Clowndance Summer Course 2022
In July 2022, I ran the first intensive workshop series exploring how clown principles, games and exercises might be reinterpreted for dance artists. The course ran for four days, in a dance studio space at DMU’s PACE building.
The participants were all women, five (including myself) with university or vocational dance training, one a trained actor-combatant with dance experience. We ranged in age from our 20s to our 40s, and we work across dance and theatrical performance, choreography, movement and fight direction, arts education and drama therapy. Not everyone was able to be present every day, but everyone contributed unique and invaluable work, insight and joy. Ana Raquel Azevedo, Esme Blood, Samantha Bosworth, Sarah Butler and Lucy Wordsworth: a huge thank you to you all.
The participants were all women, five (including myself) with university or vocational dance training, one a trained actor-combatant with dance experience. We ranged in age from our 20s to our 40s, and we work across dance and theatrical performance, choreography, movement and fight direction, arts education and drama therapy. Not everyone was able to be present every day, but everyone contributed unique and invaluable work, insight and joy. Ana Raquel Azevedo, Esme Blood, Samantha Bosworth, Sarah Butler and Lucy Wordsworth: a huge thank you to you all.
Reflective roll and personal post-it notes.
Each day had a particular focus, with ideas and principles developing and emerging across the course. I drew on a range of established clowning sources as well as games and provocations of my own; some I have used often, some brand new. We stopped regularly to discuss what we had just experienced, and we ended each day with a moment of writing. Thoughts about art, performance, training or the context in which we work were written in large letters on a long roll of paper. Personal reflections were written on post-it notes and stuck to the same roll (see above).
In the following write-up I outline the material covered each day, pull out some key moments of excitement or insight, and give a flavour of the written reflections.
Click on a day to read...
In the following write-up I outline the material covered each day, pull out some key moments of excitement or insight, and give a flavour of the written reflections.
Click on a day to read...
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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 identities, names, words, and images in the form of photography and video to be acknowledged in the research write-up and on this research website.