Artists and vulnerability: Mixing it up with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
(photo courtesy of Kelly Strayhorn Theater)

ClassClassClass 

presents

Preparing The Vulnerable Body

 for Performance

a workshop with 

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Sunday, Feb 16, 1-4pm

Abrons Arts Center

466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan

(directions)

Part performance theory, part vocalization, part group movement/thinking exploration, students will investigate themes of trans performance states, sensitivity, risk-taking, eroticism, exhibitionism, bad behavior, and vocal sounding as a means of healing the self through live performance. Together we watch and support each other by finding, exposing, and attempting to break open previously locked/hidden pathways of emotional, physical and visual performativity. Students are encouraged to bring props and costumes to the workshop to which they have personal meanings, but are willing to let be destroyed.

Kosoko with composer-musician Pauline Oliveros
(photo courtesy of Jaamil Olawale Kosoko)

Kosoko talked with me about his three-hour workshop, Preparing The Vulnerable Body for Performance, open to performing artists from a multitude of genres:

"My idea is to encourage a kind of desegregation in the classroom, to encourage a variety of different kinds of artists to occupy the same space and to learn from each other. So often, we encourage a more insular approach to the creative process and creative space-making. It’s super-important to give those of us who want to branch out of that and explore the terrain an opportunity to engage and meet and explore this idea of vulnerability with others who are working in a similar way but maybe not in the same genre, and use it as a platform to give and take in that way. 

"I also want to think about incorporating a variety of theory into the workshop, bringing in poets, music, maybe some text that I’ve been thinking a lot about--I really love the work of Daphne Brooks--author of Bodies in Dissent--and other literature that I plan to use as jumping off points to initiate certain creative spontaneity. That’s what I’m super-excited about. And then just to see who all comes and what we can share with each other and to create a safe space for that exploration to take place.

"In addition, I’ve been working a lot with Pauline Oliveros over the past year, here in Philadelphia, a legend in the sounding, experimental music, vocalization world. So, using various tactics that I have accumulated over the past ten years of my professional career, I’d love to share some of these methods and ideologies that I’ve learned as a part of my own practice for preparing my body for doing the kind of work that I do and present on the stage."

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a producer, curator, poet, and performance artist. He is a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, a 2011 Fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and an inaugural graduate member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University.

Rooted in a creative mission to push history forward, Kosoko’s work in theater and dance has received support from The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through Dance Advance, The Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, The Joyce Theater Foundation, and The Philadelphia Cultural Fund. His new solo performance work entitled BLACK MALE REVISITED: Revenge of the New Negro premiered in December 2013 at Miami Theater Center as part of Art Basel and Art Miami '13. As a performer, Kosoko has created original roles in the performance works of visual artist Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, Headlong Dance Theater, and others. Kosoko’s poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Poems Against War, The Dunes Review, and Silo, among other publications. In 2011, Kosoko published Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). He is a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC). Visit: www.jaamil.com for more information.

*****

In February, CLASSCLASSCLASS will also present affordable workshops by iele paloumpis (see my interview with them on Dancer's Turn), Aretha Aoki, Nia Love and Jillian Sweeney, among many other artists, at Abrons Arts Center. Click here to learn more.

"Touching Into Text" workshop with Marissa Perel

CLASSCLASSCLASS 

presents

Marissa Perel

"Touching Into Text"

Saturdays, June 1 and June 8, 1-3pm

Description

This class will combine somatic awareness with reading to create an embodied approach to understanding language. For each class a short selection of text will be presented for reading and discussion. Through exercises that draw from various somatic practices, and experiments made up by the instructor and participants, the class will play with ways of feeling language; bringing words and their meanings into an intimate experiential sphere.

There is room in this class for contemplation, finding an individual pathway for movement and speech, and for giving space to the often daunting mind-body split. It’s possible that we will get emotional about language, that we will love or not love how some texts feel, and that we will invent radical interpretations of what we read. We will investigate who we are as bodies that are simultaneously reading and being read by others.

There is no level of ability, skill or virtuosity required for this class, except real investment in writing, reading, and taking your own body and the bodies of others seriously. Being able to listen to your body as it is reading and experimenting, and being sensitive to the processes of your peers is highly valued here. The desired outcome of this class is that participants find possibilities for integrating language and movement in their artistic processes.

The first hour of class will be a short meditation and relaxation exercise, followed by reading and discussion of the selected text. In the second hour of class, participants will find their own space in the room to investigate the text somatically, with exercises provided by the instructor and the participants. For the last hour, we will debrief on our investigations, and individually present our discoveries.

There will be guest facilitators and lecturers on specific class days coming from diverse fields of art, writing, cultural theory and criticism, poetry, music, science and healing arts practices who will either provide the selected texts, or lead discussions or experiments.

Texts will include selections from such writers as Gertrude Stein, Claire Bishop, Jack Halberstam, Dodie Bellamy, CA Conrad, David Wojnarowicz, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Camille Roy, Kim Jones, Yvonne Rainer, Amelia Jones, Peggy Phelan, Lucy Lippard, Laurie Weeks, Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, Roland Barthes, Carole Maso, kari edwards, Jill Johnston, Faith Wilding, Avital Ronell.

Marissa Perel bio:

I am an artist, writer, independent curator and editor whose work spans performance, video, installation, visual text, poetry and criticism. Recent work has been presented at Danspace Project, Golden gallery, Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, and Ontological-Hysteric Theater. I was co-curator of Movement Research Festival 2012: Push It. Real. Good, and co-editor of Critical Correspondence, for which I co-curated two Judson 50th Anniversary events at Judson Church and the New Museum. I write the column “Gimme Shelter: Performance Now” on the Art21 blog, and am a contributor to P-Club. B.A. Naropa University, M.F.A School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

marissaperel.com
thebodyofmarissaperel.blogspot.com
art21 blog

Admission: $8 per class

St. Nick's Alliance / Arts@Renaissance
2 Kingsland Avenue (at Maspeth Avenue), Garden Level, Brooklyn
L train to Graham Avenue (map/directions)

AUDIO PREVIEW: Jill Sigman

Above/below: Jill Sigman in Hut #5
(Photo: Lindsay Comstock)

The Edges of Performance

A workshop led by Jill Sigman

Saturday-Sunday, June 4-5 (2-5pm)

Location: The Border

1 Grattan Street, Studio 221, Bushwick, Brooklyn

(Take L train to Morgan Avenue)

$15/workshop day

from Hut #5 (Photo: Lindsay Comstock)

 AUDIO PREVIEW

Dancer-choreographer Jill Sigman

talks about The Edges of Performance

Click to play [Play]
(6:32)

Where do the edges of performance lie? Does performing rely on a state of mind, a mode of presentation, a kind of activity, an audience? We will investigate these edges beginning with fine-grained movement explorations that are fueled by the visual and aural fields around us. We will then let ourselves be guided by touch, task, and taste, and eventually arrive at explorations of such activities as planting cooking, or building. We will test out the borders of performing through these activities—performing for ourselves, each other, the space, and the street below.

It is encouraged to take both days of the workshop for a more complete investigation, but it is possible to take one day as a discrete experience.

This workshop is part of the ongoing series CLASSCLASSCLASS. It also coincides with Arts in Bushwick Open Studios.

For more information, 

click here.

Jill Sigman asks questions through the medium of the body. Trained in classical ballet, modern dance, art history, and analytic philosophy, Sigman has been making dances and performance installations since the early 90s. In 1998, she founded her company jill sigman/thinkdance as a vehicle for her performance experiments. In the same year she received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. Equally comfortable on a proscenium stage or crawling in the dirt armed with fluorescent waterguns, Sigman transforms deceptively simple actions into explorations of politics, gender, and society; her work currently exists at the intersection of dance, theater, and visual installation. Sigman’s dances have been produced by such New York City venues as Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, Dancing in the Streets, and the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center. Internationally, her work has been shown in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, and India. As a teacher, Sigman offers workshops nationally at colleges and universities; she has been a member of the dance faculty at Princeton University, a movement tutor at the Imaginary Academy in Groznjan, Croatia, a frequent guest teacher in Belgium, and a professor of aesthetics and performance theory at Brooklyn College and The New School. She has recently been teaching in Oslo, Norway, and is currently at work on a multi-site project about huts and sustainable living. See: www.thinkdance.org

Learn more about Jill Sigman in an interview with dancer-writer Siobhan Burke on her blog, phase.shift and on Performance Ritual, a new blog Burke shares with Isabella Bruno. Click here and here.

You've got CLASSCLASSCLASS!

Hang on, New York! Spring will come...eventually...and with it, CLASSCLASSCLASS!

Classes ($10) and workshops ($15) will run 14 weeks from March 7 - June 12.

Teachers include: Hilary Clark, Chase Granoff, Chris Peck, Elizabeth Ward, luciana achugar, Melanie Maar, Walter Dundervill, Ana Isabel Keilson, Irfana Jetha, Lindsay Clark, Diana Crum, Madeline Best, Colin Gee, Mariana Valencia, Elizabeth Giron, Justine Lynch, Beth Gill, SKINT, Will Rawls, Marjani Forte, Tatyana Tenenbaum and Jen Rosenblit.

For more information, click here or contact classclassclassdance@gmail.com.

CLASSCLASSCLASS nurtures a continued future of dance pedagogy in New York City by engaging and developing a new generation of dance and performance artists as they teach their craft, while simultaneously making the act of taking and teaching class affordable to all.

Movement Research is partnering with CLASSCLASSCLASS in order to enable a fertile space for newer teachers to experiment with their craft under the umbrella of an established organization. In this partnership, CLASSCLASSCLASS maintains its own mission, goals and modus operandi.

CLASSCLASSCLASS action this Saturday!

Join CLASSCLASSCLASS this Saturday in Washington Square Park from 11am to 3pm for an Outdoor teach-a-thon!

Take class in the park with CCC teachers Jen Rosenblit, Aynsley Vandenbroucke, Adrienne Westwood, Ana Isabel Keilson, Molly Poerstel and Hilary Clark! 


Guest teachers include Third Rail Projects (Tom Pearson and Zach Morris), Nathalie Jonas, Diana Crum and more!

Sign up to teach a class in the park!
Listen to music!
Bring a picnic!
Write a manifesto!
Be part of the performance; sit back and watch the performance!

In the spirit of anti-war teach-ins, Allan Kaprow-esque happenings, and Judson Church era installations, participants of CLASSCLASSCLASS--teachers, students, mentors, and accompanists--will have the opportunity to publicly voice their opinions and experiences of dance education. Audience members will have the opportunity to participate in live manifesto readings, join in during simulated class exercises, and write down their hopes for the future of an emerging generation of students and teaching artists. The goal of this performance is to raise awareness of the importance of CLASSCLASSCLASS and its ensuing dialogues: how we can better understand who we are as dancers, performers and movement-based artists through a public, transparent, and mutual contemplation of how and what we teach and how and what we learn. The Great Community CLASS Manifesto is open and free to the public and they will be encouraged to participate in the event.


For moremoremore on CLASSCLASSCLASS, click here.

It's all about CLASSCLASSCLASS

LOTSLOTSLOTS happening with CLASSCLASSCLASS, from March 1 to June 12!

Too much to tell you here. You'll have to check it out yourself.

But I will drop a few names of which I am perpetually enamored: Kyle Abraham, Hilary Clark, luciana achugar, Sydney Skybetter, Walter Dundervill, Aynsley Vandenbroucke...

 CLASSCLASSCLASS nurtures a continued future of dance pedagogy in New York City by engaging and developing a new generation of dance and performance artists as they teach their craft, while simultaneously making the act of taking and teaching class affordable for all. This year CLASSCLASSCLASS is partnering with Movement Research, but will continue to be a separate entity maintaining our own mission, goals, and modus operandi. We are hoping that this relationship fosters a very fertile space for newer teachers to experiment with their craft under the umbrella of an established organization.

Sounds cool. And so do the fees: classes $10; 

workshops $15.

First come first served. No reservations.

Sunday evening potluck/teaching forums (Fort Greene)

CLASSCLASSCLASS participating studios: 

BRAZIL (Bushwick)

The Chocolate Factory (Long Island City)

lululemon athletica (SoHo)

Studio 5-2 (Flatiron District)

Get complete info here.