Teaching
Dreaming Reality
Every night – without exception – you plunge into a dreaming reality. You are carried away by a flood of seemingly unrelated images, dramatic events, unforeseen meetings, incoherent developments, and unconventional resolutions. You wake up deeply moved, often wishing to erase this night’s journey.
“It was just a dream”, you say.
What if these nighttime adventures are not only an assemblage of coincidental pictures, but they weave a precise, clear, and deeply embodied image of your current life? What if they reveal to you a personalized, inner map depicting numerous choices you face, and possible responses to your reality?
Dreams are showing you where you are.
They are “news from the body”.
Every night, without exception, they present to you your deepest desires, challenges you are currently facing, and possibilities that exceed your rational thinking. If you can understand the poetic, nonlinear language of dreaming, an interactive, clear, and very actual map unfolds, and an accurate action presents itself. You are co – creating your waking reality.
In the work, we are diving into an embodied exploration of night and waking dreams, discovering how images move us, and how our choreographic choices transform inner landscapes. By navigating this on-going dialogue between material and imagined, a space of presence, bliss and response-ability unravels.
A singular dream is “opened” by the whole group, creating a communal space for experiencing a unique inner reality. We work with dream’s storyline, embodying singular images, developing their specific qualities, states they induce and movement materials they jolt. We move between images, experiencing transitions as a space of potential, from where choice arises. We follow the way in which images expand into narratives, and research how these storylines are woven and undone. We trace repeatable patterns, noticing the gifts and challenges of repetitions. Expanding on a pattern, we practice building choreographic materials and shifting between them with curiosity and ease. We expand on a pattern to find the right question, which unlocks dream’s secret, supporting a leap into an utterly new reality. Working with questions allows for a poetic way of composing, weaving materials in a non-linear, associative manner that fosters connections between seemingly unfamiliar movements. Working with questions teaches that images are a language. Speaking in image transforms our inner realities into tangible, unique choreographies.
The work combines intuitive ways of creating with conscious choreographic choices. By ‘shifting the eye’ within and without the body, by moving between different orientation points: time, space, texture, relationship, emotion, one learns to remain receptive and responsive while performing. This practice is done through solo research and with a presence of an observer. It includes working hands on and hands off, developing instant choreographies while being supported by the gaze of the other. It is moving between imagery exercises, dreaming, dancing, drawing, writing, and speaking. It is where you dream yourself into being.
@ Nawojka Gurczyńska
Shifting the eye
The process of dance that combines intuitive ways of creating with conscious, choreographic decisions, empowering performers to connect with their dreaming as a legible source of knowledge and the foundation for creativity. It is a practice of an on-going becoming, moving playfully between real and imagined, between doing and observing, expanding an awareness of the endless flow of impulses, able to choose which one to follow, form and embody. By ‘shifting the eye’ simultaneously within and outside oneself, one notices the focus of attention. In following it, engaging with it and expanding it through the body, we will discover and work with the creative potential of every moment. The practice is aiming at unfolding the body into a multi-layered, ever flowing, response-able entity, available to the continuous emergence of sensations, feelings and images, curiously creating from what currently is.
Throw a glance
This workshop takes a closer look at ways in which cinematic tools can be applied to choreography. Montage, camera work or the "eye" of a film director/ directress are a huge inspiration in my artistic research. I will offer scores and exercises sourcing from many years of practice on the crossroads of in dreamwork, imagery, and choreography. We will explore diverse perspectives, shifting attention within and without the body, between body as a whole and a detail, body as a process and body as a form. During the workshop we will play with moving dancers' and audiences' awareness between real and imagined, composing movements, scenes, and instant choreographies from the question of the gaze and inner looking. This work highlights the subjective nature of perspective, and the active role of an observer. The practice is done individually and with a partner, always within a greater ecosystem of other participants’ looks. Simply throw a glance!