Aug 19th 2016

Open Workshops: WAVER project [free]

@ High Concept Labs

2233 S Throop St, Chicago, IL 60608

Opening Friday, August 19th, from 6PM - 8:30PM

On view through Friday, August 19th

• STUDY AND PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNITY for tangueros, butoh-ka, contact improvisers, physical theater artists, musicians, and creators of all stripes
• because we’ve received grant support, performers will be paid!
• no prior experience necessary to participate
• the seven workshop sessions are non-sequential; feel free to drop in anytime during the series

Led by Carole McCurdy and assisted by visiting dance artists, these FREE workshops, 6-8:30pm on 7 Fridays from August 19 to September 30, will explore movement and dance concepts as research for Carole’s WAVER project, which won grant funding this year from Chicago Dancemakers Forum. The workshops are open to all on a drop-in basis, but will also serve as a casual but engaging audition for those interested in committing to a rehearsal process beginning in October, then performing in work-in-progress showings in December 2016 and a complete production in 2017.

The WAVER project springs from an interest in experimenting with ideas and influences from both Argentine tango and butoh. (Although clichés and misconceptions abound, most people are familiar with tango as a genre. Butoh has had more limited audience: for more information about butoh, a postmodern dance form that questions our understandings of embodied existence, see links below.)

The workshops will explore intimacy and freedom in partnered movement, but will not be lessons in social dance. For those with experience in dance performance and/or butoh, this workshop series will introduce new approaches to partnered movement. For serious students of tango, this workshop series can be a means to increase awareness in the dynamics of partnering, playfully opening greater nuance in connections with space, groundedness, and musical interpretation.

Raymond Rorke, a ceramic artist, describes how free-flowing clay has “a dynamic tension between willful self-containment and a willingness to merge.” This phrase also describes an essential quality in tango, and it’s this quality the WAVER project will seek to explore.

Bodies balancing, genders mixing, we will find partners in one another… in a helium balloon… in the harp of a hammock… in a gravestone soft and light as a pillow…

Official Website

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