Physical attention is key to communication. But do we actually understand the varieties of attention? Do we get its significant influence on our relationships? And, what’s touch got to do with it? Everything.
Dance teaches us that embodiment is a creative act. Contact Improvisation teaches us to articulate that creativity in coordination with the physics of motion … and how to do that together. Communication between partners and within ensembles is key to the expansive range of creative play we can experience. In this workshop we explore how the dimensions of our communication are organised by our ability to share knowledge across duets, trios, quartets and ensembles. At issue is that our habits of attention are trained since childhood by cultural practices that constrict and constrain our abilities, and our instinctual know-how. By ReWilding our attention, we can stretch beyond the habits of our identity, the limitations of our singularity, and the pre-conditioning of our relationships.
This is a personal and a collective voyage, which is made more accessible by pedagogic practices similar to trance inductions in which the dancer is given permission and control as they are guided, while dancing, through specific attention training. This is an option for each person. Releasing entrenched patterns of action and response, our old forms of embodiment, we can become fresh, strange, and undiscovered to ourselves … and one another! Then dancing becomes filled with new intelligence and purpose. Together we can amplify our interior and exterior networks of exchange via different scales and systems of knowing. We then have nurtured the development of articulate embodiments, and found creative practices in which the dance begins within the artistry of our attention. Our goal is to play, play well, and play full-out.
