To Be And Not To Be 

authentic movement workshop

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Essentially, this AND NOT practice is a mode of free association of the entire human organism.

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While a collective experience, it is a one-by-one practice:

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witnessed by the group – with eyes closed,  you follow any impulse to move (or not), to sound (or not), or to speak (or not).

 

Each person takes a number of turns, with variations in length of time and ways of entering the time, of being witnessed.

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After an unled warm up, I often start the work with a brief eye-hand exercise. 

We also decide as a group how – or even if – to talk about what we witness – both as mover and as watcher.

Whether witness or witnessed, an other kind of seeing, listening and being is accessed.

One's aliveness is – changed.

 

‘Authentic Movement’ was originated by Mary Starks Whitehouse in the 1950's as a diagnostic tool in the frame of Dance Movement Therapy; it was given a more mystical grammar by her student Janet Adler, z"l. She called its other kind of access an interior descent.

 

While it’s become a creative, compositional tool in the live and film arts (where I first encountered it), AND NOT workshops are not ‘performance’ workshops – although it certainly can produce material for work, visible, audible and written.

Questions of 'performing', of 'showing', of being seen and of who's watching are fundamental to its act.

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No experience necessary (or … possible?).

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Because the authentic in "authentic movement" is questionable – as is the free in 'free association' – this is precisely part of its power, as well its distinct relationship from, and to, psychoanalysis.

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Please get in touch if interested.​