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. A typical workshop consists of six hours daily training of body, voice, sensory perception, and observation, lasting from two days to two weeks. Djalma workshops have been hosted internationally by organizations such as Mime Centrum Berlin, Antagon theaterAKTion , Theater Training Initiative of London, and Exploratorium Berlin.

For the CURRENT SCHEDULE OF WORKSHOPS see events

September 27 to October 2, 2010
LE CORPS : SENS DEDANS DEHORS
a workshop by EPHIA
-- duration: 36 hours
--open to dancers, actors, marionnettistes, visual artists, writers, and all for whom the poetry of the human body touches their artistic practice
-cost 170 € / possibility of financial aid by l’afdas
at Ramdam . 16, chemin des santons 69110 sainte-foy-lès-lyon, France
www.ramdam-quoi.org

To participate in the workshop one must ask for a registration form at RAMDAM, www.ramdam-quoi.org,
contact . +33 (0)4 78 59 62 62 - ramdam.assos@wanadoo.fr

June 30 to July 07, 2010
Le Corps: SENS DEDANS DEHORS
Workshop dedicated to the encounter of body and environment
Led by Ephia
With musicians Audrey Rocher et Roland Devocelle
At the « Buron du Pas de Mathieu » on the plateau of Aubrac, Cantal, France

I begin to look closely, to fall into the matter, to be involved, to be enveloped, to lack a point of view, to not know. I begin to feel... I enter into a space so that I can know her perspective. I ask this space how to dance inside her...

Le Corps: SENS DEDANS DEHORS is a workshop which unfolds the imagination of the human body through physical experiences in nature. Let us consider dance as discipline of madness for human evolution, permitting one to climb over the walls that society has constructed around the body. Our training attempts to crack the shell of socially ingrained movements to arrive at a dance of existing rather than expressing. Under the elemental conditions of nature, the movement of our body becomes the movement of our consciousness, connecting our evolutionary future with our evolutionary past.

Djalma Primordial Science developed this corporeal research during summer four workshops from 2002 to 2006 in the desert wilderness of New Mexico. Since then, the workshops have continued in France. The seventh edition will take place on the Plateau of Aubrac, an isolated region of the Massif Central, sometimes referred to as “La petite Mongolie”.

We sever ties with our quotidian life; the landscape itself becomes the primordial teacher. We begin to realize that all that exists around us, exists as well inside us. The facade of our identity dissolves, our personality retreats to give room for the insignificant things: scratching sounds of an insect or tremblings of a leaf , now amplified, find their life inside our body. A dance is born.

Each day consists of eight hours of movement exploration in the landscape. In preparation for the research, we begin with a rigorous warm-up, unleashing the body's energy reserves. Special attention is given to opening the channels of the voice and the breath in connection with the movement, to giving and receiving energy from others. We continue with solo, duo and group research in specific locations of the land accompanied by the sonic atmospheres of musicians Audrey Rocher and Roland Devocelle.

We experiment the resonance of the body with matter, sound and the UR-matter of space. Our inspiration emerges from long journeys in blindness, sensory immersion and confusion, mapping and getting lost, observing the dance of the microcosm. We research seeing with the ear: how sound is invisible movement. We lengthen the nerves beyond the clothing of the skin to discover the “living space” which surrounds us.

An unknown terrain changes our presence. We begin to sense the drama dormant in the landscape and to allow a shifting earth to transform our posture, our thoughts. With new clarity the emotional landscape of the human body manifests itself. What exists before language? What exists before (and after) the lines and geographies of the human? As the estranged human form experiences its awkwardness in the body of the landscape is there a cry of separation?

The workshop will be taught in French and English. It is open to people of all experience. The workshop begins June 30 (arrival between 14:00 and 17:00) and ends July 7th at 14:00. Transport from the train station of Aumont-Aubrac to the buron Pas de Mathieu will be coordinated for those traveling by train. Accommodation at the buron Pas de Mathieu is primitive, without electricity. The group will cook meals communally and will sleep under the stars. The workshop fee, which includes meals, is 390 euro. Early registration is encouraged, as the workshop size is limited to twelve participants. Upon acceptance into the workshop, a non-refundable 75 euro registration fee which counts toward the total cost of the workshop should be paid in order to reserve your place. Remaining workshop balance is to be paid in full by June 14, 2010. You will receive a letter explaining what to bring and how to reach the workshop location. To apply please contact djalmaprisci@hotmail.com
Telephone +33 (0)6 26 31 00 58

« La region de l'Aubrac est une zone située à cheval sur les départements de la Lozère du Cantal et de l'Aveyron. Le climat y est rude, le paysage est grandiose et la luminosité varie selon la moindre brise qui fait "danser" les herbes sauvages. C'est le sanctuaire de l'harmonie entre l'homme et la nature. Ici l'homme n'est que peu de chose ; à l'image du marin et de l'océan, il vit au gré du temps et des saisons.»

The plateau D’Aubrac is characterized by vast open spaces freckled by boulders which seems to have fallen from the sky. It is situated in a region marked by volcanic activity where the tectonic plates separated and came back together pushing to the surface an ancient earth. These fragile and very fertile landscapes are called “tourbières” and they are the home to many rare plants. For the workshop our base camp will be an ancient sheperd's’a house called a “buron”, very rustic, isolated and without electricity.

FROM SUMMER's PAST...
integrating with/ disintegrating into: THE LAND IV.
dance-theater workshop led by Djalma Primordial Science
in the desert of Mountainair, New Mexico.

From 2002-2006, Djalma Primordial Science taught each summer "integrating with/disintegrating into: THE LAND", a dance-theater workshop in the desert wilderness of New Mexico. For seven days, from dawn to dusk, we led physical training with focus on elemental participation in high desert landscape. Please find below testimonies from the participants of the desert workshop.

Statements from workshop participants:

"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. Ephia and Jeff, thank you for your depth, imagination, presence, and especially for your originality. 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 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, both of you, 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.

“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