21–23 July 2023
Volksoper Probebühne (Severingasse 7, 1090 Vienna)
& Online
Invitation & Open Call Panel Participation & Deep Dives
Application until 15 May 2023
Lace#1: Topographies of Touch is bringing together experts working at the intersection of art, academia and activism to examine the challenge of place, the restriction of its specificity and to explore strategies for successful interpersonal cross-cultural contact-making in the age of gentrification, polarisation and segregation.
Lace#1 will provide distinctive formats curated and hosted for and by practitioners.
Topography, according to the Oxford Dictionary of English, brings together the origin words topo – that comes from the Ancient Greek for place and graphy – commonly associated with writing. Unlike choreography, however, where -graphy has traditionally been associated with writing, in sciences like geography, -graphy is what designates this particular science as descriptive. Topography, then, can be understood as the science of describing, naming and acknowledging place in its situatedness, its specificity, in its present and its history.
When described, named and acknowledged, the abstract – situatedness, specificity, present and history – becomes sensed, felt. It becomes the experience of colour, of tone and texture; it becomes a source of wisdom and evidence of knowledge. This activity evidences the importance and value of considering place for any (critical) study to succeed.
Topographies of Touch is imagined as a collection of events, each of which functions as a metaphorical place where touch can be examined in its context-specific capacities. The range of contexts we chose to examine this year encompasses a variety of scales: human-to-human, human-to-practice, human-to-institution and human-to-non-human.
When examined within a variety of contexts in a short period of time by a variety of human and non-human subjects, what about touch will become evident? What about touch, in other words, will we be able to learn only when we accept this simple suggestion: that each of our experience of touch is specific and that each of our experiences of touch is specific for a reason.
Language of communication is English.
Curated by pavleheidler and Deirdre Morris
Opening
Hosted by Deirdre Morris and pavleheidler, the opening ceremony will introduce the ImPulsTanz Symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices to the world’s stage. Like the Symposium itself, this ceremony will be collage-like in structure, drawing from a series of formats to tell the story of how the Symposium came to be, what purpose it might serve and what one could do to unlock its potential.
The ceremony will include a guided somatisation. Please dress so that you can dance, if you’d like to.
Expanding Fields
Moderated by Efva Lilja
What challenges do we face when we do not stay within given frameworks but choose trans-media contexts? Which are the specific challenges encountered by artists and researchers working through and alongside the expansion of their field? How can we act to support the development of a relevant and critical discourse? And a vocabulary that supports new ways of communicating?
The role of the arts is to act past what we already think we know. New narratives, images and thoughts are formulated. Creativity is stimulated. Or? This panel addresses practices that generate trans-media methods of research, work, sharing and communicating, practices that challenge traditions and conventions, ideas of value and utility, maybe of the concept of art itself. Let’s meet, share and discuss from our different places of departure!
Text by Efva Lilja
3,6,9: Energetic touch and polymathic dancing
Moderated by Mayfield Brooks
How can the practice of improvisation adapt through numbers and archetypes that signify different approaches to touch? Can we challenge the status quo by approaching odd numeric configurations in dance that expand out of the solo and the duet or the 1 and the 2? How do we make the consequence of our actions visible in the present by thinking and moving in multiples beyond the material world and into different energy fields? 3, 6, 9 is a group of numbers that highlight the energetic power of a sum and its parts and encourages shifting from the singular to the multiple, whether it’s understanding the body as time / space / matter or vice versa. This approach also moves away from capitalist notions of the individual who dances with another individual and away from touch as simply a self-gratifying sensory experience. What if touch was a multidimensional experience awakening the polymath in all of us? What if the assumption was that we are always dancing in an oddly, exponential and multiple space with ancestors, sound, organic matter, architectural environments, sentient beings, or the cosmos? Using 3,6,9 as a jumping off point, this panel will be an interactive, associative and embodied conversation engaging with ways to be multiple in dancing, imagining and connecting through touch and improvisation.
Text by Mayfield Brooks
Mediated Touch
Moderated by Katy Dymoke
Touch is a touchy subject.
The topic of touch has been subject to polarisation, on the one hand the pro-touch discourse recognises touch as essential to human survival, development, the foundation of healthy relationships, a language for the expression of feelings, emotions that are beyond words and so on. On the other hand, the non-touch discourse conflates touch with the violation of personal boundaries, as the conduit for abuse, unwarranted attention, resulting in the regulation of touch within education, care, social settings.
For those protected by non-touch regulation there are incidents of touch deprivation and the choice or opportunity to consent to touch is regulated out – to protect professionals from accusation and recipients from abuse. This scenario reduces touch to a one-dimensional risk assessment. If touch is foundational to personal and interpersonal relationships, how can we populate the space between these discourses and argue for touch and careful consensual procedures to enable inclusion and counter deprivation?
Now we can meet and touch again, further research into touch has ensued and provided a precedent for “consent” for “safe touch” – and a starting point to build from. With the pandemic many felt this through a screen and yet remained touch deprived, longing for contact and having to renegotiate how to feel safe to touch again.
How do we experience touch now?
Are we aware of touch taboo?
Are we subject to hidden social diktat to the expense of touch in our lives?
Is the pro-touch discourse able to withstand the authority of non-touch regulation?
How do we address fear of litigation for inappropriate / unwarranted touch?
Text by Katy Dymoke
Intra-species Contact
Moderated by Deirdre Morris
This panel looks to gather evidence of knowledge-making and creativity within the field of inter-species contact. When successfully establishing inter-species contact challenges the orders established by the western canon, how does the challenge exercise a wider influence on the canon itself? To successfully make “intra-species contact” – in the sense of Karen Barad – we must assume that no distinguishable “species” pre-exist the making of this particular contact. This is because each of the “species” must distinguish itself as “species” through and from this contact, since distinguishment itself is and must remain relational, not absolute. The reason we have already failed in successfully making “intra-species contact” before we even tried is twofold. Firstly, the concept of “species” is so common, Robin Wall Kimmerer only needed to write “george washington” to prove how common this concept is and how effective / affective it is. And secondly, distinguishment is not a word. All joking aside. Whilst not a word, distinguishment is key. At least key to the unlocking of the content of this panel. For what happens when distinguishment is not assumed, but discovered? This panel looks at how successful the notion of “human” is at preventing affective “human” to “non-human” contact. And why! This panels looks at what it takes for “human” to make contact, or, in Haraway’s terms, to make “kin-with,” since “nothing makes itself.” This panel brings together stories of contact, of kinship, of affective experience and knowledge-making emerging from and within the field of entanglement between all Earthly matterings.
Text by Deirdre Morris and pavleheidler
Friday, 21 July 2023
18:00−20:00 Opening and Somatisation, guidance: pavleheidler, Deirdre Morris and guests
Saturday, 22 July 2023
09:30 Arrival, coffee and tea
10:00−12:00 Panel Expanded Fields, moderated by Efva Lilja
12:00−14:00 Lunch, break, reflection
14:00−16:00 Panel 3,6,9: Energetic touch and polymathic dancing, moderated by Mayfield Brooks
16:30−19:00 Deep Dive: Ecotone#2, host: Anouk Llaurens, Eva Maes and Julien Bruneau
10:00−19:00 Deep Dives: tba (see open calls)
Sunday, 23 July 2023
09:30 Arrival, coffee and tea
10:00−12:00 Panel Mediated Touch, moderated by Katy Dymoke
12:00−14:00 Lunch, break, reflection
14:00−16:00 Panel 3,6,9: Intra-species Contact, moderated by Deirdre Morris
16:30−17:30 Deep Dive: MA – Pregnant Nothingness#2, host: Defne Erdur
10:00−17:00 Deep Dive: tba
17:30−18:00 Closing
Hosted by Defne Erdur
17–21 July 2023, 10:00–16:00
Staatsopernballettschule 1 (Goethegasse 1, 1010 Vienna)
Last year’s residency in the frame of IDOCDE’s Symposium was devoted the Japanese concept of MA. Then we pursued the desire to co-create “empty space” as an interval, a threshold. We wanted to experience timelessness, spacelessness, pregnant nothingness to allow ourselves to transform, discover/recover, reconnect to our creative potential as artists, researchers, teachers, facilitators, students from any field of knowing, i.e., curious beings on this planet. And we were in awe with the gifts of resting in MA. In this year’s residency, we are going to approach that same desire to co-create “emptiness” as something that can be touched, as something that can touch. Touch will be our orientation device, literal and figurative, as we inquire MA. How does touch orient the experience of discovery? How does touch orient us for recovery? What “hidden realities” can we get in touch with, if only we let ourselves be guided by “what is not there (yet)” in a tactile manner? You are invited to co-exist in an open space for experientially diving into emptiness and touch.
Hosted by Anouk Llaurens, Eva Maes & Julien Bruneau
17–21 July 2023, 10:00–16:00
Staatsopernballettschule 2 (Goethegasse 1, 1010 Vienna)
Ecotone are laboratories proposed within the framework of Replays, variations on Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Score, artistic research initiated by Anouk Llaurens (see: http://somework.be/pages/Replays#annotation-14f1b). Replays aims to celebrate and perpetuate the culture of the Tuning Scores through their artistic and pedagogical diffractions. Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores offer a practice of the collective, of living and composing together, with all the forces present, especially making explicit the differences and frictions that are present in the shared space. It teaches us to compose with our dissensions.
For Ecotone#2, Anouk Llaurens invites Julien Bruneau (choreographer, dancer and visual artist) and Eva Maes (dancer) who both displace / creolise the Tuning Scores to invent new forms. Anouk and her two guests will share one of their artistic or theoretical practices, in continuity / linkage / resonance with the work of Lisa Nelson.
Opening a transitional zone between Replays and the participants’ research the participants are invited to practise their research by observing the possible resonances, meeting points or frictions with what is shared by Anouk and her guests. An ecotone is a transition zone between several ecosystems. It acts in relation to the inhabitants connecting, separating and modifying the habitats that border it. For dancers and art researchers interested in Tuning Scores, diffraction and learning about their research through the encounters with other ways of being / seeing / dancing. Come with a research question, ready to listen to and move from your sensations.
Residencies intend to create space for conducting research and sharing research findings along a thematic interest. The residency hosts are invited to organise the space of the residency relative to the explored ideas sensitising residency participants to the idiosyncrasies embedded in or embodied by their research methods of choice.
The residencies include working Monday, 17 July to Friday, 21 July respectively according to the agreements of the host(s) and the participants. Each residency has access to one studio 24 hours a day.
To apply for residency participation click here.
Application deadline: 15 May 2023
Max. 20 participants per residency
We will inform you about your acceptance by 31 May 2023, so you may make travel arrangements.
As a residency participant you are automatically registered for the symposium. You just pay the symposium fee. We encourage you to participate in the symposium. See further down: Participation and Fee & contact.
With this open call for panel participation, we are inviting professional artists, researchers and educators whose practice is in any specific and practice-based way embodied to contribute to the symposium. Your contribution needs to be panel specific. Please read the descriptions of the existing panels. Panel moderators are creating a specific structure of time and space for an embodied and trans-media exchange between panel participants. Panel participants will be sharing their artistic / research / academic / activist practices and reflections with the other panel participants and the audience.
With Deep Dives we are offering artists, activists and researchers whose practice is in any specific way embodied the opportunity to contribute a 90 to 120 minutes session related to the overall topic of the symposium. They are intended to compliment the panels offering opportunities for extended considerations or durational practices that can be described but cannot be experienced in short form or in mediated ways.
To apply for your panel participation click here to learn more about the conditions and to send us your information.
To apply for a Deep Dive click here learn more about the conditions and to send us your information.
Application deadline
15 May 2023
We will get back to you with our decisions by 31 May 2023.
You may participate offline and online. Online participation via Zoom will be hosted and offered for the opening evening and the four panels.
The symposium registration for offline and online participation starts on 18 April 2023.
Please click here to register.
Pay what it’s worth to you
Minimum: €20
Recommended: €100
Your registration is only valid after we have received your participation fee.
Cancellation Policy: If you cancel your participation, we charge a 20 euro cancellation fee.
Limited volunteering possible. Offline volunteering includes helping hands supporting the smooth moving of the group through the symposium, e.g. taking care of drinks and snacks, having an eye on the spaces and the inside yard, preparing the location on Friday and finishing up on Sunday. If interested write to symposium@impulstanz.com.
You have any questions around your participation and / or registration?
Please contact workshopoffice@impulstanz.com.
Efva Lilja
Efva Lilja works with choreography as dance, imagery and text in works that take us through different layers of consciousness, erotic episodes, contemplative calm or playfulness with a political edge. Her works are both entertaining and worrying when she tackles the basic human condition with singular suggestive power. She is an unconventional artist, who uses choreographed sequences in the formation of a reality where everyday events and actions are transformed and given new expressions. She creates cross-disciplinary works that have been described as beautiful, poetic, controversial and groundbreaking. Her works have been shown in some forty countries and her books and articles have been translated to several languages. www.efvalilja.se
Katy Dymoke
As director of Touchdown Dance since 1994 Katy has co-created projects and productions integrating visually impaired and sighted dancers. Katy works as a touch and movement based specialist with all ages and abilities. Dance Movement Psychotherapist and supervisor Katy undertook doctoral research into the impact of touch in her practice and has published on this topic. As director of Embody-Move, the Body-Mind Centering® UK training programme, Katy delivers BMC® training and sessions in diverse contexts.
Mayfield Brooks
Mayfield Brooks improvises while black and is based in Lenapehoking, the unceded land of the Lenape people, also known as Brooklyn, New York. brooks is a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer and wanderer. brooks teaches and performs practices that arise from Improvising While Black (IWB), their interdisciplinary dance methodology which explores the decomposed matter of Black life and engages in dance improvisation, disorientation, dissent and ancestral healing. brooks is the 2021 recipient of the biennial Merce Cunningham Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a 2021 Bessie / New York Dance and Performance Award nominee for their dance film, Whale Fall, a 2022 Danspace Project Platform artist and currently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.
Anouk Llaurens
Anouk Llaurens dances, teaches, researches and practices shiatsu. She has been involved in attentional practices since her encounter with the work of Lisa Nelson (Tuning Scores) in 1998. Through her current research, Anouk is investigating the notion of “experience as document” and develops what she calls “poetic documents” in the form of performances and participative practices. She teaches improvisation/choreography at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and in various dance and visual arts programs in Europe. She has contributed to the online publication Mind The Dance. She collaborates with the Belgian artist Julien Bruneau. She lives in Brussels. anoukllaurens.be
Eva Maes
Eva Maes, escaped, after obtaining a Master in History, to Cunningham Dance Studio (NY), where she enjoyed the presence of different dancers of several generations of the Merce Cunningham Company (Meg Harper, Louise Burns, Carol Teitelbaum, Foofwa d’Immobilité, Robert Swinston, e.a) as well as Merce Cunningham amongst her teachers. In 2003 she met Lisa Nelson´s ´Tuning Scores´ (a process leading to more workshops and collaborations with her and with the group ‘Tuning Space - Brussels and its humus) and started her studies at the School for Body-Mind Centering®, where she graduated as Practitioner (2006, USA), and as certified BMC® Teacher (2019, IT). She assisted Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen in various workshops in NY (2006, 2018), Brussels (2007), Bratislava (2006), Berlin (2013, 2016), Amsterdam (2013), Claremont (2019) and taught/ teaches BMC at Leben Nuova and Corporalmente, Licensed Training Programs BMC® in Italy and Brasil respectively, and at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp. Other collaborations in dance include Chantal Yzermans/Radical Low and Anouk Llaurens. She loves fluctuating between diverse educational, artistic and research geolocations. Both the project ´Embodiment Embroider´, concluded within the Master Dance- program at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, as well as the research project ´Transmitting the Body´, developed within the CORPoREAL-platform, emphasized a desire to continue exploring ´embodiment´ in relation to ´transmission´ as core themes of Dance. www.evamaes.wordpress.com
Julien Bruenau
Julien Bruneau is an artist working with presence, movement, drawing and language. His interest lies in the dynamic interplay between interiority and collectivity and takes shape in various formats: performance, installation, exhibition, publication, laboratory or transmission. He holds two master degrees, one in visual arts (ENSAV La Cambre, Bruxelles) and one in choreography (AMCh, Amsterdam) and completed the research programme THIRD (Das Research, Amsterdam). He writes and works as an editor in the field of artistic research and beyond, notably for oralsite.be and Revue Corps Objet Image (2016–2022). His first book, Fields, is published by Varamo Press in December 2022. Since 2020, he teaches Authentic Movement.
Defne Erdur
Defne Erdur is a mover, researcher and a therapist working in the fields of performing arts, health and education. She is trained in Contemporary Dance (PhD), Sociology (BA,MA), Inter-model Expressive Art Therapy and Creativity, Meditation (World Peace Initiative), and Trauma Healing (Somatic Experiencing, Integral Somatic Psychology, Full Embodiment, TRE, Deep Tissue Release and Trigger Point Massage Therapy). Having worked with pioneers in Somatics and different theraupeutic modalities, she is actively practising and researching towards a deeper understanding of the body as a bio-psycho-social whole. Invested in building safe, inclusive, and collaborative creative environments she offers workshops (Hunting Gathering Cultivating, Every Body Knows, Consent Improvisation) and residencies (MA-Pregnant Nothingness, Moving Library, Into the Light) around the world. She travels and works with different populations ranging from professional and amateur dancers to therapists; from women and LGBTQIA+ people to migrant children and youth. In the last years, she prioritised founding and coordinating humanitarian task forces for trauma prevention and healing (SE Turkey Covid-19 Support for Health Practitioners, SE Ukraine Task Force, World Human Relief-SE Turkey Earthquake Solidarity). Today she is recovering from burnout, reconnecting to her own resources and building her home. She believes in joy.
Pavleheidler
pavleheidler (they / them) (ADHD-autism) is a movement-and-word artist and activist, educator, curator and researcher. Their work-ing is meant to be encouraging of the continual re-form-ing in and of the emergent field of queer critical practice. www.pavleheidler.com
Deirdre Morris
Deirdre is an interdisciplinary site responsive installation and performing artist, educator, director and curator. Deirdre’s artistic work focuses on site relational somatics, contemplative practices, the nervous system, environmental ecology and social justice. Most recently in a series of short films, installations, & associated workshops: Land / Tree / Sky / Window, with collaborative partner Esther Baker Tarpaga. Deirdre’s work explores the relationship between organic wild world, man made structures & ideas and the stories & desires we place upon them. Deirdre directs her own project, ‘The Forgotten Body Remembers’, a site for relational somatics and contemplative practices and is one of the curatorial team for LACE#1. She received her MFA from the University of California Davis (2014), where she focused her studies on contemplative practices and the performing body. Deirdre is interested in mobilising embodied agency – through reciprocal relationships and deep states of meditation, that offer balm whenever possible. Deirdre spends her time in the forests and mountains around Santa Fe New Mexico whenever possible!
