Meet the dancers of Levée des conflits’ professional workshop, Pt. 2
On September 9th and 10th FringeArts and Drexel University’s Westphal College will present Levée des conflits, a dance in the round from world-renowned choreographer and dancer Boris Charmatz, as part of the 2016 Fringe Festival. Beginning September 7th, Westphal is hosting a series of lectures and workshops—professional and community—around the performances as part of a series dubbed Boris Charmatz: Dancing Dialogues,capped off with an informal performance from the professional workshop of 24 local dance artists. In anticipation, Dancing Dialogues has been profiling each participant and we’ll sharing their reflections on their craft here. (Pt.1 here)
Loren Groenendaal
“The practice of being present in a meditation practice applied to movement is really amazing. But then it’s also not an attachment practice. It’s like here’s myself and I’m putting it out there but immediately adapting to another, and immediately being yourself. Like always renewing yourself in another and being bold enough to put something out there but not being too attached to the outcome. That’s been a huge life lesson that I’ve gotten back from contact improv. Dancing or teaching – putting out an idea in the world, moving in the body, and don’t be attached to the outcome.”
Beau Hancock
“Both sides [audience and dancers] are hampered. To be an observer, you are divorced from the lived experience of the dance, which is such a beautiful understanding of what’s inside the work. Although there is empathic kinesthetic understanding of having a body, of taking in sensory information when watching a performer. You feel it in your bones. You feel a leap across the stage in your pelvis. And for the performers, they’re also missing the beauty of the macro-vision of the work. An audience gets to swim in the fullness of the dance.”
Gabrielle Revlock
“A performance is like a portal to this other world. And it feels like a real gift to be able to enter into this other world, entering this other self. I think in a lot of my performances, I’m playing some version of myself. It’s like we have all these different sides of ourselves, it’s all in there but maybe there’s one dominant side that people are seeing in daily life. To turn that into a different side and a performance is really satisfying to me. I really wish that everyone could have the opportunity to perform and to know themselves in this different way.”
Esther Baker-Tarpaga
“In a theater I don’t like being held captive in a seat. I currently myself am performing in smaller, intimate spaces where I can be closer to the audience or I can bring in materials such as paint, drinks, flowers, fire, etc. This is allowed in more in performance art and interdisciplinary spaces or outside, where audience members can move around, get a drink, interact, or leave. It’s very multidisciplinary. I love dance, I love being a dancer and in the training of dance, dancers learn collaboration through listening deeply in their bodies and learning to move together. I also like to work with people who have not been “trained” as dancers or they come from different training modalities. I like having a multiplicity of ideas and backgrounds coming together, that really interests me.”
Nicole Bindler
“When I’m in my Body-Mind Centering training in Germany, we do Authentic Movement twice a week as a way of synthesizing and integrating the work we’re doing. And about half the time––even though I have my eyes closed––I wander out of the circle. I just crawl out of the room. And people laugh and say ‘there goes Nicole, leaving the room again’. I wonder politically, spatially, and emotionally: what are the frameworks, norms or things that we take for granted? Can we subvert these assumptions and look at it in a different way? When I enter a space or context what excites me at first glance, is noticing the frameworks and thinking about how we can push the boundaries.”
Katherine Kiefer Stark
“When I’m in someone else’s work I think it’s my job to listen a lot to what they’re trying to do and not just to what they’re saying. I love watching how they do their movement. And then it’s interesting if they want me to be them. Or if they want me to be a different version of them. I like feeling parts of myself that I wouldn’t find if I was just making all of the movement myself. It’s really interesting to make something I wouldn’t make myself.”