Dancing the Political Online Lab DROP IN format

Trailer #1

This is a trailer from a 3-hour "taster workshop" where participants embody different sides of social and political issues they care about.

Trailer - Geneva June 2023

Trailer from Geneva June 2023 end of creation process performance edition with Héloïse Dell'Ava Luna. Videography and editing by Raphaël Harari.

Summary

• You will take a social or political issue and embody them, process them, and perhaps "perform/express" them outwards.
• Level of workshop and audience: all levels of dancers and non-dancers, suitable for amateur and professional — recommended to have improv background. If you don't, you must submit a video of dancing to me as an application.
• Meeting length: 2.5 hours Sundays
• Pricing: 30 euro recommended (pay as you can system, pay by location you come from - more details below)
• Register here link — will get back to you when I'm available! You can push me by email!
• Questions here: saed.mansour.movement@gmail.com

Dates and Times

17:30 Central Europe time, 8:30 am USA PT time, 11:30 am USA ET time

Each session will last 2.5 hours.
Example session: 5–10 minute check-in, 30-minute warmup, 5-minute break, 1–1.5 hours diving deep into the Dancing the Political session, 5–10 minute break, 15 minutes processing through conversation.

Introduction and what will we do?

The story, pain, and trauma we contain in our body are not just our own: it is heavily influenced by social and political issues in the world, by our family history, and by our roots.

We will embody and improvise on social and political issues we care about through tools I used in my dance creation process in the last years that helped me create my dance creations - specifically tools from my solo "اثنين שתיים" and duet "Divide and Conquer".

Example exercise

Each participant will take a personal story that touches them deeply and is connected to their community or society. Then you will embody the collective of your group, and then you will embody the "enemy", and then we will play with embodying both at the same time (for your issues we might use different words - "enemy" might not work for you).

For example Saed (A Palestinian with an Israeli Citizenship) - I will embody the Palestinian collective, then I will embody the Israeli Soldier, then I will live both in my body at the same time. The result is unexplainable until you live it.

Background needed / Pre-requisite / Level

All-level workshop with some dance/theatre improv — this is an all-level workshop but you need experience in improvisation so you can take a subject and improvise on it through movement. You will have a hard time if you cannot improvise — if you are not sure about it, please send me a video of you dancing to my email in the details of this page.

How did this start?

The beginning of this research came from Saed's solo "etheen shtaieem". But this workshop, as a process, started in Geneva with Saed and Héloïse Dell'Ava as a week-long process of solo creation of political and social significance.

Emotional availability and willingness

To do this process you need emotional availability and willingness to go through tough topics and processes, share in front of the group, etc. We will be as sensitive as possible, but make sure you have the space for it in your life right now.

Pricing

30 euro recommended price - but pay as you can. Exact pricing system and how to pay here!

Cancellation policy

I don't do refunds for these online drop-in classes (can be used as a coupon for a future workshop in this series only).

How do I choose a story/issue/conflict to work with?

You can choose a collective issue that is of personal connection to you: from your roots, ethnicity, race, or country. You can also choose a collective issue from another collective with a lot of sensitivity of how that other collective will feel towards you doing that. For example: a white person doing an act about Afrodescendant heritage needs to come with a great deal of awareness. In this space, we don't want to over-provoke other people's deep wounds - even though we believe in the act of provocation through art but in this particular space, we do want to be very sensitive towards the group that will work.