touching within between without

Live music by Galen DeGraf

First choreographic work of "The Touch Project: Performing Gender Across and Through Our Skins," Kelly Klein's 2008 thesis awarded high honors in both the Dance Department and the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department.

In rehearsals for "touching..." I looked to contact improvisation for ways to approach the use of touch from an angle other than its social implications and expand the use of touch non-normatively. I based much of the rehearsal process on the ideology of contact improvisation in order to create a sense of ensemble, help the cast be comfortable with touching one another, and sharpen their physical awareness to touching and being touched. The tenets of contact improvisation allowed me and the cast to explore touch more freely and experimentally, although I did not abide by contact improvisation techniques strictly by any means. Instead, I used the basic principles of CI in new ways and in a very different rehearsal process. Overall, I sought to expand upon these tenets by consciously bringing social implications and norms, emotions, and the multitude of identities of the cast into the movement exploration and dialogue. Unlike most CI classes and gatherings, I wanted to use socially constructed touch conventions, digging deeply into them in order to transform their effect on the performers and the audience.

Patricelli '92 Theater, Wesleyan University

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• gender
• touch
• wesleyan university
• kelly klein
• dance
• modern dance
• thesis
• middletown
• CT
• patricelli '92 theater
• contact improvisation
• Galen
• DeGraf

[jfinch10]

Cool to see this!