Workshops 2023

Workshops 2023

Katy Dymoke
Touch – the reciprocal intersubjectivity of touch, and the pro-touch discourse

© David Lindsay
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Week 2, 17.7.–21.7.2023
09:30–11:30
Schmelz 10

Touch has been banished to the edges of professional practice and social acceptance, in education, health, and social care settings. The intricacies of touch are rarely mentioned, and many seek to address this non-touch discourse. In this workshop embodied experience of touch is offered, based on phenomenology, consciousness studies and Body-Mind Centering® to redefine touch as a primary sense reciprocal to movement and underlying and supporting the other senses, thinking and consciousness.

What is touch? What qualities of touch are there? What is the nature of the positive use of touch? Exploring the subjectivity, commonalities, and differences in experience due to societal diktat, personal experience, and different sensitivities. We will explore the dialogue of touch and its relation to movement. How does touch work as a non-visual form of communication and so is accessible to those without sight? Drawing on fundamentals established by Touchdown Dance from Contact Improvisation (by the founders Steve Paxton and Anne Kilcoyne) and developed by Katy using Body-Mind Centering® as an approach to the attention and intention of touch in a movement context. We will be addressing touch qualities as the underlying impulse for movement expression: contact with the floor, the space, with each other. We explore touch density, giving weight, we will explore different modalities, levels, and ways to dialogue.

We will explore the non-touch/don’t touch discourse. What are the socio-cultural factors behind the negative attitudes towards interpersonal touch? Is there such a thing as natural or neutral touch? Ascertaining consent and saying ‘no’ and addressing the topic of trust and non-hierarchical attitudes. We will practice contact that accommodates difference and is permeable to the unconscious aspects of self that find expression through touch and movement, rather than facilitate boundary breaking touch is a boundary setter.

Katy Dymoke
© David Lindsay
© Katy Dymoke