Workshops
Bodies (Re)Searching Bodies: The Disruptive Power of Joy
May 2023
I ran this three-hour workshop as part of a series, Bodies (Re)Searching Bodies, exploring social justice in performance based practice research. Mine was the second of two practical sessions, the first run by my fellow PhD candidates Francesco Sani and Satkirti Sinha, and we filled these up with an online 'in conversation'.
We were a small but wonderful group of explorers for this session, and I would like to extend my gratitude to Flora Wellesley Wesley and Miriam Cummings, both of whom travelled a long way just to be there, and whose openhearted and thoughtful play was a joy and a gift to me.
We were a small but wonderful group of explorers for this session, and I would like to extend my gratitude to Flora Wellesley Wesley and Miriam Cummings, both of whom travelled a long way just to be there, and whose openhearted and thoughtful play was a joy and a gift to me.
Bodies (Re)Searching Bodies series flyer
I wanted to explore how can we use pleasure and enjoyment in the physical performance space (in teaching, devising and research) as a tool for greater equity and collaboration. Particularly to elevate the voices of those who may feel less inclined to offer opinions- often those who have experienced discrimination. This is informed in many ways by Socialist Feminist thinking around radical happiness (Lynne Segal, 2018), pleasure and utopian thinking (Jill Dolan, 2006).
The session covered:
The session covered:
- An opening moment based in experiential anatomy
- A pair of games about synchronised movement, complicity and teasing- the clowning principle of putting each other in the shit.
- A gameified version of a classic dance improvisation task, The Conversation (Blom and Chaplin, 1989)
- Structured feedback and discussion based on sensory observations and following pleasure
Moment 1- Feedback on walking games:
While the material I delivered was of course part of the research, my particular focus was on was how to facilitate feedback from participants at various stages through the session. So after this first set of games I asked the participants to give some observations on what had just happened. When I’ve done this before with students, I’ve noticed that only a few people will offer observations, usually the most confident individuals, who tend to be white and male. At this stage, there is absolutely no right answer or even any better or worse answer, all we’re looking for is a sharing of how people experienced the game, in their bodies, as unique individuals. I therefore asked the participants to frame all their observations in the same way, to say:
I saw... I heard... or I felt...
While the material I delivered was of course part of the research, my particular focus was on was how to facilitate feedback from participants at various stages through the session. So after this first set of games I asked the participants to give some observations on what had just happened. When I’ve done this before with students, I’ve noticed that only a few people will offer observations, usually the most confident individuals, who tend to be white and male. At this stage, there is absolutely no right answer or even any better or worse answer, all we’re looking for is a sharing of how people experienced the game, in their bodies, as unique individuals. I therefore asked the participants to frame all their observations in the same way, to say:
I saw... I heard... or I felt...
I saw people make eye contact, jump, then look away
I heard us falling into rhythms with each other
I felt we were being kind, wanting it to succeed
Journal extract, record of participant observation: 11/05/23
I heard us falling into rhythms with each other
I felt we were being kind, wanting it to succeed
Journal extract, record of participant observation: 11/05/23
Tightly restricting the way we phrased our observations made this section of the session also feel game-like, rather than dropping us into our more habitual, analytical and academic forms of thinking and speaking. I enjoyed the possibilities that 'I felt' offered, being both a sensory and an emotional term.
Moment 2- The Conversation:
In the last part of the workshop, I trialled something new. Building on the improvised dance duets we had just done, we played a gameified version of a classic dance improvisation task, The Conversation (Blom and Chaplin, 1989) in which the dancers improvise using a question and answer format, finding ways of speaking and listening with movement.
What we did in this session was add another feedback provocation at the end of each dance, so the frame went:
I saw... I heard... I felt... I enjoyed... I wanted more of...
With thanks to Louise Peacock for the last- she uses it with clowning students to help them frame useful constructive criticism for their peers. Doing this allowed us to build each dance improvisation on from the last, following our collective pleasure. It also led to some enjoyably garbled grammar.
In the first improv, someone made a rather grand entrance from behind a curtain, which led to the response:
In the last part of the workshop, I trialled something new. Building on the improvised dance duets we had just done, we played a gameified version of a classic dance improvisation task, The Conversation (Blom and Chaplin, 1989) in which the dancers improvise using a question and answer format, finding ways of speaking and listening with movement.
What we did in this session was add another feedback provocation at the end of each dance, so the frame went:
I saw... I heard... I felt... I enjoyed... I wanted more of...
With thanks to Louise Peacock for the last- she uses it with clowning students to help them frame useful constructive criticism for their peers. Doing this allowed us to build each dance improvisation on from the last, following our collective pleasure. It also led to some enjoyably garbled grammar.
In the first improv, someone made a rather grand entrance from behind a curtain, which led to the response:
I wanted more of making entrances
Journal extract, record of participant observation: 11/05/23
Journal extract, record of participant observation: 11/05/23
So the second improv (above) was almost entirely exploring appearing and disappearing through the curtains at the edge of the space, playing peekaboo and hiding, before coming together in the centre of the studio just as the music came to an end, which led to:
I wanted more of using all of the space
Journal extract, record of participant observation: 11/05/23
Journal extract, record of participant observation: 11/05/23
Which led us into exploring using objects we had found around the space, breaking a spatial convention by going behind the lighting desk, and making each other laugh, which led to:
I wanted more of making sounds
I wanted more of being close together
Journal extract, record of participant observation: 11/05/23
I wanted more of being close together
Journal extract, record of participant observation: 11/05/23
Which led to a glorious final duet with singing, wailing, air guitar, simulating giving birth. It showed a level of trust and play between strangers that I don’t think we would have got to as quickly if we hadn’t gone through this process of collectively following our enjoyment and pleasure.
Miriam and Flora make a connection
The participants in this session were incredibly positive and generous with their ideas and responses. It was a challenging session in some ways, in that there were only three of us (a mixture of illness and some goblin mode non-attendance), but I think and hope that we all got a lot out of it.
Here follow a few quotes from the reflective roll and personal post-its:
Here follow a few quotes from the reflective roll and personal post-its:
The request for ‘more gentleness’ from another reminded me about my value of compassion and self-compassion. Made me think about co-regulation, taking care of one another. Led to some lovely artmaking.
‘feeling well’ as an active practice that is productive
People do care
‘feeling well’ as an active practice that is productive
People do care
I posed myself a question on the reflective roll that has been playing on my mind as I more consciously integrate Feminist thinking and values into my practice:
All-female spaces are different and familiar and very safe.
What would this work feel like in mixed groups?
What would this work feel like in mixed groups?
Ethical Research Statement
This practical research was carried out with ethical approval from the Doctoral College at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Participants have all given explicit consent for their workshop activity and reflections (both verbal and written) to be included in the research write-up and on this research website. Where participants are students, not professional artists, I have used pseudonyms to protect their identities.