Solo “Partnering” Workshops
Bi-weekly during the quarantine on Zoom via @freeskewl and independently
When we dance solo, who or what dances with us? Are we just one body or a multiplicity? How does the material of contact and partnering inform solo movement? How does the solo mover redefine partnership and ensemble? Are we solo when we address the materials and obstacles present in our environment? Are we partnered by absence when we practice physical distance?
In my pedagogy, I have been working to develop solo options whenever presenting contact, partnering, or other hands-on exercises. This solo material can open up many of the sensations found in partner work such as support, space, impulse, listening presence, clear sense of gravity, and even surprise. For this class, we will be using our own hands as well as contact with surfaces and objects. We will also consider the solo body as an ensemble. May this feed us in times of physical distance and contribute toward more options for moving alone and together in our futures.
Donations for class ($1-25) will be going to Pioneer Valley Workers Center Undocumented Workers Fund. You can donate directly there or venmo me Lailye-Weidman and I will do the donation steps.
https://pvworkerscenter.org/undocu-fund/
teaching/learning
Dan Van Note, Brooke Huguley, Benin Gardner, Tiz Rome, Blythe Wild, and Whealon Costello in Current, a dance work made collaboratively with all 21 students in Dancing Modern 1: An Introduction to Moving, Making, and Performing in Context, taught by Lailye Weidman at Hampshire College, Fall 2018
I conceive of dance as a forum for embodied dialogue on critical issues and as a powerful mode of research and action. When I teach, the material or activities at hand are subject to questioning and reinterpretation. Any concept I present gets refracted through the collective discovery of a group of bodies moving and engaging in conversation together. A process of critical inquiry unearths multiple possibilities where before there may have been only one. Students’ responses, their resistance and their desires, guide us deeper into the material and deliver me into a sea of questions that propel my art and teaching practices.
Workshop Descriptions
Collective Tools and Obstacles: a workshop in ensemble improvisation
How do tension and difference bring us into togetherness? Can group negotiation and conflict facilitate dynamic choreography? How does dancing expand notions of collectivity and collective action?
In this workshop, we will address these questions through movement practices and improvisation scores that operate on consent, consensus, and interdependency as well as others in which the roles of “leader” and “follower” shift frequently. Rather than attempt to move together seamlessly, we will highlight the work and negotiation it takes to share a dance. We will also explore solo dancing as a site for consensus, dissent, and multiplicity.
Taught at Bowdoin College, ME; The Dance Studies Association Annual Conference at the University of Malta; and Lightbox Performance Space, Detroit, MI
Deríve (Improvisational Walks)
Deríve is an embodied philosophy—a practice of moving through the urban landscape with no destination nor map but rather an openness to being moved by what we encounter. These journeys yield new ways of experiencing familiar environments as well as insights that can be utilized to address space and place in artmaking, dance composition, and design.
Deríve workshops led at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA; Williams College, Williamstown, MA; Elysian Park Museum at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Thresh out/Bounce off
This workshop is an interactive research lab in which participants share skills and build scores to facilitate the generation of language, writing, and other discourse directly from dance practice. What are our methods for asking questions of and about dance practice? When we talk about dance, what do we leave out, what do we include? How do we get real, air our criticisms? How do we engage in discussions that feel surprising, generative, uncomfortable, and new? This workshop is meant to feed the creative processes as well as our relationships with fellow dancers and dance communities. We will be moving, writing, and talking.
Taught at Lion’s Jaw, Boston (2017) and as part of a residency at A.P.E. Ltd Gallery in Northampton with Meredith Bove
Modern/Contemporary Technique
This technique class includes phrasework as well as somatic, improvisational, and mindful training of our moving bodies. We will work with gravity, find dynamic relationships between periphery and center, play with points of initiation, activate our focus, and use imagery to clarify tone and quality. Inside a steady flow of movement, we will meet tasks and phrases that develop our endurance, concentration, and rhythmic and spatial precision. Partnering exercises may be included to expand options for finding support and moving through space.
Semester-length Modern/Contemporary technique courses (int/adv level) taught at Hampshire College, the University of Illinois, and Marlboro College; individual workshops at the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Moving Target Boston, and Moving Target Portland