quick or languid:
shapely & earth bound
A Movement workshop: February 7-8
Join us for a movement-based, improvisational workshop.
We’ll consider the how and what of making with the body, moving across time, space, and relationships.
WHAT
We humans are made of STUFF, and in this workshop, we will lean into that sensorial, diverse, transient STUFF; it’s visceral and derived from universal materials: land, stars, water, minerals.
We will begin by diving into the SHAPES we make when we are dancing—still, evolving, fractal—as well as the accumulative material of shape generation and disruption. From there, we will build together in playful relational frames to explore how our shapes engage with being witnessed and influenced. We will embrace the idea that performance begins when one engages with both the consequence of and reflection on their action, whether or not they are witnessed. We will consider our shapes in a landscape of physical materials: sound, site, story, and land. We will engage with performance practice with self, performance practice with others, and performance practice with environment. Finally, we will look at the possibilities of noodling or moving in ways that are not performative. We’ll try it on, dance a lot, talk, write, read, throw away, try again, and research together.
when
Saturday, February 7th: 10:30am-4:30pm
Sunday, February 8th: 10:30am-5:30pm
On Saturday, we will spend our time exploring, gathering, and reflecting in the studio.
On Sunday, we will meet at The Whole Shebang, then drive to the Wissahickon to look at the natural formations and patterning there. This will be followed by studio practice back at Shebang in the afternoon.
Sunday schedule
10:30am—Meet at Shebang, drive to the Wissahickon
11:00am—Time in the Wissahickon
1:00pm—Lunch
2:00pm—Drive back to Shebang
2:30pm—Studio session
5:30pm—End of day
who
With Meg Foley
This workshop is for intermediate/advanced improvisers, as well as playful movement practitioners who like making it up along the way. It is informed by Meg’s foundational improvisational practice, action is primary, and her current research as a queer parent into human formation: gestation, family and childhood development; identity: gender, sexuality, social role; and geology:forms, deep time, where we come from, and what we’re made of.
Meg Foley(she/he/they) is a transdisciplinary artist, educator, and parent. For 20+ years Meg has made work concerned with illuminating the experiential and transformative potential of our bodily selves as a tangle of corporeal and social realities. Meg uses movement, visual & environmental design, and choreographic thinking to create containers for bodily engagement and reflection on a somatic present, on the power and location of the body itself as participant. Meg’s practice centers movement generation and rigorous physicality, emergent somatic and social choreography, and engages textiles as bodily extensions and partners. Meg’s recent project, Blood Baby(2021-present)—emerging from her experience as a queer gestational parent—explores queer and trans family building and lineage, gender, sexuality, and geology. Since 2016, Meg has facilitated gatherings intended to foster access to and awareness of a somatic presence for all bodies, outside traditional dance presentation frames and employing the languages of movement improvisation, social therapy, and queer club and drag culture. As part of Blood Baby, Meg initiated and co-facilitated Queer Parent Convenings, creative fellowship groups for queer and trans caregivers to explore queer child-rearing through art and somatics, from 2021-2024. Meg is a 2020 NEFA National Dance Project awardee, a 2012 Pew Fellow in the Arts, a former Vox Populi member, and founding member of Mascher Space Cooperative. Meg is also an educator, curator, and unschooling parent.
Have questions? Please email us at art.at.shebang@gmail.com and we’ll get back to within 1-2 business days.