Workshops - content details (english)

German texts will be added later.

Language in the workshops will be german by default but english, if there are participants who do not speak german)

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21.-23.9. (within inmotion festival)

Making art from the moment – improvising with movement, body, voice

(Surreal Improv Basic Workshop)

Experiencing your body as an infinite source of impulses and qualities; develop specific movement qualities, connecting them with feeling states; taking impulses from space and partners; the eyes of the improviser; realizing being watched and make it a source; basic ensemble improvisation principles, such as similarity and contrast, using time and space to get specific, interesting things going on

20.-22.10.

Language and imagination

fertile bodymind - sounds, words, pictures and stories from the moment 

This workshop is about lifting the barriers between body awareness, expression through language and imagination. We explore channels leading from body awareness through pictures and feelings to spoken words, phrases, dialogues and maybe even stories. How can what moves us flow into language without letting our body awareness run dry?

 We will open up to different qualities of the voice as well as to different forms of texts and see what they to pur body and feeling states.

 Furthermore we research how develop and interweave narratives, stories monologues and dialogues where we (and the audience) stay interested in what comes next?

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1.-3.12.

solos and duets

My improvisation

(counts as Surreal Improv Basic Workshop)

This workshop is about taking the focus and enjoying it.  It is about opening up to the godess of performance and trust that she will deliver, through you. It is about telling the audience something important, although you have no clue what it is. It is about failing, surrendering and discovering the truth of the moment.  It is about having your back up against the wall and about being the hero who miracously turned the wheel and saved the day.

So this workshops asks you: what do I artistically care for now? What is my decision? With nobody else to hinder you or to put the blame on, this can be a disturbing but also very valuable experience.

And it is about supporting. Making your partner shine, completing the picture, fill in the missing voice and exploring a couple of ways how this might be done.

In order to do this this we will work on deepening our understanding of the principles of instant composition: Similarity and contrast, framing and reframing, supporting and interrupting, giving and taking space, direct and indirect contact, musical and spatial connections.

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19.-20.1.2024

Music

The flow of Now

In this workshop we will approach our improvisations from an musical angle. Which means that we listen to the musical flow, the dynamics, the rhythms, the acoustic qualities of movements, sounds, and words. Researching the joy of delicious repetitions, experimenting with the rate of change and the concept of different voices. listening and giving over to underlying harmonies, dynamics and rhythmical structures. Musical awareness is a major instrument to let the material develop a life of it‘s own and surpass our limited means of construction and willful design. 

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 Special: 17.2. Poetry and Movement (together mit Semier Insayif)

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5.-6.4.

Physical contact

touching moves

Touch in theater improvisation can be a dangerous thing. (Leonard Cohen sings: ‚I could not feel, so I tried to touch‘ – was that inspired from watching an improvisation?) It can transform proud, energetic individuals into amorph heaps of bodies and inert masses without direction and dynamics or reproduce terrible cliches.

But touch is also a source of deeply emotional experiences and in the sense of the word touching scenes. In this workshop we will develop touch in improvisations so that it feeds the emotional qualities as well as musicality, dynamics and spatial awareness. We will explore the manifold of touching relationships and their possible connections with sound and language.

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24.- 26.5.

Ensemble Improvisation & collective Dreaming

Together we dive

In the first part of the workshop we will focus on how to improvise in a group with movement, sound, language.  How to apply the Basic principles of instant composition in group. Learning to deal with the ego, giving over to the group humbly, as well es being totally inhumble and introducing the new thing into the group when it’s time. How to as an ensemble direct the focus of the audience. Taking and giving focus; Establishing  and developing patterns and themes. Using scores and rules to discover unknown territory.

The second part of the workshop will enable us to collectively dream

We don’t make dreams, they rather happen to us. In dreams we experience what engages us beneath our conscious busyness and beyond rational and morale boundaries. In this workshop we aim to access the same sources that fuel our dreams.  We will work on the lightness of improvisation, as well as on “letting it happen” rather than forcing it.  It being movement, voice, language, imagination, playing together. We will train holding back judgement, fostering witnessing, wondering and giving over to what comes next. At the end of the workshop we will let collective dreams come into being.