Body Weather A Field Guide to Embodied Awareness

Frank van de Ven returns to Naarm Melbourne having spent the last 6 months touring Europe presenting a range of Body Weather trainings and workshops.

Frank brought Body Weather to MIECAT in early 2024 and we're delighted to welcome him back for this new Body Weather experience.  In this 5-hour experiential workshop we will playfully investigate our sense of embodied awareness and expression. 

Through creative and immersive movement tasks and explorations we’ll consider how body and mind are intrinsically interwoven and how we can discover multiple relations and connections between them, as well as between ourselves and the world in which we are embedded.

Participants will

• Enhance your capacity for awareness, attention, relaxation, and concentration.
• Recognise prevalent thought and movement patterns and explore the possibility for change.
• Connect to a fresh sense of physical and mental well-being
• Explore ontological questions in a light way.

• Have fun!

The workshop will involve movement, touch, improvisation and partnered activities. Please consider that this is comfortable for you before registering.

There will be a lunch break (no catering) from 12.30-1.30pm.

Who is this workshop for:

• This is a workshop for anyone interested in the relationship between mind, body and world.
• It also offers a professional development opportunity for Somatic and Mental Health workers and Creative Arts Therapists. (A  certificate of attendance will be issued)
• It will be of interest to a broad variety of somatic practitioners, creative facilitators, creative arts therapists, performing arts, dance, theatre and movement practitioners, mature students and artists, and anyone interested in exploring the body and physical presence.

No special movement skills are required.

Please note this is not a therapy experience, it is expected participants are able to monitor their own physical and mental well-being and level of engagement.  Please email publicprograms@miecat.edu.au with any questions.

About Body Weather:

Body Weather is a comprehensive approach to movement that investigates the intersections of bodies and their environments. The physical and philosophical basis for Body Weather was founded in the early 1980s by Min Tanaka and further developed by dance artists worldwide.

Bodies are conceived not as fixed and separate entities, but in relationship and constantly changing – like the weather.

Our facilitator: Frank van de Ven

Frank has 30 years experience of teaching dance, theatre and creative movement in many Art Colleges, Universities and Dance Institutions around the world. His main practice is Body Weather, a comprehensive approach to training and performance that investigates the intersections of bodies and their environments. Bodies are conceived not as fixed and separate entities but as constantly changing - just like the weather. Weather is seen as a complex system of forces and influences coursing through and beyond bodies and the world.

Photo credit: Bertram Dhellemmes