About the technical contemporary dance approach

POWER SOURCES WORKSHOP

I use different exercises and games, lead improvisations, and offer tasks that help participants improve awareness and access playful bodies, spirits, intuition, and instinctive motion.

Attention to specific technicalities and detailed work is an important part of my approach, as well.

While protecting the body, I rely on knowledge of our skeletal structure and muscular chains and explore physical mechanisms that allow us to reach extremes. As I create a demanding environment without fear, and we work in our bodies, I offer tools to enhance fluidity and freedom in movement, and I invite students to understand ways to recycle and save energy. I often use metaphors and images (associative concepts or idealized physical actions) to produce or enhance new kinesthetic experiences and awareness. I also give my students tools for partnering work and look for balance between strength and resilience in mental, physical, and emotional ways.

As we work, I include theatrical inputs with specific energy and clear images that give meaning to movement and elicit performance rather than just learning and execution. In this way, my work in the classroom combines the specific, physical language of dance with the human emotion and drama that motivates theater.

Tools for Partnering Work

Technical exercises, games, and improvisations with a clear framework will be the starting point for group and partner work. A fluent physical communication depends on the awareness and control of the shared balance in a couple. There will be set-up situations where you will fully trust the other, act under risk, speed, share responsibilities, play with power roles, etc.
Changing roles and couples will be a constant during the workshop. We will use recognisable human relationships to help us create images, define energies, and inhabit stories. Participants will explore some given material and specific steps as mechanical examples and sources of inspiration. Still, they will be invited and guided to look for anew materials within a defined context. We will look for creative impulses that, when released, offer us new possibilities for achievement.

Space - Conflict & Catastrophic Imagination
Laura Arís / Ultima Vez Vocabulary

“In Vandekeybus's performances, the body is at stake in a world of conflict. It is an arena of tensions and contrast: horizontal/vertical, high/low, hard/soft, virtuosity/vulnerability, active/passive, man/woman, body/mind, man/animal, order/chaos, intellect/instinct, nature/civilisation…On the basis of these types of contrasts where formal, physical and existential categories overlap”

— Erwin Jans (1999)

The workshop will approach the universe of Ultima Vez from Laura’s personal experience after spending a decade with the company. We will explore some themes and ideas from different creations and some of the energetic physical vocabulary from Wim Vandekeybus and his troupe, as well as practising with some given tools of partner work, aur of Ultima Vez's taste and flavo work.

More info at ultimavez.com