Words and Movement: A One Day Mini-Festival

Words & Movement invites participants from all artistic backgrounds to explore how text and motion, as individual and combined practices, can be catalysts for deepening your creative process. How can movement inform your writing? How can writing inform your movement practice? Through this event, we aim to cultivate collaborations and strengthen an artist’s main focus through a fusion of forms.

The curators will lead sessions in yoga, text, movement, and poetry as well as mentorship in individual and small group settings. Other activities will include guided artistic “speed dating,” fostering connections between participants through short sessions of idea sharing and observation, and an end-of-day Words & Movement Slam. The Slam is a focused hour to informally perform existing works or works-in-progress inspired by the day’s events.

Tentative schedule:

11:00- 11:30 Registration/Arrival

11:30 - 11:45 Group Welcome

11:45- 12:40 Yoga/Meditation/Words

12:45 - 1:30 Text/Poetry Workshop

1:30- 2:30 Break/Observe Classes on own

2:30- 2:45 Reflection on morning sessions

2:45 - 4:00 Movement/Text in Relationship

4:00- 4:45 Creative "Speed-Dating"

5:00-6:00 Break/preparation for slam

6:00 - 6:50 Movement and Words Open Slam

6:50 Ending circle

All events take place in Studio 7, located on the ground floor of The Dance Complex.

More Information about the Day's Events:

Yoga/Meditation/Words with Denise Washington, Akili Jamal Haynes and Born Bikim

Description coming soon!

Let Us Unload Before The Light with Jean-Dany Joachim

-A self-reflection on the known and undiscovered burdens that one carries

-A writing invitation via poetry & other genres...

-A meditation invitation via writing and spoken words

Movement/Text in Relationship with Peter DiMuro and members of PDM

This section of the day will be a crash course in methods and strategies on how to create text from movement, movement from text, and plant the seeds of a relationship of these elements in performance. The focus will be on what participants build organically, avoiding formulaic approaches.

Creative "Speed-Dating"

Continuing on the theme that “experts are among us”, participants will be led through a series of one on one meetings with other participants in quick active rounds of time, with the goal of sharing ideas, observations and tools that can help deepen each artist’s practice, and add to their creative toolbox.

Words and Movement Slam

A performance slam will combust from the day’s proceedings, with the focus on inspiration, rule-breaking and sharing a range of tried and true works as well as things newly made that day. We will have only 60 minutes - so under 5 minutes per person encouraged, and great things have been known to occur in a minute or less!

Curators:

Jean Dany Joachim

Anita Morson-Matra

Denise Washington

Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Dance Complex, 536 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, United States