Workshops / Intensives (Summer 2024)

Forthcoming...

SUMMER INTENSIVE With Charlie Morrissey - August 17th-18th (Tues-Weds), 11-5pm, Wytham Village Hall

Contact improvisation
...As if it hadn’t been invented yet

This workshop explores how the body experiences movement: in relation to gravity, to the ground, to the space and to other bodies. Our exploration and experience will then inform and instruct our ability to fully inhabit our dancing.

We will work solo and with a partner or partners, tuning our attention to listen to our own movement and the movement of others. This active listening will enable us to take an embodied ride on the momentum that is generated by two bodies moving together in space.

The workshop is called Contact Improvisation – As if it hadn’t been invented yet - because I’m interested in what happens when we don’t name something or have an idea of what it is before we start – and Contact Improvisation seems to me to lends itself to this idea, because it is in a constant process of being invented - so in this workshop we will be inventors.

Anatomical imagery will be used to give a deeper sense of the internal structures that support our movement. Different exercises will explore sensation and the senses, falling, flying, rolling, pouring, folding, unfolding, extension, connection and integration, giving and receiving weight, moving/being moved, action and reaction, following and leading, speed and stillness, force and acquiescence.

Time will be given for the exercises to lead into extended dancing and improvisation so that we can see how they inform and provide a base, inspiration and toolkit for dancing.

The workshop asks what happens when we allow ourselves to be explorers – with an intention to step out into unknown territory with all the attention, openness, alertness and anticipation that the act of exploration implies.

The workshop is for all those with movement experience and an ongoing curiosity about movement.

Bio:

Charlie Morrissey is a performer, teacher, director and researcher. He has been working in the UK and in many other countries around the world for 20 years. He creates large and small-scale site-specific and theatre and gallery based performance work in diverse contexts working with set and improvised materials. His teaching is informed by ongoing and long-term collaborative working relationships with Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Scott Smith, Kirstie Simson, K.J.Holmes and many others. Charlie is part of the trio Moving Men with Jean-Hughes Miredin and Adrian Russi who have been teaching and performing together across Europe since 2024. He co-organises a group called Movement 12 in Brighton – a group of dance artists who curate an international professional development programme for dance artists. Find out more about them at www.movement12.org. Charlie is an Associate Artist of South East Dance. You can find out more on his website: www.charliemorrissey.com.

Venue for workshop

Wytham Village Hall, Wytham (3 miles from Oxford). Parking is available on site. See www.wytham-village-hall.org.uk for more details.

Cost:

£25 (£20 concessions)

NB: To book for the workshop, please contact Miranda Laurence - e-mail: mlaurence@oxford.gov.uk or tel: 01865 252820