BART 92A16 - Choreolab: Body, Space, Imagination, and Dance

This workshop explores dance, choreography, and bodily expression through improvisation and movement composition. Emphasizing the deep senses such as proprioception, kinesthetics, and awareness of the body in space, students will learn to (re)connect with their corporeality and develop a bodily imagination. Exercises will first focus on breathing together, attuning to one another, and engaging all the senses (hearing, sight, touch, taste), and instinctive reflexes (fight, flight, or freeze).

The gaze will be explored in multiple dimensions: inward, outward, toward others, and through peripheral vision, in order to develop a heightened awareness of spatial and interpersonal movemental dynamics.

Building on these foundations, the workshop will guide students towards choreographic composition, and practical/technical elements to develop individual and collective experiments. Drawing on methods such as Laban's movement analysis and improvisation in spatial grids and scores, students will experiment with movement qualities (including weight, timing, flow, direction, and effort) and translate textual, poetic, or narrative prompts into physical forms, and vice versa. Small choreography exercises, improvisation, partner work, contact improvisation, and spatial awareness tasks will encourage multiple ways of movement to the composition of a dance piece. The semester ends with a public performance, offering students the opportunity to share their work with peers, receive feedback, and perform in front of a wider audience.

o Develop bodily awareness, understand corporeality through proprioception and kinesthetic perception.

o Explore creative capacities and discover movement as personal and collective expression through improvisation, Laban movement analysis, and composition exercises.

o Strengthen corporeal, collaborative and relation abilities, coordinate breath and movement, and build relationship group exercises.

o Connect conceptual and technical tools to practical movement tasks.

Assessment will combine attendance, practical execution, and final public performance. For the public performance on session 12, other students and teachers from the campus will be invited to attend, allowing them to discover and understand the work done during 11 sessions.