A SURPRISED BODY

för professionella dansare och koreografer

Ett samarbete mellan Kulturakademin, Dansalliansen och Danscentrum Väst

Kursbeskrivning

“The Surprised body project is a dance project that focus on a specific movement quality, on structured improvisation, on choreographic and compositional issues related to music and space. With the "A Surprised Body" workshop I share my personal approach to contemporary dance, based on release technique and influenced by the layering of the experiences made as dancer/choreographer and by my personal practice of tai chi chuan.

The workshop will be introduced by a class that combines tai chi chuan, floor work, hands-on exercises and movement sequences focusing on centre and gravity. The aim is on awakening the internal and external supports and allowing isolation in the limbs and flow in the movement. The image of a body in a constant alert, escaping from a habitual daily body and from any kind of routine. A body more focused on reacting than on acting, on receiving, rather than doing.

The workshop will be an occasion to search for specific qualities of disarticulated movement, layering the experience throughout several proposals and improvisations, challenging and intensifying the body awareness, by approaching the movement avoiding tactics and routines. After a first part dedicated to ground the principals of the work, the workshop will articulate through a series of investigations on the movement and structured improvisations, intended as a conceptual, but also physical and mental challenge.

Movement materials will be transformed and de-structured in several ways, also by intuitive random, through improvisations and composition.

The Surprised body project has been developing, as an ongoing creative process, while creating several new versions of the work while touring in different countries. The

Surprised body project, has never been the same twice, as the structured improvisations always modified the work and local needs and possibilities dictated the shape and context of the actual event.

Since its première in Buenos Aires in October 2010, the project has been successfully presented in 26 countries in Europe, Asia and South America. The teaching project “A Surprised body” has been invited internationally in 42 countries in North, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Middle and Far East.”

Francesco Scavetta

Francesco Scavetta

Francesco Scavetta is born in Salerno, Italy, and studied at National Academy of Dance of Rome. He graduated in Theatre and Performing Arts and Post-graduated in Sciences of Communication. He has since the beginning marked itself for its original style and an extensive international activity. Francesco has been giving classes and workshops, among others, at: IMPULSTANZ/Wien, PARTS/Performing Arts Research Training Studios/Brussels (where he is involved as part of the faculty), Henny Jurriëns Foundation, Amsterdam (Holland), MTD/Amsterdam, SEAD/Salzburg Experimental Dance Academy, Tanzquartier Vienna, Greenwich Dance London, K3 Hamburg and in many dance/theatre festivals around the world. Francesco´s theatricality has often been associated with the atmosphere of a weird dream or to a playful world of a child: strange, funny, poetic and surprising. The creations have changed in format and aesthetic, yet they have continuously tried to explore what theatre and performance can mean in contemporary life and what kind of dialogues they can open with the audience. The core of the company’s investigation deals with fragility and paradox, epiphany and dream, empathy and surprise, avoiding narrative and physical cliché, and questioning reality and identity with humoristic disbelief. They want to create performances that can engage and amaze, that evokes empathy and can twist expectations. Since 2012, Francesco has been establishing Vitlycke – Centre for performing arts, a new residency place, in the middle between Oslo and Gothenburg. http://vimeo.com/57501069 http://wee-francescoscavetta.no/productions/7