Dance As Ritual/Dance As Performance Workshops
Imagination is world making. Participants came from all walks of life: the arts, therapists, cheese makers, businessmen and women, clowns, writers and more. They spend a week intensive on Mireille’s family vineyard, to explore the body in motion and focus on a selected theme chosen by the facilitators.
I and the We (identity), Spirit of Place (the land), Wheel of Fortune (chance), were a few themes chosen.
We were interested in the intersection of inner states of awareness with our performance work. We explored this in daily workshops and included a presentation at the end of the week. To introduce varoius traditional states of mind in movement, Susan Osberg taught Sufi Dance, Catlin Cobb taught Shamanic Work, Mireille Feyzeau brought in anthropology and healing. All three choreographers have worked in Mind-Body techniques.
Our research evolved over ten years from these questions:
Is contemporary performance a present day ritual?
What are the differences between performance and ritual?
How can our contemporary practice reflect states of awareness also found in spiritual traditions?
Does the art of dance deepen the human experience?
Does embodied thinking illuminate our inter-realtionships?
Can we change ourselves and thereby change the world?