Jule Flierl & Mei Bao
How to: Protest Choir

This field project focuses on empowering voices, bodies, and minds for situations of protest, with the aim of creating personal gestures of manifestation. The group uses tools from dance, martial arts, expanded voice techniques, and drumming to practice taking up and giving space in public situations. Jule and Mei will introduce methods for opening eyes and ears, staying attuned to our perceptions and emotions in public.

Participants explore different ways of dissent – generating slogans, gestures, sounds, and interventions for protest. They have the opportunity to bring their own context and struggles, developing material for and with the group – experimenting with forms such as call and response, flashmob choreography, strategies of disruption, and amplifying each other’s voices. Finally, participants will take their “voice-bodies” from the studio to the streets!

In this field project the group will seek responses to our contemporary moment and examine protest gestures that have come before us. The aim of this workshop is to expand imagination regarding demands and to build a practical toolbox for engaging in the public sphere through choreographic means. Jule and Mei also propose a practice of solidarity with others and their causes, as well as creating space to discuss consent when participants repeat other people’s words.