Meditation, Movement and Space:  Improvising from the Inside Out.

 

We begin with the powerful tools of expressive movement: stillness, silence and space. From that foundation, we investigate the contrast between the empty space and the qualities that our activities project onto it as we dance, act, and tell stories.     Our improvisation practice works with six energies: space, time, kinesthetic, relationship, image, and story.  These energies and the dynamics that arise from their interplay inform the choices we make as improvisers - our entrances, exits; beginning, middle, and end.     How can we be ourselves in the moment and embody what we want to communicate? How does composition interact with our awareness of the shifting ground of improvisation?     We will practice with forms which define and sharpen our relationship to space and to each other:  solos, duets, trios, and group work in sound, movement, and text.  Our work focuses on being and doing, exploring our natural strengths, doubts, attractions, and inhibitions.     I think of improvisation as fieldwork, an open laboratory for expressive communication; a heightened awareness that develops and shifts with natural grace.

The workshop will culminate in a showing on  Friday, Sept, 10, where we will dance some of the scores that we have worked on for an audience.

 

Biography Steve Clorfeine

Original performance, developed through improvisation, has been the foundation of my 35 years as a performer, director, and teacher. I studied improvisation with Barbara Dilley, one of the early members of Merce Cunningham’s company. At the same time, I studied writing and poetics with Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Ted Berrigan and a host of New York and California writers gathered at The Naropa Institute.While performing improvised work, I met Meredith Monk and became a member of her company for 12 years, performing and teaching in the U.S. and Europe. At the same time I joined Ping Chong’s Fiji Company, also performing and teaching in Europe and the U.S. From 1977 on, I’ve created my own work, using physical theater as a base for introducing text, film, and characters. Collaborations include musicians Jerry Granelli, Steve Gorn, and Jay Clayton; actors/dancers Lanny Harrison, Arawana Hayashi, Brenda Bufalino, Wendell Beavers.

In theater and storytelling workshops, I begin with sound and movement exercises aimed at accessing each person’s storehouse of imagination. Movement and sound call up memory in surprising, often provocative ways, that cannot be “thought out.” The exercises allow images, feelings, and their expression to arise in the context of mind-body relationship. From that place, we can more fully enter the world of embodied memory and expression, and begin to tell our stories.

I’ve been a student of meditation for the past 40 years, mainly in the Tibetan Buddhist and Shambhala traditions. As a member of the Shambhala community and the formative Naropa University community, my practice has included formal training in the Vajrayana path of Tibetan tradition, in the Shambhala teachings and practices associated with it, and in the traditional arts and contemplative arts practices, particularly contemplative movement, T’ai Chi, theater and writing. I’ve been trained as a meditation instructor, as a director of Shambhala Training, and as a contemplative arts practice director. In teaching arts based courses and workshops since 1973, I’ve incorporated a contemplative approach, often including sitting and walking meditation practice and drawing on my studies in T’ai Chi and 'dharma art' principles on perception and mindfulness-awareness. Through the forms of improvisation and 'deep play' I’ve been able to present techniques that draw people closer to their creative strengths and awaken their healthy resistances.

Fee: 150 EUR

schwelle7 members: 100 EUR

  

registration:

 

 SLEEPING: We can host workshop participants in our Guestrooms or in special sleeping cocoons in the studio. Prices start at 10 EUR a night per person.