WORKSHOPS & COURSES
I have been teaching since I began to perform professionally in the mid 70’s. I am dedicated to how research plays a major role in how one can approach their lifestyle and their work as an artist; teaching alongside ones professional practice, is one and the same process. My pedagogy promotes that I listen using my recourses spontaneously in guidance to what each individual person in the workshop reveals.
I have had the possibility to create material for my workshops out of a wide range of practices in the performance arts. I have not formulated my teaching material into a frozen body of knowledge because I do not believe that the accumulation of knowledge is how one becomes a teacher. I believe that It is out of my practice and the practice I witness with a student that all knowledge becomes clarified in the lessons I am leading.
Now in my 70’s, I have been teaching workshops internationally and in University systems for over 40 years. Alongside my studies in music, dance, theatre and film, I am connected to new technology, physical sciences and economic and political new sciences. I use language and theories that are based within these sciences in order to clarify areas of art practice especially when executed in real time and within our ever evolving context to be professional artists.
The professional field of the arts has altered drastically in comparison to when I began my practice in the mid 70’s. I encourage young artists to devise strategies that allow for them to sustain the production of their work, with creativity and research involved, and yet survive.
Workshops
Multidisciplinary Workshop
For musicians / actors / singers / dancers / text artists / performance artist
I have worked in acoustic and electronic music from various genres; jazz, traditional, modern and punk. I have worked in theatre from various genres; acting for play text, musical theatre, mime and modern dance in companies, troupes, as a soloist and ensembles.
I have included text, movement and music in my performances since the 70’s with an ear on how this can integrate musically as well as produce an objectified meaning of events. I have included the use of object in relationship to figure since my early work in Italy in the 80’s.
These experiences are what I use to distinguish a Music Theater platform for interdisciplinary real time performances. I accept artists without prejudice concerning technical skills or aesthetic boundaries.
I guide performers through physical exercises that highlight how the eyes and ears affect movement choices. I set up exercises for the musicians, text artists and vocalist during the physical work to challenge their ability to create “a band” while being aware that space is shifting with bodies involved. Musicians and performers can choose to change roles in these exercises at any given time.
I extend the workshop towards improvisation sessions by setting a fictional front in the studio space and then declare this as a platform to choose pause, flow or exit. I highlight how the limit of these three choices can already provide the frame for a composition to take place, and that misunderstanding, coincidence, real time, interactivity, messiness, emotions, intuition, impulse and inspiration are basic in a creative process.
These raw materials are integrated with the combined fact that everyone in the workshop group can make a choice. The improvisation sessions are given a delegated time frame with an option for the workshop group to shift, drop or lift the space at will. The practice of an individuals development of presence is a critical process in the workshop be it in music, text, movement, figure-object or vocals.
I have created games to set an example for building and dropping the tension in the music theatre space by way of an individuals presence with an emphasis on states of mind in performance, such as vulnerability and expressionism.
Choice is introduced to the workshop group as a composition reality but also how it allows for individuals to elect to participate in the performative or as a viewer and yet remain involved in the process.
The aim is to gather the workshop group to recognise that, in a creative composition process, time is passing in different perceived speeds and that space is shifting in several dimensions at once. This awake fullness can promote individual performance presence, composition alertness and an appetite for creativity.
Every day we will practice and engage with all of the aspects available to us in t music theater platform. I will centre on one area of study in lectures, practice, feedback and reflection each day; sonic – tension – body / music – body – text / music – object – figure
Improvisation/ Composition for dancers
For dancers and movement artist
I guide the dancers through physical exercises that highlight how the eyes and ears affect movement choice. The workshop extends towards improvisation sessions setting a fictional front in the studio space and then declaring this as a platform to choose pause, flow or exit. This platform highlights how the limit of these three choices can already provide the frame for a composition to take place, and that misunderstanding, coincidence, live time, interactivity, messiness, emotions, intuition and inspiration are basic materials in a creative process.
These raw materials are integrated with the combined fact that everyone in the workshop group can make a choice. The improvisation sessions are given a delegated time frame with an option for the workshop group to shift, drop or lift the space at will. This shifting, dropping and lifting of the performance space places each individual in a position where they need to be to be fully awake or they will loose the thread of the creative composition activity in play.
Choice is introduced to the workshop group as a composition reality but also as a means for individuals to elect to participate in the performative or as a viewer and yet remain involved in the process. The aim is to gather the workshop group to recognise that in a creative composition process, time is passing at different perceived speeds and that space is shifting in several dimensions at once. This awake fullness promotes individual performance presence and composition alertness.
Body Body Body Classes
(Movement studies within the workshops or as individual classes)
I cover materials I have researched about “why” we learn to walk and why we forget to keep learning to walk. In my world of theatre, music and dance, the body is the glue that brings all time arts together reminding us that the joy of moving is based in how we continue to be curious about the simple actions we do day to day.
“Dance is fancy walking”
We will begin the work using simple movement tasks that wake up our awareness.
“Tell the brain to tell the mind to shut up ……… body obey me”
The aim is to rekindle a curiosity for not just what or how you are discovering movement, but rather question what motivates you to move and then “Why” do you choose to go one direction or another in any given creative situation.
“80% of the people on the planet forget that they have a body once they reach adulthood. Before that, it was the first thing we remembered as we woke in the morning glee full and proud that we learned to step out of our beds. We remember we have a body, we are reminded we have a body, we take detours in order to re-discover daily we have a body”
I will increase the work I do in my interdisciplinary workshop about how the eyes and ears are a basic part of our physicality, that there is a differences in how we look, watch or see. In how we hear or listen. I will integrate the question; is the wall coming towards us or are we are going towards the wall?
“Our agility with spacial orientation it is a gift in creative movement. The chemical rush we receive to the brain enhances our perception of “Body Body Body”.
Annual Amsterdam workshops
Multidisciplinary workshops on going in Amsterdam Attic studio Last Sunday of the month 11:00-18:00
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