First the description: Towards Moving Thinking is a workshop on movement exploration, improvisation, collaboration and exchange focusing on dance, society and lots of questions. How do we carry different expectations, values, roles and rules in our bodies and moving? How do we read dance and movement as public appearance? What happens to (our) moving thinking and to the reading of it in different contexts? How about improvisation and/or choice making in different situations in our everyday life?

The aim is to increase one´s awareness, to draw from and to get inspired by our personal experiences, thoughts, ideas and ideals on dance, art and society. How dancing, the way I do it and the way I think about it is related to a more general idea of (contemporary) dance art, performance and embodiment in the society I live in? What moves or touches me right now? What is important?  

 The aim is to embody/move/work on these questions with a sense of play and curiosity hoping that each will bring his/her own experiences, interests, ideas and skills with a willingness to share and collaborate with others.

 Each day we will start with a warm up together with a focus on movement development and improvisation supported by writing and/or partner work.  After a warm up we will create suitable working frames and methods to explore chosen topics alone, with a partner or in small groups using moving, writing and sharing.

 In the end of the class we come together to share by talking, performing or other ways.

Watching others and to be watched, as well as discussion is an important part of the workshop.

The Workshop is open to everyone interested in movement exploration, improvisation, discussion and linking dance art to different contexts and society.

The working frame for the week:

Day 1

Introduction and names

Video About to Dance, swing of politics (7 min of the video)

 Dance in Society

Where does dance happen? Locating dance… (studio, street, football field, ball room, stage, home)

Warm up, arrivals and departures

Working in pairs - one mover- the other one works with touch (“ don´t ignore the touch”)

Making questions - what is a right question?

Sharing processes/ Talk

Day 2

Starting with talking in a circle

How do you meet your every day life as a mover?

What is listening?

Warm up

3 touches and move (in pairs)

3 different spots in space 

Noticing difference: Moving from sensation / Moving from imagination (“images are sometimes more like stereotypes”)

What questions come up?

Writing

90sec solos

Ending in a circle

Day 3

What´s the first question that comes into your mind right now?

Warm up - Levels

3min moving as much as possible - 3 min moving as little as possible  (in a spot, in pairs, one is first watching the other one, then changing of the roles)

 Can dance be an answer -concept (40 mins in working pairs): Participants find themselves a working partner. Each duet can decide the best way to work on personally chosen questions/themes. Only suggestion from Pia is that dancing would be part of the working (with talking, writing, observing).

Ending circle

Day 4

Talk

Warm up, levels (independent)

Touching station (in pairs - one person is a mover and the other one is observing and being ready when the mover comes to be touched)

Writing: what engages you now - what would you like to work on more/deepen in your moving/dancing?

Visiting a solo -(working  in pairs) one person is dancing/moving, the other one is sometimes visiting the solo, also observing and in the end making a responding dance. (The writing done just before supports the moving and observing as well)

Writing, in the end 6 mins talking or dancing, each pair can decide themselves

Ending circle

Day 5

Warm up

Arrivals + departures,

Dancing a duet with your spine

What´s the most crucial question right now?

Can dance be an answer working- concept (people could decide if they worked alone or with some one)

 - Questions to support the working: 

How do you articulate or (re)search the unknown? How to extend and when to extend with the material what occurs in your working. Is there a way to support a surprise? How would you do that? 

How to expand the view and the perception of your own body and movement/moving through your own practice?

How do you engage yourself? How do you get back to working? What moves you?

Talk - sharing experiences from the working.

Ending dance all together (with a possibility to observe others every now and then)

Reflections/thoughts/memories: 

- It is (and was again)exciting to see how different individuals come, be and work together and form a temporary creative community. And of course to be part of it.

- I was moved by other people´s moving thinking. I was sitting on the side and watching people working on their own and finding different ways of including others into their studies of movement/ moving studies. The openness to engage oneself in different kinds of moving dialogues and the constantly changing space was beautiful to watch.

 - On the 3rd day morning II took the book had been reading: The secret world of doing nothing by Swedish sociologists Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren, to the workshop. It is an inspiring study on “what is actually happening when nothing special seems to be going on. What are the hidden significances of people´s routine lives? Even the study does not focus primarily on movement or bodily experiences I find their approach supporting the acknowledgment of embodiment (the awareness of the body and senses). It triggers (at least me) to dive more into details of experience right here and right now. 

 - I find myself often repeating sentences I have heard in other classes for example Rosalind Crisp´s “ how do you keep engaging- no one else can engage you but yourself” (I´m here using my own words…)

 - I was (am) thankful for the meetings and talks with Iris Julian who participated the workshop and was going to write about it (a nice support offered by LEAP-project). We met twice before the class, had coffee and inspiring discussions. That experience makes me think how could I in my everyday life find more supportive structures  to share experience and knowledge. To embody fully the idea of the other artists, teachers or participants being collaborators rather than competitors or critics.

 - How do I meet people with my own enthusiasm?

 - How do I define embodied knowledge in practice? Or ownership?

TO TEACH

like a dancer or a choreographer

like an artist

like a mover or a poet

like a coffee addict

like a mother

or a friend

or a movement enthusiast

like a human being

like a thinker

or the one learning 

like a very old person or a tree

like no one else or everyone

or like rain - or any weather ...