Workshop
GHOST BEHIND THE MACHINE
CONSCIOUSNESS & CREATIVITY
FOR PROFESSIONAL DANCERS AND DANCE STUDENTS 18 AND UP
Led by Karole Armitage and Armitage Gone Dance Company Members
AG!D 3 WEEK INTENSIVE SIGN UP FOR 1 wk - 2 wks - 3 wks Designed to fit your schedule.
Armitage Gone! Dance Studio
Mana 888 Newark Ave. 4th Floor
Jersey City - PATH to Journal Square
Monday, March 6 - Friday, March 24, 2017
Monday - Friday: 10:30am - 3:30pm
Consciousness and Creativity Workshop
The Consciousness and Creativity workshop will explore the random, metaphoric, and rational thought processes that ocurr in the mind while dancing. Armitage and four company members will offer hands-on guidance to explore the ghost behind the machine. How do mental diagrams of geometry, the sounds and thoughts in your mind – emotions - and your relationship to other dancers connect while dancing?
Video Submission Requirement
ALL attendees must send a link to a one minute video, regardless of previous attendance. Share your passion to move and your skills. Please send video link to
Once accepted into the intensive you will be invited to register.
Questions?
Technique
Each day will begin with a ballet or contemporary class. After class, dancers will explore movement combinations using a highly articulate, athletic vocabulary requiring refined musicality. Armitage and company members will offer students insights to make the movement personal, legible and expressive. Some vocabulary will be devised from Chinese ideograms for words like "neurons" or "synapses". Ideograms are used as maps to define spatial pathways and to create musicality through the calligraphy stroke order.
Creativity and Consciousness
Dance phrases will be developed in multiple ways that ask each dancer to use their own creativity. The way a dancer thinks and feels while moving changes the dance. Can we explore the workings in the mind while dancing? If we try to capture consciousness, do we alter it? Can we obtain a state of mindfulness that allows us to perform movement while observing our own stream of consciousness? Can we verbalize thoughts while moving? What role will eroticism and our innate ethnic, cultural and sexual orientations play in the exploration?
Short Term Goal
On the last day of the workshop we will invite friends and non-dancers to join us. They will be given instructions for interacting with the dancers to explore concepts for an immersive dance experience in which audience members become a part of the dance.
Long Term Goal
The workshop is part of a two year plan to build an immersive dance production on consciousness and creativity combining neuroscience (the science of the brain) and cognitive psychology (the science of mind).
The production will heighten the experience of these processes in an interactive work for a large number of dancers. The audience will wear headsets giving them information, instructions, choices in how to participate, and a way to occasionally hear thoughts coming from the dancers. Audience members can become a part of the performance in group scenes and in one on one movement interactions with a dancer of their choice. Implicit in the work will be the innate eroticism of consciousness and will include an invitation to walk into a scene inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s mysterious work, “Etant Donné”.
Daily Schedule:
| Ballet/Contemporary class | 10:30am - 11:45pm |
| Phrases & Articulation | 12:00pm - 2:00pm |
| Consciousness & Methoidics | 2:00 pm – 3:30pm |
Qualifications
Students need to be well trained in ballet and modern/contemporary dance. The workshop is designed for students who want to become professional dancers or for professional dancers who are interested in studying new kinds of movement and thought. (Note: this is not a beginner workshop.)
Fee
The workshop fee is $500 per week. 50% Deposit is due to reserve your place upon acceptance on February 24, 2017
- 3 week workshop - $1500 (deposit $750).
- 2 week workshop - $1000 (deposit $500).
- 1 week workshop - $500 (deposit $250).
- All Deposits due on February 24, 2017.
- Balance is due on March 3, 2017.
An voice will be sent by Paypal.
Application
Application materials and questions can be submitted via email to:
