This year, for the first time ever, we’re opening the doors to our studio to everyone interested in meeting the artists contributing to the LACE symposium! Come join us in this series of open level classes, meet the artists and the team behind the event, and explore the world of dance practice that is being developed in the context of artistic research! No previous academic or research experience necessary.
Monday, July 14
Zander Porter invites participants of all backgrounds—across spectrums of movement experience, (dis)ability, and (dis)embodiment—to a movement workshop exploring the relationship between emotion and expression. Drawing from their ongoing choreographic production and research project 3M0T1NG (“emoting”), Zander leads a series of specific and imaginative relational exercises that invite participants to “emote” through facial and bodily gesture and gaze, mirror one another, and experiment with the (de)construction of collective attention and the characterisation, playfulness, porousness of “identity”.
Together, the group will practice guided psychosomatic “micro-ceremonies”—small ceremonies that focus on noticing how feelings (don’t) arise, move through body/bodies, and are reflected in self/others through various selections for expression. Differences between expressive and “un-expressive,” visible and unreadable, eyeballs and sapphire lenses will become clearer.
Tuesday, July 15
This is a dance practice class with a favourite improvisation score at its heart, a favourite movement task that for Nicola never gets old, just folds and creases in the best ways. Afterwards you will feel nourished and gathered-in and quietly ready for the day ahead. It is a class that makes sense in a favourite t-shirt kind of way: a lot of familiar, a bit of awkward, very much ‘just as you are’. Half is welcome, slow is welcome, not-yet -awake is welcome, soft attention is welcome. Expect some guided alone-time, your own movement, partnering, touch on back, touch to hands, stillness and listening as a key calm resource.
The class is open to everyone—all levels and backgrounds welcome.
Thursday, July 17
Embroidery and Ballet is inspired by Rachel’s shared interest in craft, technique, detail, and the breaking down of traditional rules and expectations. The class explores how seemingly outdated systems as living tools for expression, reflection, and creativity can be related and reinterpreted.
The class begins with simple ballet-based movement, followed by basic embroidery techniques and guided improvisational tasks. Participants explore the sensory connections between these two practices: How do they link, interrupt, follow rhythm, shape space, or tap into muscle memory through both movement and stitch?
No prior dance or embroidery experience is needed. Supplies for embroidery will be provided. The workshop is open to everyone—all levels and backgrounds welcome.
Friday, July 18
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This class explores embodied attunement - through stretch and slowing. A practice of pleasurable resistance where stretch and strain share breath, thinking with space, speed, weight, and the felt edge of effort. The movement becomes a series of small interruptions - a practice of noticing, of staying with uncertainty, of folding back in on yourself. The practices lean on the root word tendere - to stretch, to reach toward, to hold attention in tension. Tension requires relationality. Hindrance meets support. Effort is redistributed as bodies brace one another and stay with the labour of stretch, micro-shifts that accumulate into a direction. What is present, what calls attention, what is turned toward, and what is turned away.
The class is open to everyone—all levels and backgrounds welcome.