idocde meeting Stolzenhagen August 13-17, 2012

VISION

idocde  is an exchange and reflection platform through a documentation process. Teaching is the theme. The aim is developing documentation modes and habits in relation to the idocde website.

Our vision for Stolzenhagen is to meet and exchange with our peers, and to find and practice feasible methods of documentation.

We encourage you to create a pathway through the week that considers your individual goals within this frame!

GOALS FOR THE WEEK

• To create 2 finished idocs (at least one of these should be a class documentation idoc)
• to review already done idocs, and to rework them if necessary
• to find one (or more!) „buddy“ for ongoing support in documentation
• to find and comment on several inspiring idocs
• to review and finish your profile
• to be comfortable using the website

 At the heart of the schedule are dance classes every morning: to take part and to document in every possible way – to both practice hands on documentation and to publish exemplary contemporary dance classes.

Please look at the schedule and create a path that works best for you – between attending and documenting classes, meeting in small groups to experiment and practice, meeting with peers for feedback sessions and support, or unstructured time.

BEFORE YOU ARRIVE

The website will be taken offline Saturday August 11th. We will have a local version that will go online Sunday August 12th in Stolzenhagen and transferred back into the online world after Stolzenhagen.

No internet in Stolzenhagen: If you would like to bring materials that are online, make them available offline and bring them with your computer (for example profile photos, or you might have documentation videos to show...).

Due to registration procedures all key teachers need to have signed up to the website before Saturday (no email reception in Stolzi so you can’t receive the confirmation link in your email to sign up!).

Same with profile photos: We encourage all of you to use face photos as profile photos during the Stolzenhagen week – so we can connect faces to names in the real Stolzi world easier.

UPON ARRIVAL

The Stolzenhagen team will give you an introduction to its place, how it works, what you need to know on your day of arrival!

Every local group meets on the day of arrival with their mentors to go through the schedule and clarify any questions.

VEXATIONS

The idea of the performance installation „Vexations“ at Ponderosa and the idocde pilot project idea were born in conjunction! It is the opportunity to meet all other key teachers in a moving context. Vexations is a set up at the core of „transmission of dance“ and links artistic practice and education. Read more below.

TECHNICAL EQUIPMENT

While of course it is helpful and very welcome if you share your technical equipment, this is your personal choice. idocde can’t assume liability for it.

THE SCHEDULE. explanations!

link to schedule

1) local group intro with mentor: Your mentor introduces schedule, options, visions to your group. The local groups decide where and when to do this at their arrival.

2) Tutorials: These are introductions to the website: General, video/media and tips & tricks. If you plan on attending, take the earliest tutorial possible after arriving in order to avoid tutorial crowds on Monday night and Tuesday. Each tutorial can host about 20 people!

3) Walking and talking Check out the 20 minute walk around the Burgwall. More details on the schedule board on site. Gather a few people you don’t know and find out a bit more about them in a walk and talk.

4) Check in & hello: Any questions? Or even confusion? Or desire to see who else is here?  Here you can connect, ask and be curious.

5) Welcome circle: short and sweet. The one opportunity now to meet the entire group! Please join us!

6) Class 0-12:

Use the classes to practice different methods of documentation, as a starting point to discuss best practices of teaching, to learn what you want to learn as a dance educator.

All classes include 15 minutes of organizing and setting up documentation issues in the beginning and the end - make interview dates, get cameras to work, ask for help, distribute group documentation roles.

The goal is to document every class in any possible way (writing, audio, photo, video, graphics, observing...). Not only for the sake of the class, but also as a practice for yourself. We invite you to challenge yourself!

Check the schedule who teaches when, and check the idocde folder „Stolzenhagen“  for class descriptions. Slots for participation are not unlimited, you might be asked to observe and document.

7) Class documentation review groups:  On Thursday evening people who documented the same class meet in a group to make a meaningful combination of class idocs: Sharing and comparing idocs, merge suitable idocs or even erasing idocs if in the context of other idocs it does not make sense to keep yours.

8) Writing together: a space where people work on their idocs next to each other and are open to give and receive verbal support for each other.

9)  One to one: feedback sessions with a fellow key teacher. Just go to the space and see who is there for this „duet“: Share your idoc and ask for feedback and suggestions. If no-one is available in the space, make a deliberate date with someone. More detailed ideas for feedbacking you will find in the “one to one” space.

10) Experimental moving and documenting space: Please post your ideas on what you would like to try out on the wall in the experimental moving and documenting spaces, including a day and time when to do this. So check out these walls regularly and sign up for propositions right there! 

11) Harvest /dialogue: We will be sharing results & ideas that have come up during the day, and will be making plans for next day (i.e. aquiring collaborators for ideas for the next day). We decide together on Wednesday if we want to have a harvest on Thursday.

12) What is an idoc? Mentors and other interested teachers meet to discuss and narrow down guidelines (quality and nature) for idocs. The second meeting is dedicated to defining written guidelines for idocs and putting them on the idocde website.

13) IDOCDE film night:  If you would like to share a short film that is related to dance education & its  documentation, this is an opportunity. The sharing should include a talk / discussion about the film.  Your film can be taken from the idocde website or from elsewhere. If you plan on sharing something, please talk either to Eszter Gal, Iñaki Azpillaga or Charlotte Darbyshire.

14) Wikipedia dance project: Doreen Markert (from the Stolzi team) is involved in Wikipedia and would like to raise the quality of dance related information there. This can be a starting point for collaboration with idocde for interested key teachers.

15) Jam / party / offerings: This can include your local workshop “presents”, or other offerings, informal sharings such as staged discussions, readings etc. of ideas regarding dance education & documentation that took shape during the Stolzenhagen week. (no tech, no prep, informally and improvised). Or we simply hang out and have fun.

16) Local groups meetings One result of local groups seems to be that face to face support and meetings on an ongoing basis will help to ground our own practice of documenting. This is an opportunity to continue this process with your local key teachers group.

17) idoc wrap up Still need some time to finish your idocs or complete some other things for your goals? Now and here is the time!

18) Class 12 On Friday morning the UK key teachers will lead us through a warm up into a more open setting (score) to move together.

Blank spaces in the schedule: We purposely left space in the structure for anyone to initiate more events, such as classes / excerpts of your teaching, discussions etc. You can announce them on the schedule board.

Meal times: Breakfast 8-10am, Lunch 13:30-15:30, Dinner 19:30-21:30. We will be eating in two shifts. More information on site.

Your Stolzi team!

VEXATIONS. A space/sound/performance installation

The „Vexations“ by Erik Satie are among the longest compositions in music history. The score – a base line combined with a harmonisation of an atonal choral – consists of only four lines. Satie “suggests” to prepare in silence to be able to repeat the oevre 840 times. The performance durations varies between 14 and 28 hours. The aesthetic focus is on the theme of repetition, and therefore also on the question of variation and boredom.

Stephen Whittington: „The static, undramatic nature of Vexations, reinforced by repetition, gives it the character of a 'sound object' (objet sonore), while the 'flatness' of the music suggests a two- dimensional surface. The immobility which the performer is advised to adopt is the immobility of the music itself, which becomes an 'immobile' sound object to be 'viewed' by the listener. One is reminded of mystical experience of the Zen masters who describe "hearing with the eye", and "seeing with the ear."

The absence of thematic material - which is a function of memory, since thematic material must be memorable - leaves Vexations as a 'ground' with no 'figures'. The performer and the audience become the figures; the 'dramatic action' is the transformation of consciousness effected by the music.“

In our set up the music over time turns into a web in form of a playground for repetition, movement ideas, perception and interaction of bodies present in space, boredom, pleasure, curiosity – and in the end becomes a metaphor for time passing.

Satie’s suggestion to repeat the composition so often and in very slow speed in order to experience its meditative character is a challenge to the pianist as much as to the listener, physically and mentally.

This challenge is met through the fusion of the two roles – of performer and recipient – into the role of a participant. The format enables the participants to contribute to the creation and to experience it physically, mentally and emotionally.

In our frame of transmission of dance the format invites a multidimensional and multidisciplinary space to meet each other, to share, transform, reflect and just be beyond certain boundaries that we are conventionally confronted with, such as a time frame of 1-2h or the separation of "protagonist" and "participant".

We invite you to contribute with whatever you would like to share and design in the moment - and enter, stay, leave and come back to the space as you feel like.

Jan Burkhardt & Kerstin Kussmaul