Workshops with iterations

EXCUSES FOR GATHERING

As a dance educator I have been also facilitating dance laboratories connecting artists in that process. I’m interested in the meeting point between theory and practice, blurring the boundaries between the classroom and dance studio. By so doing, I intend to reflect on co-imagination, collaboration practices (from everyday life to dance practices).

In this meetings, we ask participants to explore case study, and object, a word, through different means (from histories, interviews, testimonials, field work, memoir, documentary and journalist documents, to embodied experiments that can be used to inform creative material) in order to create a performance. We thoroughly think on the body-subject as an open form, an active becoming, as both subject and object simultaneously.

Through texts, video excerpts, and group discussion, supplemented by short reading assignments, class participants will encounter writers and artists who experiment by inserting themselves into their own work. Our research will focus on the meeting point of texts and body, shifting between text- based, field work and movement-based exercises to approach new modes of analysis and expression. To this end, each meeting will include discussions, physical improvisation, body exploration and generative performance assignments that consider performance to be a form of research. Our last meetings will focus more heavily on creative/artistic responses, giving participants the opportunity to develop a final project in the medium of their choice.

Participants with any level of writing and performance experience are welcome. The course is designed for an interdisciplinary group, representative of a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.

Since this project started in 2015, we have been gathering students and professionals, dancers, performers, artists from different mediums, around Latin America, EEUU and Europe, connecting their practices and experiences, creating new process in this encounters.

Dance and memory

April 22 to may 4. 2016 .Lima, Perú. Facilitators: Vanessa Vargas/Ana Elena Brito.

"El viaje" is the result of the workshop "Dance and urban memory", which was held in the Department of Dance Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Perú, taught by Vanessa Vargas and Ana Elena Brito, Venezuelan contemporary dancers and teachers who live in Lima and New York, respectively, developing their artistic practice. This workshop was conducted with the support of both the Department of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University and the department of dance of the the Dance School of Performing Arts of the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Perú, especially Luis Peirano Falconi, Dean of the Faculty of Performing Arts, Mirella Carbone Dagnino, Coordinator of the Specialty of Dance and Director of the School of Contemporary Dance, and all the teachers and students who took part in this project.

Mapping the City

Sunday, August 6, 2017 . Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, New York. Facilitators: Vanessa Vargas/Nelesi Rodriguez

Our bodies help us recognize, understand, navigate, and even create the urban space: the blue dot in Google Maps, traces of bodies in space that provide us with clues for our own movement, metaphors we use to talk about the city and its systems, and even measurement units. At the same time, cities can have a particularly interesting effect in bodies’ self-awareness and their interactions with the environment, other bodies, and themselves: think sidewalks, elevators, benches in public spaces, but also workspaces, supermarkets, and spaces for prayer and meditation.

Since then, this workshops has been iterations in different in different countries and cultual spaces, such as Galpona face, Buenos Aires (2018) and Abrons Arts Center, NYC (2019).

The Body In Exile

August 26 through Sept 14, 2018| Abrons Arts Center| New York.

The School Of Making and Thinking in conjunction with Abrons Arts Center

In this worskhop, participants explore migratory practices and experiences through different means (from histories, interviews, testimonials, field work, memoir, documentary and journalist documents, to embodied experiments that can be used to inform creative material, in order to create a performance). We will thoroughly think on the body-subject as an open form, an active becoming, a migratory body, at a time both subject and object.

Through texts, video excerpts, and group discussion, supplemented by short reading assignments, class participants will encounter writers and artists who experiment inserting themselves into their own work. Our investigations will focus on the meeting point of texts and body, shifting between text- based, field work and movement-based exercises to approach new modes of analysis and expression. To this end, each class will include discussions, physical improvisation, body exploration and generative performance assignments that consider performance to be a form of research. Our last meetings will focus more heavily on creative/artistic responses, giving participants the opportunity to develop a final project in the medium of their choice. Participants with any level of writing and performance experience are welcome. The course is designed for an interdisciplinary group, representative of a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.