This one day symposium aims to offer a forum for Feldenkrais practitioners, performing artists and somatic movement educators to exchange, document and question emerging practices and non-dualist thinking.
We are inviting performing artists – theatre/dance/music/live-art, pedagogues and academic scholars to present academic papers, video documentations, provocations, workshops, lecture demonstrations and performances.
There is a growing trend in the application of somatic informed approaches to performer training and performance making in the UK. While these approaches are being increasingly theorised and anchored within academic and training institutions, there is a concurrent interest in the field of performance and cognition and the development of embodied practices that allow for non-dualist training of performers and new ways of approaching creative process and spectatorship.
The Feldenkrais Method has been applied within the performing arts from its inception. As a pioneering method it bridges cognitive performance concerns with somatic education processes by leaning on constructivist and enactivist notions of neuroplasticity and learning. Dr.Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) worked with leading artists such as director Peter Brook, violinist Yehudi Menuhin, conductor Igor Markevich, and guitarist Narciso Ypes. His teaching focused on the development of self-directed learning, autonomy and curiosity through heightened awareness and improved functioning of the flexible individual.
The Feldenkrais Method was integrated into the physical theatre pedagogies of Jacques Lecoq through the work of Monica Pagnieux, and into the work of Choreographer Siobhán Davies through dancer and Feldenkrais practitioner Scott Clark who inspired a generation of independent dance makers in the UK. Feldenkrais is increasingly taught in Higher Education institutions and conservatoires within the UK, and around the globe. It has been theorised within educational contexts as a trans-disciplinary and emancipatory approach to learning that transcends notions of improved physiological functioning (Edinburgh 2012, Fortin 2009, Ginot 2011, Kampe 2014, Shusterman 2004) and offers an open ended discourse. The symposium coincides with the upcoming journal volume of TDPT on Feldenkrais and Performer Training (07/2015), edited by Libby Worth and Dick McCaw.
Invited guest presenters include Professor Emeritus Glenna Batson – author of Body and Mind in Motion: Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation (2013) and Dynamic Systems Alignment (2008), Professor Emeritus Wendy Wheeler, author of The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture (2006), and Scott Clark – organiser of Feldenkrais Training London.
Participant fee: £45 This includes food and drink during the event.
CALL FOR PAPERS
DEADLINE 14 JANUARY 2015
Proposals should include a 250 – 300 word abstract of your presentation,
stating the format. For example:
- a 20 min long academic talk or presentation
- one hour workshop or workshop/demonstration
- poster with relevant research findings
- Skype talk
- artistic presentation, max 20 min length
You must also include a brief CV with relevant background and both should be provided in PDF format.
Bath Spa University will provide basic technical support for presentations.
We are currently negotiating opportunities for participants to submit their work in a peer-reviewed journal.
To send your proposals and for more information, please contact: t.kampe@bathspa.ac.uk
The symposium is supported through:
- The Performance Research Centre of Bath Spa University
- Bath Spa Live
- The Feldenkrais Guild UK
- The International Feldenkrais Federation
- Centre for Dance Research C-DaRE Coventry University
- Royal Holloway, University of London
Recent Comments