Thinking Out Loud – the Study Group launches

Dancemakers and The Dance Current invite you to 

Thinking Out Loud – the Study Group, launching at 6:30pm, Tuesday September 29 at the Dancemakers’ Centre for Creation with an introductory meeting and discussion of Paulo Freire's The Act of Study. (see below for information on getting the article)

Thinking Out Loud responds to our desire to read and talk together. To create a space in Toronto for a meeting between contemporary dance and contemporary thinking in an open, casual and critically supportive environment. An environment that includes snacks and beverages of varying types.

The mostly monthly meetings will each introduce a topic through a close reading of one or two articles and their relation to a specific artist and their practice. Articles will be announced a month before and available online or at Dancemakers.

We encourage any and all to join us, regardless of experience level or background. We like people from other fields (art, social sciences etc…) and we know that for many people this could be a very new thing. We will try to keep all of this in mind. All we ask for is a curiosity and willingness to read and participate.

Please join us on the 29^th to learn more.
And if you're coming- can you let us know? So we can have the right number of cookies?

If you are interested but unable to come on the 29^th – send me an email and I’ll keep you in the loop.

The full selection of topics and articles is still in development - and participant input will be important.

Information on the article for the 29^th below,

Hope to hear from you soon!

Jacob Zimmer, Dancemakers
and Megan Andrews, The Dance Current

Paulo Freire's The Act of Study from:
Freire, Paulo. The politics of education : culture, power, and liberation. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1985.

Hard copies will be available at the Dancemakers office after Thursday September 17^th 

The book is also at the Toronto Reference Library -

and available online here* – unfortunately you can’t print it.

*signing up for an a.aaaarg.org is required to get the pdf  - and is a very good idea anyways - we may continue to use it as a way of sharing texts - and there are lots of great texts there

Read Full Post...

Open classes start soon

Open company classes begin 10am Monday September 28 with Artistic Director Michael Trent - for the full fall schedule, go here. Read Full Post...

Study group part 2

Following up on the Dancemakers study group (original call for interest)

On some technical things: The consensus seems to be for something once a month – which seems right. Mostly likely a weekday evening.

On a broader level I’d like to get some ideas of what areas people might be interested in studying.

While dance will be the frame for the group, I would like it to be a interdisciplinary approach to that. Not only between disciplines of art practice, but also of fields outside of art-making (social sciences etc…)

Some things I’ve thought of - they are broad and somewhat theoretical, please feel free to comment on areas of focus too – and really – I want this to be lead by the curiosities of the group, so please add your own.

The nature of “performance” – including performance studies and gender theory background. The first chapter of Diana Taylor’s book for example.

Some things about words we (especially at Dancemakers use): Contemporary (what do we mean? what do others mean?) Collaborative (how, why)

Aesthetics (how people talk, think about aesthetics) – Dave Hickey’s Invisible Dragon, a book on beauty in art comes to mind.

Any the of these subjects could be a year in themselves, but I imagine a series of shorted readings, articles and chapters rather than books.

Ancillary field trips could also be planned…

thoughts?

also, please send this on to anyone else might be interested. Read Full Post...

Conversation = collaboration

I've been reading and thinking about collaboration for a long time, and recently have been interested in how other areas articulate aspects of collaboration, specifically people who organize meetings and facilitate conversations.

While sometimes I am nervous about a level of corporate speak, or things wander to far into "fuzzy warm feeling places" for my taste, often there is a refreshing practicality and a removal of some of the mysticism ("the unspeakable creative force") that some in the arts can bring to the discussion.

And today this appeared in my feed:
"guidelines for dialogue" from facilitator Judy Brown by way of the Artful Manager:

• Speak from the heart and the moment, and from your own experience; listen from the community, from the collective;
• Listen without thinking about responding;
• Listen for information, not confirmation;
• Begin thinking in terms of "I wonder..." or "Where I am on this issue now is...;"
• Allow for silence; it may mean people are thinking, considering;
• Suspend assumptions and consider alternatives ones that might be just as useful;
• Assume that the ideas and observations of others come from a desire to contribute;
• Expect that ideas build upon each other even if they don't link logically one to the other;
• Remember that difference of opinion can be helpful, because it sharpens our understanding;
• Move away from conclusions and toward observations; notice what you are noticing, and what meaning you are making of it;
• Sometimes in communication, less is better, and slowly is fine.

from Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow's Workplace, essay entitled ''Dialogue: Capacities and Stories" by Judy Brown.

And Misha starts today – which is very exciting and a pretty great way to think about how people work together. Read Full Post...

On how not to not improvise.

The thing about Misha Gloubermans improv workshops is that they seem to get around so many problems with improvisation.

In the Viewpoints workshop Michael and I ran last year, we had a lot of discussions about some of the common traps of group improv – the slow build to big final climax, the dominance of rhythm, the difficulty of following or coming to agreement about complex things, trying (unsuccessfully or too hard) to avoid personal habits. I think a lot about Aimée Dawn Robinson asking for "more middle" in improv.

In Misha's workshops (I took one last year at Array Music) we make noise. Mostly with our mouths. The noises are not expert noises (these are not "voice" or "how to make better noises" workshops) they are noises anyone can make. Misha says this is so that there is no need for expertise in an instrument or form.

He also (rightly I think) says that many times, when we are learning "improvisation" we are actually learning the form (eg Viewpoints teaches ways of making performance) and with the noises we are working on improvisation - on how we make choices, when we step forward, when we follow, how a group comes (or doesn't) to togetherness and how it moves apart.

And in the apparent absurdity of making all these noises and going through the forms Misha lays out, I learned some very real and useful things about improvisation and performance. And not only in the "understanding in my head" way of learning, but also the "we actually did that" way.

After the workshop, which was attended by mostly people who don't perform, I began wondering about one of these workshops at Dancemakers. About what the performers and our guests could learn, and what would it be like if it was a week of afternoons.

Luckily Misha and Michael joined in that wondering, and so now we're a week and a bit from it happening.

And I'm really looking forward to it. Hope to see some of you there.

Click here for details and registration.

And in these places for videos of previous Terrible Noises for Beautiful People editions:

Cobra Edition
Nuit Blanche Edition
Birthday Party Edition

Which might be nothing like the Dancemakers one - but are good watching. Read Full Post...

I'm going to do some workshops in Europe this summer and will try to blog from there - but I also thought I'd put up some links before hand.

Stop 1- Vienna
Impulstanz - major festival with great training component. I've applied to take a Coaching Project on creative writing and dance with Jonathan Burrows (and more) and Adrian Heathfield.

Stop 2- Frankfurt
Tanzlabor_21 - International Summer Lab - Taking a workshop with Hooman Sharifi (more) and Bojana Kunst.

See also:
Maska - an arts organization in Slovenia that has a very compelling mix of production, seminars and publication. Bojana Kunst, one of the workshop co-leaders in Frankfurt is a frequent collaborator.
Unbound - an online store for books, dvds, and limited editions. All in pounds, but appear to ship to Canada. Read Full Post...