The Gesture of a Story

A workshop with Yewande YoYo Odunubi exploring storytelling as a form of knowledge transmission.

What can happen in the space between the story we receive and the story we tell? We warmly invite you to a two-part workshop commissioned by Pina and delivered by Yewande YoYo Odunubi at Rose Choreographic School on Tuesdays 3 and 10 Nov, exploring storytelling and gesturing as sites for bodily transmission of meaning.
We will think together about the stories we carry through our personal and shared histories and use movement, voice, writing, sound, objects and improvisation to experiment with different ways of receiving and transmitting stories, while playing with the physicality and materiality of written language.
Using Pina magazine's short stories as its cue, the two-part workshop develops a series of activities to centre gesture as a means to recall meaning, respond to what is unfolding, and open up a possibility that did not exist a moment earlier.

The event is open to all, and attendance to both sessions is encouraged but not required. Tickets are based on a Pay What You Can inclusive model. The copies of Pina will be available at the space.

Yewande YoYo Odunubi is an artist, researcher and cultural producer whose practice revolves around the enquiry: "what does the body need to dream?" Approaching the body beyond a singular, fixed form, identity and/or function, she explores how we see, read, shape and practise ourselves. Her practice considers what might constitute a poetics of the body, working with movement, performance, film, sound, text, textiles and facilitation as means of translation, experimentation and dialogue with the body's present and imagined possibilities.
Drawing on freestyle-improvisation as both a choreographic and pedagogical methodology, her practice explores how theory, memory and experience can be processed, translated and gestured in / through the body. Attuned to the interior as a location of agency (Kevin Quashie), she investigates sensuous and rhythmic modes of knowing and the possibilities for movement, relation and being that emerge in space.

Pina, founded in 2024, is a portable, printed exhibition space. It functions as a commissioning platform, collaborating with artists to create exhibitions existing solely within 60 pages of the magazine, and pairing these with short stories. Pina issue #3 presents exhibitions by American Artist and C.B. Evans, short stories by Lola Olufemi and Orion J Facey, and conversations between the artists and Che Gossett and Dean Spade, respectively.

Programme outline:

Session One: The stories we carry and that carry us
3 Nov, 7–9pm
Through language, collective storytelling, movement and sound, this session explores how stories and their meanings shift through repetition, imagination and exchange: what a story makes possible, what it fixes in place, and what remains unsaid.
Materials: Pen and paper will be available, but participants are welcome to bring their own notebooks and writing materials.

1. Arriving in the body
Breath and Movement

2. The man who was once a father
Writing, Voice and Repetition

3. Echo, distort, pass
Voice, Sound and Movement

4. The blank who was once a blank
Writing, Sound and Movement

5. Closing
Group Sharing and Reflection

Session Two: In the space between us
10 Nov, 7–9pm
This session explores how stories, memories and experiences move between people and change as they are shared, imagined and reinterpreted. Using objects as starting points, participants explore the traces of time and memory, and the connections that emerge through listening, movement and sound.
Materials: Participants are to bring an object that holds a story they feel comfortable sharing and exchanging with others within the group. The story can be personal, imagined or somewhere in between. Pen and paper will be available, but participants are welcome to bring their own notebooks and writing materials.

1. Arriving in the body
Breath, Movement and Mirroring

2. The before game
Collective Storytelling, Movement and Sound

3. An object, a shared story part I
Sharing Objects

4. An object, a shared story part II
Paired Storytelling, Movement and Sound

5. Closing
Group Sharing and Reflection

Images are by the artist, and the image of Yewande YoYo Odunubi by Elena Cremona