Ecological Bodying

Performance Creation/Research, Dance/Somatics, Practice/Theory

Fascia, Feldenkrais and Axis Syllabus, Dancing between habit and hesitation

Somatic Research

This weekend movement workshop will move between emerging science studies on fascia, Feldenkrais and the Axis Syllabus practices to explore the ways movement and imagery intersect in diverse and dynamic ways, shaping how bodies move and what they can do. We all have metaphors that we live and move with. This apparent stability of a metaphor or concept is an effect of the bubble we live in and a normalizing world. It can be thought of as “history turned into nature” so that a metaphoric landscape that emerges from a training becomes sensible, reasonable or thought of as natural. In this class we ask, how might exploring new images, felt sense, and metaphors allow us to dance along the edge of our habits into hesitations, playing with new ways of moving and being moved. What might dancing with metaphors in relation to new science studies on fascia do? What kind of felt sense might emerge in the practice? How might we play with the ability to respond and commit to multiple future vectors without knowing?

Date: Saturday February 8, Sunday February 9

Bios:
Belinda He is a dance artist and Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner who received her MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. She incorporates her studies of the Feldenkrais Method® and certain aspects of functional anatomy and biomechanics into an ever-evolving personal physical practice in order to synthesize her physical, intellectual and creative energies. Since relocating to the Bay Area from New York City, where she was on faculty at the Feldenkrais Institute of New York, she maintains a private Feldenkrais practice in San Francisco, where she works with humans of all stripes. In addition to her teaching practices, Belinda is in the process of developing a solo work and is also a member of Hope Mohr Dance. www.belindahe.com

Kevin O’Connor is a multidisciplinary artist working as a choreographer, dancer, improviser, circus artist and installation artist from Ontario, Canada and now based in the Bay area. He is involved in a decade-long artistic collective exploring participatory de-colonizing performances within polluted watersheds in Ontario. Over the last few years, he has worked with NAKA dance in Oakland, Shakiri and Skywatchers in the Bay Area, Oncogrrrls feminist art collective in Spain, and collaborated with Inuit hunter and designer Paulette Metuq on a project in Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. He has been learning with the Axis Syllabus community for over a decade and is a biodynamic Craniosacral practitioner. He completed an MFA in choreography and is currently finishing a Ph.D. in performance studies at UC Davis. He is working at the intersection of arts, sciences, practice-as-research and improvisation theory and practice. His research examines anatomies, body performance capacities, interventions and imaginations in relation to science studies, including the material-bio-cultural tissue called fascia.