Over 4 weekends, you are invited into a communal, embodied and reflective space to consider your choreographic practice in relation to your lived experience. Following on from the Artist Lab in September 2024, Shivaangee returns to The Place for an extended deep dive into their practice.
Through specific improvisational scores, artists are invited to experience + reflect on:
How our cycles of motivation and demotivation are rich, expressive and generative
How collective experiences of disorientation can hold playfulness, re-orientation and rest
How we can connect to our autonomy in the midst of uncertainty, not knowing, and chaos
Each of the four days will be intricate and carefully developed, held by collective rituals of moving together, reflecting together and resting together. Readings and texts will be optionally offered ahead of each week, to shape conversations and discussions during the session. Though dance experience is not specifically required to take part, it is expected that you can be comfortable in non-verbal improvisations, and that you are in dialogue with your own artistic practice.
For more information on the research and principles informing this workshop series, feel free to check out
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out on shivaangee@gmail.com.
SESSION 3 : SATURDAY 14/06: ON SELF-LOCATION AS AN ANTI-RACIST PRACTICE
There is striking overlap between the way that white supremacy and other systems of normativity continue to shape our thinking and our culture. Part of that power comes from posing as ideology-free or ‘neutral’ in their existence, so that any deviation from them is seen as a deviation, and not simply another behaviour.
In Session 3 of this series of 4 workshops, we will consider:
How can each of us practise locating ourselves within larger paradigms, structures and ideologies?
How can this practice of locating ourselves be liberating for us and others around us?
How can locating yourself within your artistic practice be inspiring for what you do next?
These workshops are designed for professional artists who crave a reflective, discursive and improvisational space in which to consider their own practice, their principles and their desires. For more information and booking, please click here.
Suggested Resources for Session 3:
(Online Article) Jade Saab, The Myth of the ‘Free Thinker’
(Online Article) Shivaangee, Paranoid Delusions: Being An Outsider to Contemporary Dance
(Book) Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology
SESSION 2: SUNDAY 08/06: ON ORIENTATION & DISORIENTATION
Co-existing with multiple systems and collectivities that all move in different ways / at different speeds leaves us feeling disorientated.
In Session 2 of this series of 4 workshops, we will consider:
How do each of us manage our own disorientation? What are our points of orientation?
How can we ‘practise’ disorientation, and in doing so, find play, mischief and creative energy?
What does disorientation tell us about the way that spaces are structured, and for whom?
These workshops are designed for professional artists who crave a reflective, discursive and improvisational space in which to consider their own practice, their principles and their desires. For more information and booking, please click here.
Suggested Resources for Session 2:
(Book) Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology
(Poem) Brenda Shaughnessy, I Have A Time Machine
SESSION 1: SATURDAY 31/05: ON FORCED PARTICIPATION AND AUTONOMY
We are forced to partake in many collective systems. Our participation is often not chosen, but is a given. Whether it is a class, cohort, family, company, institution, society, ethnic community, national population, capitalism, patriarchy, genocide.
As artists in studios and in collective, collaborative practices, how do our current notions of ‘participation’ affect us? How do we re-enforce these kinds of participation on other people? How can we multiply our understanding of participation, so that we can exist in collective systems with more ease, autonomy and energy?
These workshops are designed for professional artists who crave a reflective, discursive and improvisational space in which to consider their own practice, their principles and their desires. For more information and booking, please click here.
Suggested Resources for Session 1, downloadable here
(Paper) Kai Van Eikels, What Parts of Us Can Do with Parts of Each Other (and When)
(Article) Jo Freeman, The Tyranny of Structurelessness