we suggest the idea of an investment into a practice composed of different forms of movement training in which to combine and create the foundation of ‘the Hybrid Mover’; alternatively described as someone who is capable of adapting themselves to a wide variety of dynamic cognitive and physical situations.

The proposed training takes inspiration from neuroscience, fighting, dancing, acrobatics, meditation, locomotion and partnering, to attempt to extract different ingredients from these forms and introduce both already established ideas and an ongoing research into the subject cultivating a movement practice.

Winston is a member of the Ferus Animi // Terra Nova Collective, a group of cross-disciplinary craftspeople researching in the fields of human physiology and performance, through both an artistic and scientific lens.

The workshop will be divided into two closely-linked parts: floor-work + partnering

First part objectives:

-establish a fluid, soft, safe and at the same time clear and sharp relationship with the floor, as if it were a "partner" to dance with;

-increase the ability to absorb impact with the floor while performing movements based on the relationship between weight and gravity going up and down;

-dancing is an extended and dynamic phrase with many changes of levels and directions, without losing power, softness, concentration and presence.

Then the second part on partnering will start.

Exploring the skills of leaning on a body and the ability to counterbalance weight, we will learn how to support and use our partner's weight while moving; to lift our partner using minimal effort as well as to make ourselves light while being lifted in static and off-balance situations.

We will observe different ways of giving and receiving weight in the action of leaning, climbing and jumping on a partner. We will learn how to jump on each other and how to take and absorb the impact of the jumping body without interrupting the flow of movement. We will learn dynamic partnering sequences in which we manipulate each other in different ways as we move through space.

RADICAL SOFTNESS is a personal appropriation of an expression I've even tattooed on my body. It describes my position in the world and how I take part in it and in everything I do. I depart from the premise that personal is political and that art, even if we want it to be, it is not political enough. I create not as an artist, but as a person, as a woman, as a citizen. Through my artistic practice I see, question and connect to politics, spirituality, ethics, and togetherness and my artistic practice weaves curating, making, performing and teaching.

I don't believe in the conventional education of dance and I wish discipline designations would be abolished - our need to define is often very restrictive.

This workshop provides individual artistic research that is not based on forms, shapes or conventions but rather ignites from what we need, individually to be able to manifest creatively in the world. It is shaped by the transmission of experiences through asking questions.

Molded by two segments, in the 1st one, we start by awakening ourselves, through our bodies, as a physical tool for deep connection with the universe, through practices like yoga, somatics and astrology, aligning to the reality of the daily macro-cosmos shifts that affect our micro-cosmos as a person. Through a continuous flow of movement, the body is seen as an oracle and as a vehicle for transcendence. The participants are encouraged to forget dance, to forget what composition "looks" like and to move (or not) from their real needs to look for comfort, purpose and alignment on several mediums, like a river flow of images of the here and now.

In a 2nd part, always accompanied by a beat sound that connects us all in a collective individual manifest, we will explore the basics of my choreographic practice, working with several layers of attention that fade in and out, repetition and constant exposure of the research. We will be doing things for a very, very long time until we shed the layers of performing through insistency, intensity and intention. We will work with juxtapositions and metaphors, always evolving and unfolding through the necessary means: voice, body, presence, and breath work.

The participants are invited to dive into the grounds of my previous pieces and to play in the meanders of ambiguity; of concrete and abstract images; of a subject and an object body. The work is not created by the performer alone but instead happens in the space between of transmission of performer and audience and relies on the experience of affect rather than effect.

Akira Yoshida’s workshop focuses on the deeper understanding of the distribution and transfer of weight, the use of relaxation-tension, and the use of gravity, and how all of these actions work together to make for more efficient and free movement above ground level. It also explores the possibilities of creativity and freedom that spring from the control of weight and gravity. Much of the work is about the body’s function and its degrees of freedom, starting at the ground and moving upwards. The seminar also looks into how we can make so-called ‘tricks’ be like any other ‘movement’, by examining the stages of this transition.

There is a big focus on floorwork, in which all these principles will be applied, extrapolating things we understand when we are standing, in other situations.

The inflexibility of the established paralyzes the movement, dims the ingenuity, casts a shadow over surprise. But life force makes us adaptable, it gives us the opportunity to transform space and to translate energy into matter, matter into its own evolution. The outline of the spontaneous is blurred to disappear, the margins of the predictable are softened and we know the interrogation point those questions the automatic response. The body allows us to transcend.

Horacio proposes a highly physical work that demands attention, interest and intensity rather than a certain technique level, challenging the potentiality of each dancer to push the limits of body imagination and expression further to discover new and surprising possibilities.

The workshop evolves with what the group offers, as the ability to create and compose physically need training and attention as well as technique or style. Through the group process, the participants learn from each other through acceptance and transformation, collaboration and observation of their own dance and of the whole group.

Let’s dive into the work, get the engines started and let the imagination flow!

Let’s dance!

FLYING (fluffy) LOW + PASSING THROUGH

I embody and share the knowledge of David Zambrano’s Flying Low and Passing Through techniques adapted to my own artistic vision and needs, always taking care of the temporary group that is formed for this practice. I see them, as techniques that teach my body spiralling pathways and group dynamics - it's something I always keep in my pocket and take it out when I need to use it, just like other techniques.

In the 1st part of the practice, we focus on the Flying Low technique and the dynamics increase progressively using imagery and touch by exploring and exploding each short exercise, where participants are challenged to find their own solutions through doing, figuring out what are the pathways that cross their bodies, rather than established formulas or shapes. The technique focuses on the relationship with the floor by utilizing simple movement sequences and by practising speed and the release of energy throughout the body in order to activate the centre. There is special attention given to the extremities as extensions of the centre and indicators of direction, proposing awareness and clarity to the movement.

There's no Passing Through without Flying Low and the other way around, therefore in the 2nd part of the practice, we take over Passing Through. It is a set of tools organized in several chapters from the simplest one to the most complex, from the individual to the collective, challenging the space in and around us. In this process of constant temporary compositions, we focus on developing systems as a group-net.

Through pathways in curves and spirals that expand to the macro-space, participants are proposed to create flexible but complex dynamics, maintaining the cohesion of the group, yet keeping it open enough for unpredictability.

We move constantly, transforming the environment, playing together, within a matrix of common rules and sub-rules each of us adds on.

CONFLICT MOVEMENTS consists of very physical and dynamic practice with exercises that will allow connecting floorwork and improvisation drawing from Sabrina's and Rafa's background and experience as performers.

The workshop will help the participants to enter a guided journey where they will explore tools in physical and theatrical ways. As in dance, as well in theatre, is very important to be alert of what's happening around us in order to transform an idea into something concrete and understand what we are doing and why.

We always consider in our way to create that, the conflict in movement is one of the most important things to develop an idea and that is the reason why we would like to create a space where we can investigate with the participants.

Developed further from the previous workshop Innercore. We’ll start with a class focusing on organic way of moving, using and recycling energy with continuous flow, growing progressively from the floor and approach concepts like risk, trust, instinct and speed. We’ll focus amongst others on kinetic force and anatomy, departing from and back to our own center, with an openness towards the inside (physical consciousness) and outside (all around us) merging what we control and what we let happen/observe.

Then this encounter, will be a confrontation through a meditative state diving into your own vortex and the relationship between yourself and the space around you. In the untapped corners of your own mind and body, by finding your own vortex, you will allow the complexity of your subconscious to spur, on the technical and creative level, and generate your own individuality within the collectivity of those around you. We will explore methods of generating material that play with the personality, image, and the strengths and weaknesses of the individual in an attempt to find unique and specified material.

Discovering your vulnerability of the unconscious by channeling the purity of presence and take pleasure in spontaneity, you’ll have the freedom to question:

When can we set a limit to the forward movement?

How does a dancer approaches character, how does a character move/dance?

As this journey fluctuates between you as a human and performer you will discover your internal guerilla reflected back through the root of the dark matter.

Dark matter? Can we allow ourselves to go there?

The workshop's core research is developed with the group, with exercises and rhythms in a language that also investigates important questions about the body, space, time, the question between control and freedom, the process and the relationship with society, having the individual as the focus. With the intention of dynamizing this space for the exchange of intercultural experiences.

The practices are:

- Exercises to predict as projected possibilities, from bodily and serious principles to stimulate the development of expressive skills;

- Notion of speed, rhythm and pause from various stimuli;

- Creation of small fragments by groups.

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