List of Books from What Festival

During the festival I discovered some new books that I take in consideration as further research:

• A process model By Eugene T Gendlin
• The crisis of the criticism edited by Maurice Berger
• Choreographing Relation. Practical Philosophy and Contemporary Choreography by Petra Sabisch
• Embodied wisdom edited by Elizabeth Beringer
• The soul at work by Franco Beradi
• Tools of gravity by Ivan D. Illich
• The eyes of the skin: architecture and senses by Juhani Pallasmaa
• A general theory of Love by Thomas Lewis
• The gift- how the creative spirit transforms the world
• Ancient land
• Of wolves and men by Barry Lopez
• The philosophical aesthetics of dance. Identity, performance and understanding by Graham McFee
• Nanopolitics group
• The place of dance by Andrea Olsen

Next step after uni is to keep feeding myself with information as well as practical workshops at ID London.

Pilates, Yoga and Aerobic activities

As part of Movement Studies 3 module I managed to organise myself and lead a daily practice. Even if my university schedule and my life in general is super busy I managed to carry on with Pilates, Yoga, Swimming and Aerobic activities so that I keep and develop what I have achieved during these 3 years at Coventry University. I keep expanding my flexibility, resistance or endurance, muscle mass, relationship between body and mind. I am taking classes at the Coventry Leisure Centre, where I have a membership. I could not carry on with the classes organized by the university from financial reasons but at the Leisure Centre there are plenty of classes that I absolutely enjoy and that I use in order to feed in my continuous practice.

Feldenkrais

As I only started the Feldenkrais classes at at the end of December it did not make complete sense to me. So I started focusing on more readings in order to gain an understanding of the reason why we have this class as part of our module Movement Studies 3. After doing the session I was surprised how my understanding shifted and the outcome was a bit different than what I thought.

I gained:

•  a sense of honesty in movement
•  self-image and what background of understanding and meaning we bring to a simple movement
• breaking habits down in order to observe the natural motion of our bodies
• kinesiology/ human kinetics and thinking
• relation to SRT
• it's application to life as well as movement.
• I appreciate the gift of having one hour per week when we apply a minimalistic approach to our practice because all the other movement studies sessions bring to life big, large movements , different speeds and meanings. 

Improvisation

I appreciate a lot year group mixture and the variety of improvisation sessions. 

• text
• voice
• installation
• Lisa Nelson scores
• exposure
• talking score
• blind journey- listening to the space
• soundscape
• being present/ paying attention
• counterpoint
• games
• in between/ over/ under
• tasks

Led by KC

Land Art

Land Art at Mead GAllery

Fiona Jackson manifested her interest in land art and went to this exhibition.

Also I have a few names of artists that interest both of us:

 *** Michael Grab ***

***Cornelia Konrads***

***Sylvain Meyer*** 

What-now Festival 2014 by ID London

What-now Festival 2014 at Siobhan Davies Dance Studios- organised by Independent Dance London

Fantastic and inspiring weekend.

***

• what are we?
• who are you?
• who do you think I am?
• what do you imagine me doing in the future?
• who do you think you are?
• who do you think you can be or you will be?

I have witnessed a collection of artists-curators who were asking a lot of questions in regards to dance through different ways: talks, movement, drawing, writing, discussing, etc. It was shaped as a public residency, a festival of processes and activities.

There were a few interesting talks:

1. Derek McCormack - Thinking and moving with atmospheric things. Increased understanding of atmospheric things, a sense of happening in process, a sense of affective doing. Enable constraint for thinking in movement. 
2. Caroline Bergvall - Writing Gestures. What a performance, what an unexpected beginning. Performative talk. Cells of Release, Matta Clark, What is fugitive nature? Bilingual, transcriptions, interruption, calligraphy. Ann Hamilton 
3. Joris Vlieghe - Being-Entirely-Flesh. Philosopher and Educationalist - human corporeality. He argues that the bodily experiences are of the greatest importance. Existence. He investigates bodily dimensions and he also refers to theories of Merleau- Ponty; all of this related to my dissertation topic. He investigates notions such as attention and presence- key to both my dissertation and final major project.
4. Laura Cull - A(n Interrupted) Lecture on Attention in 9 Parts. Further research: Franco Berardi's notion of attention, Henri Bergson, Allan Kaprow. Can performance and philosophy produce counter-forms of attention? Thought as an embodied perceptual practice available to us. 

This festival was proposed by Frank Bock and curated by Katye Coe, Hamish Mac Pherson and Efrosini Protopapa.

 ***

Just being in that building was fascinating. I have listened to a few talks and learned and I use this learning as stimulation for further research and investigations. A lot of questions. It was useful to hear different artists talking about their condition as artist and to understand what life as artist means. Maybe my life expectations are different now and I think a bit softer about my future as a movement artist. Being included in this art network feels like a gift and I do value it a lot. I felt happy when I recognized a few faces and people, I met lovely Amy Voris, a few tutors and another artists. We were participating to different workshops. 

Movement Ritual - Helen Poynor

I would like to start with the fact that I planning to continue working with Helen Poynor and experience her Walk of LIfe Training. 

***

In February 2013 I have participate to the Movement Ritual with Fiona Jackson in Devon, Beer. The 3 days workshop was led Helen Poynor and she has learned the ritual ftron Anna Halprin. 

***

The Electro-Magnetic Waves of the Body and their polarity. The electro magnetic lines of force inthe human body arising from the center core and the prain polarity, whirling in opposite directions, anterior and posterior

***

creating a movement routine/pattern that repeats every day as a frame of my lifestyle-finding repetition very useful-finding different layers of attention each time I perform the same movement - looking at the body from different perspectives-how? when? why? who?

***

I felt overwhelmed the that entire place and air, by the participants of the workshop. Tears went out after movement exploration and free writing/drawing.

I feel like my free writing is a bit personal and cannot be exposed on this blog, but I am very happy to talk to anyone interested about my experience. This workshop happened in a particularly significant moment of my life and it had a major impact from many points of view. 

***

Every morning we had a 40-50 minutes of walk along the coast with Fiona in order to get from our accommodation to where the studio was. Receiving a different type of information. Nature. Maturity. Movement pattern. Learning about ourselves.

***

***

So this is when and where we started writing/ drawing post cards to each other.