Événement

Workshop: The Desert

This workshop will focus on the integration of song, movement, and text. It will be organized according to a flow between individual and group work. As a group, we will work on the basics of physical and vocal action: impulse, rhythm, and association. Through these elementary structures of embodiment we will search for moments of nondiscursive contact.

Each participant will also develop a short individual score that challenges them to a full engagement of body, voice, and being. These may involve songs and song fragments, precise physical actions, texts and poems, character and narrative. In the time given, we will see how far we can go and how deeply we are able to meet with each and ourselves.

The theme of the workshop is "the desert" in both reality and fantasy. What does the image of the desert evoke for you? Participants should bring a short text or poem (fully memorized) related to this theme. If your text is not in english, please bring a printed translation.

Please wear comfortable clothing that you can move in, with no writing on it, in shades of white and blue.

Professional experience with song and movement is not required, but participants should feel comfortable working with their body and voice. The workshop is designed for performers and performance artists of all kinds: dancers who want to sing; singers who want to move; actors who want a more precise approach to performance and technique.

---

Ben Spatz is Artistic Director of Urban Research Theater, a performance group based in New York City and dedicated to developing original interdisciplinary works out of a process of long-term embodied practice at the intersection of song, movement, and poetry. With Maximilian Balduzzi he created and performed in Play/War (Where Eagles Dare and Medicine Show Theatre, 2010) and Theatricale: a tragedy (Lincoln Center Atrium and The Living Theatre, 2011).

Ben lived in Poland from 2003-05 as an ensemble performer with the Gardzienice Theatre Company and a Fulbright Fellow at the Grotowski Institute. He has taught and led workshops at Cave Arts, the Genesis Project, Yale University and at the City University of New York, where he is also an advanced doctoral student. Ben's writing has been published in both academic and artistic journals. He is a current Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research.

For more information, please visit:
www.urbanresearchtheater.com