Workshops
"CONTACT AND THE UNDERSCORE: Embodiment and Collaboration"
com/with NANCY STARK SMITH
e /and MIKE VARGAS (música/music)
21 - 23 Junho/June 2013
Nancy and dancers in a Helsinki, Finland, Underscore, 2007.
photo © Raisa Kyllikki Ranta
Workshop concebido para actualizar e aperfeiçoar o estudo e a prática do Contacto-Improvisação (CI) através do trabalho do Underscore, uma longa partitura dirigida ao jamming/contacto/improvisação/composição, que Nancy tem vindo a desenvolver desde 1990 (descrição mais detalhada em baixo, em inglês).
Só, em contacto, em grupo, em silêncio e com música – estudaremos mudanças de estado ao nível físico e energético, composição "natural", presença e relação.
A nossa prática vai focalizar-se no treino físico e no CI, uma prática de escuta detalhada, discussão e várias estruturas de improvisação. O workshop culminará numa explicação detalhada e na prática do próprio Underscore.
Mike Vargas, compositor, improvisador e colaborador de longa data de NSS, contribuirá com a sua música e os seus pontos de vista.
É necessária experiência prévia no Contacto-Improvisação.
Este workshop será dado em inglês.
A workshop designed to refresh and refine our study and practice of Contact and Improvisation through working with the Underscore, a long score for jamming/contact/improvisation/composition that Nancy has been developing since 1990. (See full description of Underscore below.)
Alone, in contact, in groups, in silence and with live music—we'll study physical and energetic changes of state, natural composition, presence, and relationship. Our practice will focus on physical training in CI, detailed listening practice, discussion, and various improvisational structures. The workshop will culminate in a detailed talk-through and practice of the Underscore itself.
Nancy's longtime collaborator, composer/improviser Mike Vargas will contribute his music and his point of view.
Some previous experience in the dance form contact improvisation is required.
The workshop will be held in English.
DATAS | Dates
Workshop
21 e 22 Junho: 10h -18h (com 1h30 de pausa p/ almoço)
21 and 22 June: 10–6 pm (with 1.5 hr lunch break )
Workshop/ Underscore
22 Junho: 19h-21h - Conversa Underscore
22 June: 7– 9 pm - Underscore talk-through
23 Junho
12h-13h – Conversa com Isabel Valverde sobre a sua investigação em dança-tecnologia no Underscore;
14h-18h- Prática Underscore
23 June
12-1 pm - Talk with Isabel Valverde about her dance-technology research in the U'score)
INSCRIÇÕES | Inscriptions
Enviar email para forumdanca@forumdanca.pt com os seguintes dados: nome, telemóvel e biografia.
Send email to forumdanca@forumdanca.pt with name, mobile phone and bio.
PAGAMENTO| Payment
Preço| Price: 100€ (até 22 Abril/ until 22nd April)
130 € (após 23 Abril / after 23rd April)
Desistências/ Reembolsos:
Reembolso total será feito para desistências comunicadas até dia 31 de Maio.
Reembolso de 50% feito para desistências comunicadas entre os dias 1 e 20 Junho.
Não são feitos reembolsos a partir de 21 Junho (inclusivé), nem durante o workshop.
BIOGRAFIAS | Biographys
Nancy Stark Smith, Moscow, 2010.
photo © Alfiya Rakhmanova
Nancy Stark Smith first trained as an athlete and gymnast, leading her to study and perform modern and postmodern dance in the early 1970s, greatly influenced by the Judson Dance Theater breakthroughs of the 1960s in New York City. Nancy danced in the first performances of contact improvisation in 1972 with Steve Paxton and others, and since then has been central to its development as dancer, teacher, performer, writer/publisher, and organizer. She travels extensively throughout the world teaching and performing contact and other improvised dance work with many favorite dance partners and performance makers including Ray Chung, Julyen Hamilton, Andrew Harwood, Peter Bingham, Karen Nelson, and musician Mike Vargas. She co-founded Contact Quarterly, an international dance journal, in 1975, which she continues to edit, produce, and publish along with other dance literature.
Nancy's work and writings are featured in the books, Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, and Composing While Dancing: An Improviser's Companion. Her first book, Caught Falling: The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas, came out in 2008. She lives in western Massachusetts. www.nancystarksmith.com
Mike Vargas at ECITE in Tallinn, Estonia.
photo © Thomas Haentzschel
Mike Vargas began playing music in 1959. His curiosity and love of collaboration have led him through many contexts and cultures, from cocktail lounges in Indonesia to New York's Lower East Side, from cancer wards to the Kennedy Center. He started specializing in music for dance in 1978. He works as a freelance composer across the USA and internationally performing, teaching, recording, and improvising. For the past 13 years, he has been working around the world with Nancy Stark Smith. He has released 9 CDs of his music and is currently on the faculty in the dance department at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. www.mikevargas.net
UNDERSCORE
a talk and a practice
The Underscore is a long jamming/contact/improvisation/composition score that Nancy has been developing since the early 1990s as a framework for dance improvisation research. It guides dancers through a series of "changing states"—from solo relaxation and sensitizing to gravity and support, through group circulation and interaction, contact improvisation (CI) engagements, opening out to full group improvisation, and back to rest and reflection.
The Underscore is a vehicle for integrating CI into a broader arena of improvisational practice, for developing greater freedom dancing in spherical space, and for integrating kinesthetic and compositional concerns while improvising.
The four hours will include periods of small, quiet internal activity and other times of higher energy and interactive dancing. The 20+ phases of the score—each with a name and a graphic symbol—create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame, they are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships—with themselves, each other, the group, the music, and the environment.
The Underscore talk (required for participation in the practice) will give some background and outline the structure in detail, to be followed the next day by the physical practice itself, which will include periods of silence and periods of live music improvised/composed by Mike Vargas.
Este workshop é organizado em colaboração com Isabel Valverde.
This workshop is organized in collaboration with Isabel Valverde.