Mission Improvable 2013
Now Practices: improvisation and contact as performance research
Tuesday Dec. 3 at 5:30 pm -Sunday Dec. 8 at 4:00 pm
Performance Dec. 7
A 5 & 1/4 day workshop led by Brooklyn teacher Brandin Steffensen.
The days will be spent in part guided class and in part inhabiting improvisational forms. Observation and reflection, written and aural discourse will be an important part of developing the ensemble. The workshop will culminate in a performance built from activities within it.
Tuesday Dec. 3 at 5:30 pm -Sunday Dec. 8 at 4:00 pm
Performance Dec. 7
A 5 & 1/4 day workshop led by Brooklyn teacher Brandin Steffensen.
The days will be spent in part guided class and in part inhabiting improvisational forms. Observation and reflection, written and aural discourse will be an important part of developing the ensemble. The workshop will culminate in a performance built from activities within it.
Now Practices combines various tried and true practices toward developing ensemble improvisation: Barbara Dilley's Contemplative Dance Practice, Nancy Stark's Smith's Underscore, Guy Debord's Derive, and Brandin Steffensen's Pentamode, among others. The workshop frames the practitioners' individual physicality, the possibilities inside duet forms both contact improvisation and dance, and the compositional aspects of ensemble in the room as a whole. Techniques which encourage specificity while moving through space, allow for ease in moving into and out of the floor, and develop ease alternating from moving alone to sharing weight, always find compositional awareness as a background.