JESS CURTIS
Workshop:
Improvising is Sensing
Freedom beyond choosing?
Thursday 30/4 10:00 - 12:00
Studio 6
How do our senses inform, support, interrupt, confuse and enable the (inter)actions we call improvising? What is in the space between sensing and doing? Is there any space there? How does doing create sensing? How might we perform our perception? We will work from the most basic building blocks of experience, unpacking sensation, perception, impulse, affect, cognition, reflex, and reaction in order to create more space between them. Layering synesthetic sensory-motor skill sets we will ground in and surf through twisting topologies of flesh and blood to enact perceptual acrobatics that bring us into new dimensions of world.
Performance:
(Some Old Friends That Did Improvise Something Cool Once)
Duet with Stephanie Maher
Thursday 30/4 20:00
Bio:
Jess Curtis is an award-winning choreographer and performer committed to an art-making practice informed by experimentation, innovation, critical discourse and social relevance at the intersections of fine art and popular culture. In 2000, Curtis founded his own trans-continental performance company, Jess Curtis/Gravity, based in Berlin and San Francisco. Curtis is active as a writer, advocate and community organizer in the fields of contemporary dance and performance, and teaches accessible Dance, Contact Improvisation and Interdisciplinary Performance courses throughout the US and Europe. He holds an MFA in Choreography and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of California at Davis.