P.O.R.C.H. Summerschool/Training module June 2-June 30, 2012
Attention: only one spot left!
For professional level dancers, improvisers, movement artists, and performers who are available to be in a physical discourse engaging contemporary forms of dance, physical performance and training. The professional training module is the longest and the most physically demanding of the 3 modules.
The Training Module is a collaboration with Kathleen Hermesdorfs Alternative Conservatory from San Francisco.
This module provokes discussions and questions around life practice and embodiment, motion and performance. We create direct action. We affect the contemporary dance field around us and you will be taking part in the shaping of art in contemporary culture as well, by your participation.
P.O.R.C.H./AC demands an eclectic mind to be available for all aspects of movement practices and tracking an intimate study of the body in motion and performance. It is an intensive survey and exploration of the dance body as informer and educator. In the process of finding your own work, we lead people directly to a space, a body of people, the tools and/ or the best medium that supports your artistic processes. In these 4 weeks, we are also providing an educational container for liminal people questioning their identity as artists/performers/teachers/improvisers or choreographers. The practices are grounded in the body and it's discourses, wether it is survival/ need/ life practice or theoretical concerns around embodiment.
P.O.R.C.H./AC honors the wisdom of experience in our intergenerational mentor program and inspires participants to learn communally and independently. Our international program and networking opportunities will give you many opportunities to discover new friendships, collaborations and a look into the contemporary art scene of Berlin.
Each week, a new guest teacher will be leading the afternoon sessions exploring with us, a broad range of how we can experience the contemporary body in motion and in art making today. If you are interested in a deep and intensive training we are moving, dancing, partnering and improvising 6-10 hours daily with evening Contact Jams, gardening, discussions and countryside walks in between. Each individual is expected to work at their full potential and understand their limits.
Curriculum:
Contemporary Release Techniques/ Somatics/ Contact Improvisation/Spontaneous Composition/Alignment/ Authentic Movement/ Voice /Klein Technique/Contemplative Practice/Image Making/Books into Moving / Partnering/Critical/ Yoga/Body Mind Centering/ Theory/Bodywork/States & Frequencies/Energy work/ Durational & Art Installations/Land/Work/Play/Site specific/ Theatrical Tasks & Games/Improvisation as a life tool/ Awareness of Social Manifestations/Partnering/Creative Process/Performance Actions/ Foreign Dialogues in Dance Theory/Networking/International Histories/ Understanding and Questioning Pedagogy /Diverging and Developing Feedback Dialogues/
The Training module is collaboratively created and curated by Stephanie Maher (Ponderosa) & Kathleen Hermesdorf (La Alternativa). The Alternative Conservatory (AC) and P.O.R.C.H. Combine and channel their forces into an immersive and intensive month. As co-teachers, conspirators, and curators, the directors offer within this container, a training ground for the serious practitioner. The focus is on the body and contemporary movement forms, as well as the individual co-existing with others and in nature. The work is a bridge between classic and contemporary modalities and we meet at the intersection between the precision of honed movement techniques and refined technology, and the freedom of improvisational forms and challenging/stimulating/natural spaces.
2012 Faculty
Kathleen Hermesdorf, Stephanie Maher, Hanna Hegenscheidt, Meg Stuart, Maria Francesca Scaroni, Peter Pleyer, Nina Martin, Sandra Wieser
Structure
June 2 PORCH ARRIVAL
June 4-8: S.Maher & K.Hermesdorf & Hanna Hegenscheidt
June 11-15: S.Maher & K.Hermesdorf & Meg Stuart
June 15-17: Nina Martin (open to guests)
June 18-22: S.Maher & K.Hermesdorf & Maria F. Scaroni
June 25-29 S.Maher & K.Hermesdorf & Peter Pleyer
Daily schedule, Monday-Friday
Please check our calendar for details!
Creative process GUEST classes:
Our guests teachers have some special requirements for the work they will be offering. We will have a clear working process for each class. If you are unsure if, from the experience you bring, you have the required skills for a particular guest workshop, we will discuss this with you and, if necessary, tailor a suitable alternative for you during a visiting guest workshop. In bringing in the Guest Workshops we allow a way to dialogue and get new input from outside visitors. Be prepared to deal with spontaneous events during our 4 week training program.
The end of our 4 weeks links to the beginning of a ConTango week. We prepare everyone for the various shifts: in being mindful, in listening, in various technical forms and in social forms!
Hanna Hegenscheidt guest workshop description coming soon!
Meg Stuart guest workshop description coming soon!
Maria Franscesca Scaroni
contemporary body, zeitgenösissche körper {body_time_space}
The physical body is trained to modulate energy through dynamic meditations and chi cultivation practices, looking at the body-entity as very charged matter, able to strategize itself, shifting constantly between being a shape, an image, an object, an animal, a system. Working with and in space, time and presence, each body will be engaged and challenged in a question-making process concerning improvisation and its tools. How to sustain an improvised thought or action? How is such action transposed into the space? How do we engage composition?
Peter Pleyer guest workshop description coming soon!
Sandra Wieser
Experimental lab
Experimental labs exploring different approaches and practices to theoretical and practical knowledge.
There are many ways to communicate and many ways to learn. The body contains knowledge which books do not capture and vice versa. I would like to explore how it is possible to create and make use of mutual interaction between the two kinds of knowledge.Books and Bodies.
This lab should allow students, while working physically, to experiment with different types of writing and reading practices. Books or documents would be taken into the studios, read collectively or individually, discussed and shared. I would like to recycle, revisit and reinterpret theoretical knowledge, to be influenced and inspired rather than be overwhelmed by it.
Frequency: 2h-3h every two days (mo-we-fr or tu-th-sa) or only 2h-3h twice a week (mo+we or tu+th)
Price for P.O.R.C.H Training Module: 900 €, for Food and housing add 750€ .
*We highly recommend committing to all three P.O.R.C.H. Modules for an expansive range of body based techniques and compositional forms, to enliven your work as a performer, improviser or teacher.
PORCH collaborates with Alternative Conservatory for Module 1 via Kathleen Hermesdorf. She has been a part of Ponderosa & PORCH since their inceptions. Alternative Conservatory is a modular, mobile, immersive & intensive international training & meeting ground in dance & related forms. It is the educational aspect of la ALTERNATIVA, an apparatus for deeply integrated dance & music directed by Hermesdorf with Albert Mathias, based in San Francisco at KUNST-STOFF arts & offering intensives, workshops & encounters in SF, the US, Europe & Mexico.
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