Body Weather Training

5-week block @Dancehouse, 150 Princes St, Carlton North

TUESDAYS 6-8pm

May-June 28/5- 25/6/2024

5-week block $110/conc. $100

Casual drop-in rate $25

Enquiries:greteltaylor@gmail.com

This series of classes will be led alternately by Gretel Taylor and Frank van de Ven, aiming to extend physical range and deepen embodied understandings. Sessions include an MB (Mind/Body, Muscle/Bone) physical workout; and/or groundwork exercises introducing imagery-led approaches to individual and group improvisation and bringing your attention to your body in nuanced ways. You will get fitter, increase strength and flexibility and enter states of wonder.

Body Weather is a comprehensive approach to training and performance that investigates the intersections of bodies and their environments. Although we are practising in the studio as we enter the coldest time of year - 'Waring' according to the Kulin calendar, we will explore contextual relationships to the space, other bodies, and within the ever-surprising spectrum of our own bodies.

The term and philosophical basis for Body Weather was founded in the early 1980s in Japan by dancer Min Tanaka and further developed by proponents worldwide. Body Weather was introduced to Australia by Tess de Quincey in 1989.

New and experienced Body Weather practitioners all welcome.

Facilitators:

Gretel Taylor trained at Min Tanaka's Body Weather Farm in Japan in 1999 and 2000 which informed her performance, teaching and research. Gretel developed an improvisational 'locating' practice as a mode of relating to place during her PhD (2009) and as an ongoing inquiry, with particular interest in ecological and decolonial lenses on site-responsive performance. She has taught Dance and Performance at Deakin, RMIT, Monash and Victoria University, as well as regularly at Dancehouse. She is lead Artist/Curator at BodyPlaceProject. www.bodyplaceproject.com

Frank van de Ven was a member of Maijuku Performance Company in Japan from 1983-1991 directed by Body Weather founder Min Tanaka. With Katerina Bakatsaki he founded Body Weather Amsterdam, a platform for training and performance. He has an ongoing commitment to the Body/Landscape projects conducted worldwide and since 1995 he has led the annual, interdisciplinary Bohemiae Rosa Project (Czech Republic) with Milos Sejn, connecting body and landscape with art, geology and architecture. bodyweatheramsterdam.nl

Contact the host of Body Weather Naarm - 5-week Training Series