Workshop : Thea Patterson – Practices for Sideways Dances

Objective

“Practices for sideways dances” is the term I’ve developed for movement and dramaturgical practices, and an aestho-political commitment, that decentres the autonomous, individuated subject. It names a way of working and dancing that moves agency sideways from any singular position, toward the relational, the distributed, the more-than-one. It is a concept, but more importantly a practice and a speculative gesture. Through scores and propositions I ask: is it possible to situate my subjectivity outside my own centrifugal core? What if the body does not end at the edges of the skin? How might I be you? And you me? And how am I also the floor, the air, the view out the window? What happens when the dance forms outside my singular authorial hand? How does a distributed sideways subjectivity trouble human centrality?

This session offers scores and activations for distributing our dances, letting them emerge in the gaps.

Content

We will engage in scores and exercises in various groupings that redirect the origin of our dance and, that, or prioritize relations… some will be game like, some will be speculative, some will be telepathic, some will be somatic. We will practice listening, telekinetic empathy… we will sometimes do dances that move the body, and other times the dances may move through writing. We will pass our dances along, we will wear each others dances, as we also offer them back.

𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: English, questions in French and English

📷 Nellie De Boer