The workshop taking place between December 19th and 30th in Nazareth is an intensive 8-day pedagogy course for young professional dancers, emerging dance and art teachers. The aim of the course is to provide the participants with the necessary teaching skills for using dance as a therapeutic tool, especially within community context and when working with various target groups, such as children in schools and community centres, disabled persons, women in villages, violated women in rehabilitation centres, or refugees. The course will focus on educational and teaching skills, development psychology and dance therapy tools, as well as non-violent communication skills.
This is an intensive pedagogy course for young professional dancers and emerging dance and art trainers. With participants we will aim at developing fundamental skills for employing dance as a therapeutic tool, especially in terms of incorporation of local contexts, spaces, and understanding subjectivities of narratives of target groups; e.g. children in schools, disabled persons in community centres, women in villages, violated women in rehabilitation centres, or refugees in their make-shift places. The design of this workshop focuses on educational and teaching methodologies, development psychology and dance therapy tools, and raising sensitivities to prejudices as approach to tackling violence and violent communication.
The Morning Classes will focus on dance technique and anatomy. Axis Syllabus elements will physically illustrate anatomical knowledge covered in these classes. Axis Syllabus is a lexicon of human movement principles. It is a system for cross-correlating movement principles, bringing pertinent information about training the body and movement practice into an accessible format. This consolidation process helps to clear up misunderstandings and question traditions that are outdated, sponsoring the protection and enhancing the skills of today’s dancers, teachers and choreographers.
Trainer: Daniel Davis
Intention:
To identifying resources. To build trust. To orient to the kinds of work I will offer this week.
We will use playful games to introduce ourselves and create. These will offer a gentle entry into creating collaborative choreographies. The end of the class will introduce you to my work creating performance with under-represented populations. I will speak about my work with EchoTheaterSuitcase project: a group bringing together military veterans and non-veterans in collaboration; The Artistic Ensemble of San Quentin: a performance group inside of a California Prison; and On Contested Grounds: a current work with US college students making performances in response to interviews and information about life in occupied Palestine.
Intention:
To continue to build trust. To learn the possibilities and limitations of our work space. To orient to the visual field. To introduce Moment Work.
In this meeting we will get to know the space we will be working in for the coming days through a number of exercises sourcing visual information to create physical material. We will also learn the basics of Moment Work, developed by the Tectonic Theater Project. Moment Work is a compositional process we will return to throughout the week in developing content-based interdisciplinary performance material. As a group, we will also choose a theme to focus our investigations.
Intention:
To introduce tools to shift between movement, text, and image.
In this class, we will use interdisciplinary sourcing techniques to springboard between visual material, improvised movement, the written word, and set choreography. These processes will quickly develop personal content and movement material that can be collaged and combined into more complex thematic work. We will return to moment work as a structure on which to explore the new material.
Intention:
To Introduce useful understandings and applications of Somatic Experiencing.
This session will begin with a brief overview of how Somatic Experiencing (developed by Dr. Peter Levine) views trauma as a physiological process in the nervous system. We will look at how some of those understandings have shaped the way the workshop, thus far, has been planned and shaped. After a basic overview, we will do a few exercises from Somatic Experiencing intended to help re-negotiate traumas around boundaries. We will take this work into writing and composing practices.
Intention:
To introduce Dance Movement Therapy (DMT).
Dance Movement Therapy is the therapeutic use of movement to promote emotional, social, cognitive and physical integration of the individual. DMT recognizes body movement as an implicit and expressive instrument of communication and expression. Movement and dance support intellectual, emotional, and motor functions of the body. As a form of expressive therapy, DMT looks at the correlation between movement and emotion.
Intention:
To introduce Authentic Movement (AM). To offer some tools to bridge AM with composing practices.
This class will begin with a practice created by Janet Adler, called Authentic Movement. In this practice one person moves for a period of time with their eyes closed, following impulses and tracking their internal experience. Their partner witnesses their movement, tracking their own thoughts and sensations. We will take this practice into the creation of performance material.
Intention:
To integrate.
This class session will begin with a check-in about these 8 days of working together. It will serve as a buffer if there is any unfinished business from the other days. With the time remaining we will use various structures to integrate, combine, and collage the material that’s been created throughout the week.
Trainers: Nadia Arouri & Lina Höhne
These sessions will build on the training conducted by Lina Höhne in August/September 2016 (seh below). As such, we will continue to focus on developing trainers’ skills, capacities, and working with participants’ creativity. We will address adequate class planning, class duration, teachers’ responsibilities, voice, choice of music, how to build a teaching toolbox, writing protocols and class reports amongst others. This workshop will especially focus on developing differentiated and individual teaching methodologies of each of the participating trainers.
Introduction to Pedagogic and Didactic Skills, Tools and Discourse
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An intensive eight-day pedagogy course for young professional dancers, emerging dance and art teachers will be offered as part of this intervention. The aim of the course is to provide the participants with the necessary teaching skills for using dance as a therapeutic tool, especially within community context and when working with various target groups, whether children in schools and community clubs, disabled persons, women in villages or violated women in rehabilitation centres. The course will focus on educational and teaching skills, development psychology and dance therapy tools, as well as non-violent communication skills.
Through the workshop the trainers will develop their delivery skills and the capacity to encourage and then work with the participants’ creativity. This section will cover adequate class planning, class duration, teachers’ responsibilities, voice, choice of music, how to build a teaching toolbox, writing protocols and class reports amongst others. This workshop will especially focus on developing differentiated and individual teaching methodologies of each of the trainers.
Day 1: Why Dance / Why with Target Group
Through practical experience and theoretical discussions the participants will reflect on “why do they dance” and “why do they think dance might be good for children”.
Day 2: Class Planning
Suggested class structure for a technique class and a creative class
1. Length of time
2. Suggested structure for use in a children’s class
3. Aims and main elements of each section
Planning wheel
What/ How/Where/With Whom
Day 3: Class Content and Target Group
Day 4 + 5: Excursion, Experiential Learning towards “Dealing with Circumstances”
Day 6: Responsibilities of the Teacher & Anatomy
What does the dance teacher need to do before the class starts to ensure safety and what are the responsibilities of the teacher during the class? This includes preparation, class management and issues of child protection.
Day 7: Improvisation and Flexibility
Day 8 +9: Practice
Creating a tool box
Suggested books and music
How to develop an individual practice / teaching methodology
Trainers: Daniel Davis, Nadia Arouri, Natasha Aruri
Departure:
10:30 am, Thursday 22.Dec.2016
Return:
7:30 pm, Friday 23.Dec.2016,
Accommodation in Haifa covered.
In these two days we will combine and alternate between topics and skills visited in the Dance Therapy and the Pedagogy and Dance Education Tools classes in sessions of unconventional settings. The purpose is to train sensitivity to physical environments both as influencing factor and spaces of possibilities. We will focus on understanding our bodies as receptors to energies and non-tangible elements of smell, noise, colour, and mental provocations on one hand; and on the other as an energy that is capable of normalizing alternative socio-spatial behaviours and practices. Details will be provided with launch of workshop.
Trainer: Natasha Aruri
In the second half of this workshop we will dedicate 6 sessions of 90 minutes to explore in open discussion format issues of sub-/conscious racisms and methods for identifying and tackling them. Taking the triad of space, socio-cultural prejudices, and the body as entry points we will converse about issues of identity, perception, forms of violence, and consciousness to everyday communication and education as political acts. Two of the sessions will focus on universal concepts and methods, and four sessions will look at and critically reflect on experiments in creating community solidarities through dance in Palestine by I CAN MOVE trainers, which is concluding it’s Training of Trainers program with this workshop.
The last day of the workshop will focus on the integration and implementation of the discussed tools and techniques. The participants will each teach a 45-minute session to their fellow participants, integrating and applying the acquired knowledge. The trainers and the group as a whole will provide feedback, ensuring these sessions to be a valuable learning experience.
Nadia Arouri [Mag.a Phil]
dancer, choreographer and cultural manager. She is the founding and artistic director of YANTE – Youth, Art and Levante through which she has established herself as a mentor, motivational-speaker and consultant on human and community development especially through arts. She is currently working as a tutor and lecturer at various dance and cultural management programmes in Palestine, Austria, Germany and other European cities.
Natasha Aruri [Dr.Phil, M.Sc., M.Arch]
urbanist, architect and activist. Natasha worked east and north of the Mediterranean as a consultant, researcher, conceptor and manager. She is interested in domains concerned with cities of exasperated insecurities; spacio-politics of and resistance to (neo)colonialism; and facing uncertainties through people-based, dynamic strategies of spatial planning and design.
Daniel Davis [MFA in Dramatic Arts]
dancer, teacher and choreographer. Daniel is currently teaching at the Theater, Film, and Media Studies Program at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He has taught Contact Improvisation and Composition as well as Axis Syllabus for many years. Daniel has been applying his study of Somatic Experiencing to the creation of performance work with marginalized populations. He is currently developing an interdisciplinary performance with his students looking at intersectional connections between the experience of oppression in their own lives and the realities on the ground in Occupied Palestine.
