Dance/Theater Shannon
Things going up on stage.
It Never Gets Old
Feb. 11, Thurs at 8pm; tickets $7 (preview price)
Feb. 12-21, Fri.-Sun. at 8pm; tickets $15
The Garage
975 Howard @ 6th
San Francisco, CA
On Sale NOW!
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/96370
Description
In It Never Gets Old, we explore how different relationships provide context to intentions of touch. How do males and females touch in loving and non-loving ways? What happens when a touch becomes inappropriate? Deconstructing and reconfiguring the power structures of touch through the partner dance forms of Polka & Contact Improvisation help to show anew how individuals interact and influence each other.
Communicating through touch
In Contact Improvisation and polka, the act of touch is used to direct and support one’s partner. Both of these forms of dance use subtle touch to communicate movement. Both also are based on trusting one’s partner. In Contact Improvisation, the partners continually exchange roles of leader and follower. It is a non-hierarchical form of movement. The partners make their movement choices together, by physically “reading” each other’s subtle change in direction and intention. In this style, the work is “democratic”. In polka dance, only one partner leads. The follower must trust in the experience of the leader.
Relationship determines the touch
In It Never Gets Old, the dancers and I will explore how different relationships provide context to intentions of touch. How do males and females touch in loving and non-loving ways? How do friends touch in a manner that is comforting and supportive? What happens when a touch become inappropriate? Deconstructing and reconfiguring the power structures of touch in these partner dance forms help to show anew how individuals interact and influence each other. I believe this exploration will help audiences consider these similar structures in society and what a matured sense of touch could be.
The Body Mind Centering connection: I used the Developmental Movement Patterns when deconstructing a movement phrase, then had the dancers build a larger individual phrase using their assigned DMP . It turned out to be a great and fairly quick way to construct movement phrases.