Seminar: Sharing Symmetry
Maria Franesca Scaroni
and
Jess Curtis
have worked together since 2004, creating movement-based performances with Gravity in Berlin and San Francisco. They bring together a wealth of information from diverse practices including contemporary dance, contact improvisation, performance art, somatics and critical/practical theory.
The Symmetry Project is a journey through perception. Two naked
bodies interact through a highly structured improvisational score,
constricted in a specific physical habit; that of moving symmetrically,
relative to themselves or to each other. In this space of temporary
“habitus”, the two bodies are constantly tuning, reformulating the
perception of the self and of the other.
In the sharing of a central axis, spine, mouth, genitals, face, and
anus reveal their interconnectedness and centrality in embodied
experience.
Jess Curtis and Maria Francesca Scaroni want to share their
investigations and experiments around this improvisational performance
score with whoever is interested in exploring and unpacking concerns it
has raised as it has been presented in performance venues.
Issues for dancers and non-dancers, for bodies involved in their own
everyday performace, for fans of physical states and their consequences
on shown or performed actions:
intimacy as shared weight and perception
subject/object investigation
nudity as gate to vulnerability and exposure, care of our own
boundaries
rules as tools to experience a liberated state given by a
constriction
Note: This workshop involves extreme physical contact in a clothing optional setting. We will address a variety of possibilities regarding the setting of boundaries in terms of health, hygiene, and intimacy. Participants may elect to attend with a partner. Participants should also bring training clothes suitable for a dance class.