Martin Keogh	Workshop description	Rates	Registration form	Links	Location

The Fundamentals of Ease

(This is an advanced level training-not appropriate for beginners)

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WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:

photo by John Bainbridge

Where: Berkeley, CA, USA @ Sawtooth Studios, 2525 Eight Street (@ Dwigth Street)

When: one weekend in Spring 2010

What:

People often refer to someone having a swimmer's body, a ballet body, or a weight lifter's body. What does the Contact Body look and feel like? And where does it find its ease?
In this (week-long/weekend) workshop look to investigate these qualities:
* A pliant strength
* A supple and resilient responsiveness
* Limbs that move autonomously from one another
* Movement that's both organized and released
* A visceral appreciation for the spiral
* An ability to see and venture into the backspace
* A greater capacity for sensation, risk, and pleasure

Join us -- in good company -- with bodywork, games, some sweat, and the skills and thrills of the form, we will cultivate the fundamentals of ease in our dancing.

We will explore:

• Moving from a base of sensation
• Dancing with a shared central axis
• Seeking ease in going off balance
• Finding the spontaneous acrobatics of the form
• Spending more time in nuance, disorientation, and extended follow-through

We will settle into a base camp of mindfulness, and then set out to investigate the wilderness of disorientation. We will enter the forest where there's no trail, jump into the dark, swim into what might be a cave, and build a tolerance for waiting in the unknown. Special emphasis on releasing the neck and pelvis, and surprising ourselves in flight and extended follow-through.

Participants should already have a sense of spherical dancing and using their hands as landing gear. We will be exploring some advanced falling techniques, so they should have the basics of falling alone and with a partner together.

Participants are also encouraged to bring their own questions to share with the group and possibly work on during the workshop.

Here are some questions/inspirations from those who shared them in their Registration Form

- What I love about CI is the possibility of moving in ways that go from gentle and slow to wild and fast, while always staying tuned-in and connected. Endlessly fascinated with how connectivity and freedom/spontaneity are two sides of the same coin. In all of this, increasing the ease and fluidity of the dance is an ongoing quest ...

- Movemennt quality of yielding: finding new ways to play with and integrate; integration of weight sharing, core strength and a sense of lightness in the dance (how to do they inter-relate...)

- CI and performance- what is interesting from a non CI spectators view? Finding pathways of ease down and back up from the floor...

- I integrating props, use of vertical space ...

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To me, Martin's style of teaching is one which is image-oriented, sensational, focused on dancing, provocative, and drawing from the emotions to support the physical work. There are surprise directions found in the moment, and those which are quietly pre-planted. This experience of tracking the classes helped me to articulate qualities which I have felt before in his classes, and for Martin, the process also served as a sometimes flattering and sometimes startling mirror of what happened in the classroom.

(Brenton Cheng, June, 1997)

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