The Movement Research Festival returns with events happening over two weeks, February 28-March 9, 2024. The 2024 Festival is curated by Marýa Wethers, Director of the GPS/Global Practice Sharing Program at Movement Research, with a focus on the artists and partnerships developed through MR’s GPS MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Exchange Program. The Festival features performances at Movement Research at the Judson Church and Danspace Project, artist talks (GPS Chats and Studies Project), and movement workshops led by festival artists. 

Workshop: the body symphonic with Charlie Prince (Lebanon)

The workshop will focus on the exploration of deep listening and embodied resonance: of the self, the other, the group, and to the environment. Through proposals that awaken the body’s energetic landscape, participants will come to question the notions of physical experience, porosity, and sharing in order to create meeting points between virtuosity and somatic attention, renewing the infinite pleasure and power of dancing. The class will move through continual transformations of tactile and instinctive identities that are triggered by the expanding and trans-forming energetic glow that “in-forms us”—opening up dialogue between internal and external functions of physicality, between the activation of deep fantasy and the encounter with material reality.

The GPS/Global Practice Sharing program provides a platform for the international exchange of ideas, processes, and reflective practices surrounding dance and movement-based forms between the U.S. and independent performing arts communities internationally. GPS posits that dialogue across differences necessarily catalyzes the generation of new knowledge and creative innovation. By investing in the mobility of artists, curators, and cultural workers, GPS advances cross-cultural understanding and the development of the contemporary arts field at large. Officially established in 2016, GPS consists of an informal network of partners currently supporting exchange projects in Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). 

All events are FREE and open to the public. Advance reservations required at: https://movementresearch.org/events/series/festival/.