To let things unfold by catching the centre

Guests:
15 May: Sigal Zouk
16 May: Mira Mutka
17 May: Rebecca Hilton
18 May: Manon Santkin
19 May: Peter Mills
20 May: Anna Lindal
21 May: Cecilia Roos and Jan Burkhardt

For more than a year, we have been undergoing a process of artistic research without expecting any specific result or outcome other than sharing in order to see what can then unfold. We set up a series of workshops in Stockholm and Berlin, and invited 20 collaborators from different fields to take part in different groupings. The act of sharing became our primary research material, and the second was sensation, as one of the fundamentals of sharing. We make sense with our senses and connect to others and ourselves using our senses. Such connection offers a bridge to participation, commitment and decision-making, and sensation can become a practice and be cultivated. Through this project, we aim to expand the notion of sensation as a material, and sharing as a core element that forms the basis for processes.

We wish to invite you to join a habitat for emergence and sharing of sensations, dance, talk and other means of communication, to offer space and time, to let synergies evolve and new and old forms and formats of sharing manifest. The oscillation between thinking and doing can become like a metasense, and questions can be asked through doing.

In what ways can we share an experience with others?

What kind of possibilities can arise out of purposelessness?

The week is structured around different themes. On each day of the programme, collaborators are invited to contribute with some of their practice. You can sign up for anything from half a day to the whole week. Participation is for free.

Preliminary schedule during the week

Monday 15 May at 10.00 - 17.00
Sensation as a means of sharing presence

Guest: Sigal Zouk

10:00-13.00 Laughing–crying-silence practise facilitated by Sigal Zouk
We will conduct a shortened version of a 21-day laughing-crying-silence workshop, founded by the spiritual teacher Osho. The original workshop includes 7 days of laughter, 7 days of crying and 7 days of silence, with 3 hours of practice per day. Our workshop will include 3 hours: one hour of laughter, one hour of crying and one hour of silence. The workshop will allow us to drop the experience of being “stuck in our minds” and to connect us with the wisdom of our hearts. Whenever emotions are not allowed to be fully experienced in the moment, they stay in our emotional body. When we allow ourselves to experience our un-laughed laughter, our un-cried tears, and our un-lived silence, we allow whatever is in the unconscious to flow. Please sign up for this session and be there in time! We will begin and end together as a group.
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-17:00 Open space for reflection, action, practice

Tuesday 16 May at 10.00 - 17.00
Sharing as a culture / dynamics of proposing and witnessing

Guest: Mira Mutka

10:00-13:00 Slowathon facilitated by Mira Mutka
Slowathon is an invitation to walk together, slowly. The slownesses could perhaps be understood as contemplative attempts of synthesizing a variety of experience, information and sensation. The practice of Slowathon emerged initially from states of loss and a necessity for potential integration of artistic and everyday life. Welcome to participate by seeing and / or walking. Doors will be open during the hours; it is possible to enter and exit whenever.
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-17:00 Open space for reflection, action, practice

Wednesday 17 May at 10.00 - 17.00
Naming and not naming OR Sensing things and making sense of things.

Guest: Rebecca Hilton

10:00-13:00 Open space for reflection, action, practice
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-17:00 Workshop facilitated by Rebecca Hilton

Let’s say we’ll conduct a series of experiments, using something we’ll name to produce something experiential, and using something experiential to produce something we’ll name. We’ll play games with and without language, we’ll name things with and without words and we’ll work with ideas of representation (a depiction of a ‘thing’), reification (to make into a ‘thing’) and definition (the explanation of a ‘thing’) among other things. The word ‘thing’ has been used colloquially since c. 1600 to indicate something the speaker can’t name at that moment.
This workshop, in the profile area SITE EVENT ENCOUNTER, is part of the Wednesday Research Centre Seminar Series which are open to Stockholm University of the Arts staff and students.

14:00-17:00 Rebecca Hilton

Thursday 18 May at 10.00 - 17.00 
Clusters of attention and organization 

Guest: Manon Santkin

10:00-13:00 During this session, we will consider attentiveness as a site of composition. Through embodied practices and the introduction of a few benchmark-notions to orient   ourselves, we will take time to experience, observe and identify different modalities of attentiveness and their possible choreographic implications.
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-17:00 Open space for reflection, action, practice

Friday 19 May at 10.00 - 17.00 
Allowing aimlessness and claiming responsibility

Guest: Peter Mills

10:00-13:00 Workshop facilitated by Peter Mills
Is this it, is this what I think it is, is anything something, authenticity within authorship, from the starting point of the individual, a way to challenge and question authoritarianism? How can we deal with what already exists, reckon with our values and have dance practice as a social-political mode of being with each other, to meet problems, crisis, and deal with product orientated and non-product orientated collective decision-making? This is open but not public.

Saturday 20 May at 10.00 - 17.00
Dynamics of collective leadership 

Guest: Anna Lindal

10:00-13:00 Anna Lindal
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-17:00 Open space for reflection, action, practice

Sunday 21 May at 10.00 - 17.00
The heart of things

Guest: Cecilia Roos and Jan Burkhardt

9:00-12:00 Collecting ritual facilitated by Cecilia Roos and Jan Burkhardt

Biography
 

Sigal Zouk is a dancer, performer and facilitator in the field of contemporary dance. As a dancer, she has worked in the Bathseva ensemble, with Sasha Waltz, Meg Stuart and Laurent Chetouane, among others. Since 2007, she has also been coaching numerous choreographers in their processes, among them Meg Stuart, Philipp Gehmacher, Angela Schubot, Jared Gradinger, Simone Aughterlony. Sigal is teaching in several European dance departments and institutions, collaborating with visual artists and musicians internationally.

Mira Mutka, MFA, works within choreography and dance by initiating, performing and teaching, often through dances, un-readable writings and conversations. Recent working environments with Cullbergbaletten, Together Alone, Undercover Choreography and Nefeli Ikonomou (Rhymes of Pleasure) include roles as performer and production/ choreography assistant.

Rebecca Hilton works with dance, with embodied practices and choreographic systems, in situations and contexts that don’t necessarily involve dancers, dancing or the making of a dance. Lately she’s been working in a suburban shopping mall, a dementia centre, at several universities and via large screens in public places in Korea and Australia. Recently she has been involved in the creative processes of Chrysa Parkinson, Scarlet Yu and Xavier Le Roy. Rebecca is a recently appointed Professor in the profile area – Site, Event, Encounter, at the Stockholm University of the Arts, she is generating a research project around friendship, networks of intimacy and artistic practice, and she is writing a book on DANCERNESS. 

Manon Santkin is a dancer and dramaturg living in Belgium. She works as a dancer, maker, artistic advisor, teacher and writer. She graduated from P.a.r.t.s. in 2004 and completed an MA in New Performative Practice at DOCH (Stockholm) in 2015. Amongst numerous collaborations, she performed with Mette Ingvartsen, Salva Sanchis, Sidney Leoni, Cecilia Lisa Eliceche, Eleanor Bauer and Xavier Leroy. She is part of the Stockholm based group together alone. She is the author of A Glossary Of The Atlas Of Interpretation and hosts the We Happen Things performance series with Tove Salmgren and Moa Franzen. In her current works, Manon investigates the act of paying attention and its prescriptive capacities.

Peter Mills has worked with and continues to use choreography as a means to understand anti-authoritarian practice and theory within anarchism, experimental performance, dance and academic research. Based in Stockholm, he works with Linda Adami, Emma Tolander, Jan Burkhardt, Cecilia Roos, Pontus Petterson, Rachel Tess, Anna Efriamsson, Fredric Gies, Anna Öberg, Charlotta Ruth, Sandra Noeth, Nefeli Ikonomou, Robin Dingemans, Kristine Slettevold, Dalija Acin Thelander, Gabriella Ax Tripsiani, Lyn Bentschik, Bahar Temiz, Amelia Beavis-Harrison, Simon Vincenzi, and sure to be more.

Anna Lindal is a violinist, Professor of Music and Dean of the University College of Opera. Anna’s research focuses on improvisation and deconstruction of classical music.

Cecilia Roos is a dancer, Professor in Artistic Practice and Vice-Rector of Research at Stockholm University of the Arts. She has worked as a dancer and rehearsal director with numerous choreographers and companies and she has been honoured with several scholarships and distinctions. Her research focuses on the dancer’s practice and the role it plays in performative processes.

Jan Burkhardt is a dancer/choreographer, Laban-Bartenieff-Movement-Analyst and musician based in Berlin, Germany. His main interest has become to actively bridge somatic sensory awareness and performative practice, also in order to stress the profoundly humanistic layer of the work. As a performer, he has worked with Laurent Chetouane, Sebastian Matthias and many others. He has been an artistic director of cross-disciplinary projects and a choreographic coach for numerous choreographers, visual artists, directors and students. Jan is a regular guest teacher at the dance departments in Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Cologne and numerous independent dance institutions throughout Europe.