th/fo\d as Somatic/Artistic Practice - DRIFT

th/fo\d as Somatic/Artistic Practice

DRIFT - a catalytic conversation in art making

Blended workshop (live and online)

Susan Sentler & Glenna Batson

Saturday/Sunday, 15 th and 16 th of October 2022

1 – 4 pm GMT both days

Artistic creation hinges on experiencing the moving body in new ways. In this workshop, Susan and Glenna invite you to explore the aesthetic dynamics hidden within a simple fold. Drawing upon their decade of collaboration, the two facilitators provide a portal through which to explore the multidimensionality of folding. They offer this entry into movement creation through an approach to somatic embodiment and multimedia play.

Consider the theme: Drift. The word drift finds its derivation in Old English, meaning, ‘a being driven’ (like snow, perhaps). As well, drift suggests a sense of ‘what one is getting at,’ (as in, ‘Do you catch my drift?’). When embodied and embedded in creative process, drift becomes a powerful agent in art making.

Far from passive and listless, drift acts as an embodied nemesis in the controlling mind. Drifting is a catalytic agent, one that allows both mind and body to let go of habitual control and the limits of finality, common obsessions that interfere with creativity - or simply, what comes next.

Drift ramifies…meeting an array of fragments and phantoms as it suspends in space-time. Drift-as-fold seeps and slips effortlessly through embodied portals where gravity gives way to free fall. Multidimensional and dimensionless, drifting folds invite the moving witness to rise, loom, dissipate and re-emerge in the liminal, shapeshifting matrix. Here, participants discover new pathways that connect embodied perception with the emergence of movement freedom.

Susan and Glenna invite everyone to contribute to creating the group field, an immersive, sensory-rich environment. Here, participants can enter and exit in the en/unfolding continuum, exploring the many manifestations of folds adrift. They will also be invited to partner in a process of making with different forms of multi-media – paper, fabric, photography, drawing, and filming. A multiplicity of images arise from the experiential mix of material ‘batter’ – material/matter to curate building a generative archive/anarchive. As the emergence of these novel images transcend the moment and become art, a rich tether to embodied creativity.

Come enjoy the disparate possibilities of entangling in the fold, whose drift has no origin or end.

This workshop is part of the growing archive of artistic research co-evolved by Susan and Glenna, known formerly as Human Origami, and now as, The F/ol\d as Somatic/Artistic Practice.

Fee

£60 for two days (3 hours each day, 1 pm – 4 pm GMT)

£40 either Saturday or Sunday

PayPal shsentler@gmail.com by 12 th of October

For those attending live, please come to:

London Performance Studios

Penarth Centre, Penarth St

London SE15 1TR UK

https://www.londonperformancestudios.com/

Studio 5

Note: the studio will be available from 12 noon on both days. However, we will begin the workshop(s) at 13.00.

If you need to contact us prior to arrival, please phone +44(0)7779162507.

Bio sketches

Susan Sentler, BA, MACP is an independent dance artist, multi-media maker/choreographer, teacher, researcher, director and performer. She has taught and practiced globally in and around the field of dance for over 30 years. Susan’s creative, pedagogic and research practice is inter/trans-disciplinary, anchored by a honed somatic relationship to image. She focuses on gallery/museum contexts creating/collaborating on ‘responses’ or ‘activations’ within exhibitions as well as durational installations orchestrating moving/still image, objects, sound and absence/presence of the performing body. Her work has been exhibited and performed in the UK, USA, Europe, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore. Currently she is Head of Learning and Teaching for the Faculty of Education at RAD.

Glenna Batson, ScD, PT, MA is an independent lecturer, researcher, mentor and performer. For five decades, she has honed a trans-disciplinary approach to the study of embodiment, bridging between dance, science, phenomenology, and somatic studies. Professor emeritus of physical therapy (Winston-Salem State University), internationally recognised teacher of the Alexander Technique, Fulbright Senior Specialist, Glenna currently teaches Somatics at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD).