Jack Gallagher's 25 year history as a dancer and as a dance partner and Marcella Moret's wide background in the arts of theatre and dance have afforded them the chance to develope a workshop for contemporary partnering for various purposes, and in various formats: from adult couples therapeudic recreation, to children 10 and older, to aspiring proffesionals and professional dancers. Jack's individual technical approach to movement and performance Vigorous Risk is a fusion of proven methods for accessing the full freedom in movement, the maximum health centered sense of risk and the opening of new artistic pathways in content creation. From the Vigorous Risk approach, the Sustaining Creative Directions in Partnership is an natural extention.
Marcella's approach is to infuse unconventional ideas originated by immagination and virtuosity and generate tools that handle the consistendly appeared questions in her carreer as performer, dancer and dance parnter. The SCDP project is a place to research and develop forms of a healthy and rich communication and contact improvisation, under the allowance of old as well as new methodological approaches.
The method lends itself seemlessly toward the combining of bodies, skills, approaches and capabilities without needing to undo any acquired techniques or preferences.
From visualization to touch and deep sensing, participants will move into contact. Tuning into intuition, waking up the animal instincts, they will explore the multidimensional and undulating body structure, both as wise receptor and transmitter of impulses and forces.
The SCDP workshop shall facilitate the practice of exploring weight as a form of mass in direction, and a form as a supporter, in sequential fashion; Playing with multiplying the clarity of articulation within the body and the body of motion, reducing falls, meaning to increase the effortless fly through space.
Contact, communication and self organisation will be practiced with the floor, walls and partners and with the idea of "play"; Play with receiving, sharing and distributing the weight of direction.
Overview of terms:
SCDP principals and their extentions: human t ools for creative communication.
Self Creation: directing > axis > counter directing > volume > the 'other' > building the instrument
Self Management: directing > accountibility > responsibility > memory > RISK > while doing
Exchange: sensing > mutuality > generating > responding > asymetry > creating in the unknown moment > partnering
Exercise Catagories:
Passive/Active (PA):
- Horizontal (inside the Da Vinci Space)
- Expanding Horizontal
- Adding the vertical Axis
- Exchanged
- Integrated different Contact Points (CP)
Preparations/ Group work:
-Games that wake up the body to respond to original impulses.
-Practicing reactions: from impulse to idea to reaction to dialogue to history building to critical consciousness.
-Deciding together as a team, simultaniously without verbal exchange.
-From trust to idea to clarity to communication to cultivating the sense of risk.
Selfmanagement into 'Seaweed':
0. Instigation of the immagination
1. Passive Tonus / Active Sensing (residual is natural)
2. Organic Assistence / More self-management of the residual
3. Assuming and following Through
4. Following Through and Continuing further until completion
5. Continuing and Interpreting and Allowing Transferrance
6. Resisting and Maintaining
7. Continuing, Allowing and Creating
Axis Work:
STRAIGHT AXIS WORK:
- falling while maintaining the volume/axis torso, straight legs, bent legs
- using the wall as receiver and going beyond the own davinci space
- falling with a catching partner. (giver/receiver of) directed weight with straight legs, bent legs, (f, s, b)
- falling catching travelling with dependance - to the floor and back up (counter balancing with pull)
- turning axis' promenade - catching a turn - turning arms
- falling receiving transferring momentum (resistance is the begining of "lifting"). enhancing the acrobatic event
- threading through fames
FLYING AXIS WORK:
- jumping and landing
- assisting jumps and assisting landing
- catching jumps and leading to floor
Working with Repetoire:
At all times in the workshop, the partnering exchange consists of a balance between on the one side> movement generating tasks and improvisational frameworks, where the participant is free to move and access their creative freedom. And on the other side> fixed moves and existing repertoire of increasingly advanced balances, holds and actions. The Sustaining Creative Directions in Partnership workshop activates both right and left brain hemispheres, is a learner centered approach, and has at it's core the value of quality communication, the give and take, the patience and the risk, the confrontation and the laughter.