Improvisation Workshop: Towards Collective Creation
Date and Time: March 15-16 & 20-24, 3-7pm; public sharing on the 25th at 6pm.
Venue: Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Chennai.
Application link: https://bit.ly/3RRsDPo
Last Date: March 5, 2023
Registration fee: INR 5000
About the workshop: How do we see the role of improvisation within a creative process? In what ways can one’s individual practice make space for moments when we might surprise ourselves, look beyond knowledge that is taught or passed down to us?
In this year’s improvisation workshop at March Dance participants will derive graphic scores, using certain interdisciplinary terms. In the end, they will arrive at a collective performative outcome. Over 7 days artists from multiple disciplines will seek to establish a democratic, cross-disciplinary modality of ‘making’ – with clear parameters, yet without rigid boxes. The workshop references, among other inputs, ‘Turtle Dreams’ by Meredith Monk, as a way to imagine new possibilities within an interdisciplinary approach to performance.
The public sharing on the 25th will be followed by a discussion with a group of invited respondents.
About the facilitators: Pravin Kannanur is an artist conversant in several disciplines, working predominantly in Tamil theatre and the visual arts. He is a founding member of the theatre company Magic Lantern and the theatre collective India Theatre Forum.
Maarten Visser is a saxophonist and composer based in Chennai. He works with sound and contemporary music, often through improvisation. Over the years he has written original repertoire for MV3, oto.3 and Many Things. He runs a weekly jazz workshop in the city.
Maarten and Pravin have been facilitating improvisation workshops for the last 10 years, for artists from multiple performance disciplines. Both of them are founding members of the art collective Basement 21 and have had a long history of working with contemporary dance in Chennai.
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Reconstruction Workshop: Chandralekha Textbook 2 (Prana)
Date and Time: March 13-18 & 20-23, 9am-1pm; public sharing on the 24th at 7pm.
Venue: SPACES, Besant Nagar, Chennai.
Application link: https://bit.ly/3XxB0RH
Last Date: March 5, 2023
Registration fee: INR 5000
About the workshop:
Prana (1990)
“The dance explores the relatedness of breath and movement; a journey towards recovery of breath.The choreography is based on the multi-centred space concept of navagraha iconography. The work is an attempt to return to dance – and to our beleaguered lives – its lost breath.” – Chandralekha
It feels not just urgent but imperative to revisit this specific work at this time. Yet, how does one ‘reconstruct’ or even investigate the corporeal materials of a choreographer who wanted to leave no legacy? This workshop for March dance 2023, will ask questions and look at principles, in the spirit of Chandra herself. A collective looking back without a sense of nostalgia or sentiment. But rather out of a need to take a hard look at who we are as dancers today.
The ten-day workshop will be followed by a public sharing at Mandala in Spaces, where the work was originally conceived and created. The public sharing on the 24th will be followed by a discussion with a group of invited respondents.
About the facilitators: Meera Krishnamurthy, Krishna Devanandan and Padmini Chettur each worked with Chandralekha for a decade or more, and have performed the work Prana. In very individual ways, the questions that Chandralekha’s work held continue to echo in their practice, pedagogy and lives.
Basement 21 