Sara Shelton Mann
Training as Performance Practice

being in the body

This workshop is about the practices of soloing, following and witnessing from neutrality.

Choice is a precious freedom. Participants train the mind and body to see through the eye of the heart. They listen to the body as our guide and progress through the inner and outer touchstones of breaking up patterns, until they hold a high frequency, knowing where they are, what they are doing and are aware of everything else in the room. The idea of choice and trusting the body seem to be different bedfellows. They are exquisite partners in the path of freedom.

Participants will dance a lot, sweat, laugh, track, use their peripheral vision, reset and set again, and fill up their imagination muscles untill they relax – it is fun.

Becoming an orchestra of one’s physical, energetic/emotional and spiritual body, any form of dance can be mixed and applied to this practice. Sometimes it can be the most interesting, when one has no prior training in a particular form. Tracking space and geometry will be added internally and externally to the score to increase sensitivity as well as creating instant choices and choreographic momentum.

Over the course of two and a half hours, we begin with a “Physical Practice” session, focusing on dancing and embracing freedom through movement. Following this, we move into “Portals of Perception”, where we engage our imaginative faculties through writing and perception exercises, while also expanding our visual, kinaesthetic, and auditory fields – building upon the insights gained from the earlier physical work.