WORKSHOPS
Djalma Primordial Science regularly leads workshops for actors, dancers, visual artists and all those interested in exploring movement and sound from unconditioned spaces internal to the body. Djalma workshops have been hosted internationally by organizations such as Mime Centrum Berlin, Antagon theaterAKTion, Theater Training Initiative of London, Exploratorium Berlin, Nordic School of Butoh, and RAMDAM.
Le Corps: SENS DEDANS DEHORS
1-10 July, 2012
Summer workshop intensive
Dedicated to the encounter of the body and the environment
Led by Ephia with the contrabass player Benoit Cancoin
le Plateau du Velay (43), France
Le Corps: SENS DEDANS DEHORS is a dance workshop which develops the perception, imagination, and presence of the human body through physical experiences in nature. A drama dormant in the landscape reveals itself, lending us its instability, transforming our posture, our thoughts. We come into resonance with the place, the group, an object, a material. And so, the movement of our body becomes the movement of our consciousness, dissolving borders: inside and outside.
“Let us consider dance as discipline of madness for human evolution, permitting us to climb over the walls that society has constructed around the body.”
Djalma Primordial Science developed this physical training during four summer workshops from 2002 to 2006 in the desert wilderness of New Mexico. Since then, the research has continued in France with workshops in the gorges of the Tarn et Garronne (2008, 2009) and on the Plateau of Aubrac (2010). The 8th edition of this workshop will take place on the Plateau du Velay in the Haut-Loire area of France.
PROCESS/
I enter a space in order to sense her perspective. I ask this space how to dance within her...
Considering nature as our primordial teacher, we explore the physical and emotional connection between the body and its environment. We come into resonance through a process of tactile listening, sensory games, and multiple ways of seeing and receiving. Blinded, we lengthen our nerves beyond the clothing of the skin to expand our perception of the “living space” which surrounds us.
I begin to be involved, to be enveloped, to lack a point of view. I begin to feel....
Ice nervously cracks, crystals of sugar sigh and dissolve into the tea, water vapor condenses on the face of the stone, smoke wanders lazily across the wool of the pull-over. From our observations, from our sensations, we delve into the secret life of Matter and bring forth a dance. We research a cycle of reciprocity: Matter which animates the interior of our body, the interior of our body which animates Matter.
Following a clear intention, I allow myself to become lost in order to find unknown pathways...
We experience our own body as foreign object and discover new identity: no identity, the ground from which self-creation springs: a dance newly born from the absence of borders.
DAILY FLOW/
The first part of the day is spent inside the studio accompanied by the contrabass of Benoit Cancoin. He plays with sound to build material presence, creating landscapes which wander through us. Listening deeper, we connect with and initiate movement from our different body systems (nerve, muscle, bone, blood, breath). Guided by image in our dance, we experiment how to alter the flow of Time and the density of space, how the interior sensations evolve with the shifting of the posture, and how to go beyond the limits of our person.
The second part of the day takes place outside and is dedicated to the encounter of the body and the environment: opening our senses we ask how can the environment change our presence. Exercises are proposed to explore different ways of seeing, ways of listening with the body, and possible fusion of the senses. Blindfolded exercises permit self abandon and receptivity: a merging into Matter. Pursuing metamorphosis, we explore the connection between dream and landscape, memory and place.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION/
Dates : 1 - 10 July, 2012
The workshop begins on the morning of the first of July (all arrivals on June 30, from 14:00 until 19:00) and ends on the 10th of July at 15:00. The transportation from the train station of Le Puy-en-Velay to the workshop site will be coordinated for those arriving by train.
Meals : Prepared collectively by the participants with all ingredients provided.
Lodging : Participants will have the option to sleep inside in shared bedrooms or outside in individual tents.
Workshop fee : 500 euro (food and lodging costs included)
Maximum number of participants : 15
Upon acceptance to the workshop, a non-refundable 75 euro registration fee which counts toward the total cost of the workshop should be paid in order to hold your place. The remaining workshop balance is to be paid in full by June 1, 2012. You will receive a letter explaining what to bring and how to reach the workshop location.
Location : Le Plateau du Velay is a mountainous region who highest elevation is 1,754 meters. The area is marked by an ancient volcanic activity responsible for creating winding valleys and rock formations known as “des orgues de basalte.” The house and studio are in a small hamlet isolated from the nearest village, and are surrounded by fields and forests, near cliffs overlooking the Loire river. The site is an old farm, cooperatively renovated and sustained. A dance studio of 110m² was created during 2011, with the objective to open its doors for artistic residencies, workshops, and meetings.
The workshop will be taught in French and English. It is open to people of all experience.
TO APPLY CONTACT: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
+33 (0) 6 26 31 00 58
FROM SUMMER's PAST...
integrating with/ disintegrating into: THE LAND (2002-2006).
dance workshops led by Djalma Primordial Science
in the desert of Mountainair, New Mexico.
Statements from workshop participants:
"I can feel the effects of it in my bones and in my heart and, well, in my courage. The fact that the workshop and the dance itself are so physically AND emotionally demanding helped me to put my mind into my body, and manifest both right here, on the surface of the earth. I think the work you're doing is very important, that I am honored to have participated in it." Benjamin Walsh, filmmaker
"This has been the closest I have felt to nature ever--nature, my own nature. Smashing my face in the soil, walking through prickly trees, searing the earth with the soles of my feet. Feeling my body’s presence I can begin to understand that I am from the Earth. In this way death can be thought of as a journey home."
Shada McKenzie, visual artist
"I deeply appreciate the uncompromising, the continual push of the limits of my physicality and the limits of my perception. I have broken and healed many times throughout the workshop; I leave transformed."
Rosie Brandenburger, musician/environmentalist
"Things knotted up inside me unraveled: it had to do with the small becoming large and the large becoming small; the close distant, the distant intimate. Attachment and its relationship to violence. Disintegration and its relationship to Love. Everyday I got to enter another world and to explore how much of the other worlds I could bring back with me, how much of myself I could leave there. Each exercise was a multi-dimensional poem: perfect little poems expanding and contracting in all directions, out to the bear star and as deep as my spleen. I loved to listen to the instructions, the phrasing, the images, the pace. Language itself became a rabbit hole." Melanie Noel, poet
“I have not forgotten what it was like rolling into some worm like existence, morphing into wiry and crooked trees whose elderly lifeless limbs lay strewn about pushing accusatory suggestions into the body i once knew, the inspiration of which released me into the exquisite beauty and pain of a tree and its' being, and i must wonder, perhaps as i catch glimpses of nearly forgotten dreams, like rain. a flash or a flicker of some sun beaten synaptic landscape that sits up as quick as mountain’s form and begs to know if the tree became me ? or i became the tree? ” Ken Cornell, experimental musician