September 27 - November 8, 2018

THE BODY IN EXILE: EXPERIMENTING THE BODY UNDER MIGRATORY AND TRAVELING PRACTICES

a twelve-year-old makes a daredevil leap from one freight care to another. He hopes to eventually reach San Diego. Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times


In this course, we will ask participants to explore migratory practices and experiences through different means (from histories, interviews, testimonials, field work, memoir, documentary and journalist documents, to embodied experiments that can be used to inform creative material, in order to create a performance). We will thoroughly think on the body-subject as an open form, an active becoming, a migratory body, at a time both subject and object. 

Through texts, video excerpts, and group discussion, supplemented by short reading assignments, class participants will encounter writers and artists who experiment inserting themselves into their own work. Our investigations will focus on the meeting point of texts and body, shifting between text- based, field work and movement-based exercises to approach new modes of analysis and expression. To this end, each class will include discussions, physical improvisation, body exploration and generative performance assignments that consider performance to be a form of research. Our last meetings will focus more heavily on creative/artistic responses, giving participants the opportunity to develop a final project in the medium of their choice. 
Participants with any level of writing and performance experience are welcome. The course is designed for an interdisciplinary group, representative of a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.

September 26th – November 14th 2018
8 Sessions
Wednesdays 7-9PM
$230
 

Vanessa Vargas

Brooklyn based dancer, performer, journalist, dance educator and researcher. She works in social practices, behaviours, emotions, and rituals, both in dance and performance as in communication, culture studies and social theory. Since 2002, she has been working for several dance companies in Venezuela, collaborating as a dancer and choreographer. Based in New York since 2014, she continues working as a dancer and performance artist, performing for different New York-based dance companies while developing her experience as a dance educator, researcher, and dance maker, presenting her work in New York, Lima, Buenos Aires, and Barcelona. Recently, she received and scholarship to attend the Barcelona International Dance Exchange in Barcelona, Spain in April 2018, and an invitation to be a resident artist, for the first time, in La Caldera, Barcelona, Spain, in June-July 2018.

More info
Website
http://www.vanessavargasdancelab.com/
IG
@vanessavargasdancelab

Registration
https://abronsartscenter.asapconnected.com/?#CourseID=158954
 

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A photo of dancers lifting another up in the air in a studio of a Summer MELT workshop. There is a standing lamp off to one corner as the lifted dancer reaches up in the air. Photo by Rachel Keane.

 

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