Context: Since around 2009, I’ve been working with and through a practice I bluntly call nonstopping. It started as an active strategy against creative paralysis, and eventually became a practice of self-amplification and articulation in relation to conditions of the continuous present. Lately, I find the term itself, nonstopping, problematic. In the midst of change at an exponential speed, I think most people just want to slow down, rest, experience sensation, and notice details. But somehow I feel if things are moving faster than we can track, I want to find ways to be more aware and present in that ongoing change. I keep on keeping on with nonstopping because it understands the dance experiment as being on the way and because it persists in amplifying the mobilizing and mutable force of mind and body in the midst of undeniable, uncontrollable change and precarity. I keep at it because it’s an active resistance to other forces (internal and external) that conspire against expression of thought, speech and body.
What to expect:
Working from a basic premise that dance is an ever-shifting, unfixed practice of encountering ourselves being on the way, we’ll use this workshop format to play, tune, and grapple with multiple tools and strategies for being, doing, and making in the continuous present.
We’ll start with simple, non-theoretical strategies for nonstop speaking and nonstop moving as a practice of getting closer to the material of ourselves and the structures of our thinking, while contending with the velocity of what we want, what we notice, and what we feel.
Through the accumulation of different tasks, conditions, and micro scores, that deal with time, space, place and others, we’ll work on forming, amplifying, and articulating the complex ecology of ourselves in practice, in the midst of undeniable change and uncontrollable conditions.
This workshop is open to all folks of all disciplines who are willing to move and speak a lot (and sometimes write) as modes of creative practice and have a willingness to not always know what is being produced from it.
Please bring writing material.
Accessibility Notes
- This workshop includes auditive guidance.
To request ASL interpretation or Audio Description, please email accessibility@movementresearch.org, subject line “ASL/Audio Description Request, MELT Jeanine Durning” at least three (3) weeks prior to the first date of the workshop.
For access-related questions and requests, please contact accessibility@movementresearch.org, subject line “MELT Jeanine Durning.”
