Sidra Bell's Contemporary Systems

An Interior & Material Approach to Movement

Sidra Bell has crafted a unique and comprehensive approach and system to unlocking the creative potential in each artist by developing movement that evolves from the inside out, both physically and intellectually. The workshop explores a highly articulate body emphasizing organization, description, effort, risk, clarity, observation, abandon, impulse, breath, gesture, weight, touch, space, sound, direction, and line. Touch, therapy, psychology, state of mind, pliable skin, use of the room as an apparatus, and physical intelligence are cornerstones of the workshop. Artists of various backgrounds and experience can discover their individual voice and a deeper physical understanding.

Investigative tactics and improvisatory explorations are used to instigate an artist's imagination and intellect to find a greater sense of freedom within the movement vocabulary. Throughout the workshop the phrase work from Sidra Bell Dance New York is introduced and then immediately destroyed, dissected, and deconstructed. These frameworks challenge the dancers to investigate an extreme sense of physicality, specificity, complexity, and task opening the mind to possibility. The workshop utilizes collective effort in group improvisations, conversational task work, dialogue, play, and creative process explorations. The phrase work is lush, gestural, dynamic, powerful, and pulsating leaving the dancers with a feeling of exhaustion and exhilaration. The artists are pushed to remain in a constant state of choice and to work with deliberate action. Bell's work emphasizes a high degree of physicality and input from the dancers, encouraging them to execute movement with intention, play, curiosity, calm, empathy, ease, and focus.

Photography by Samantha Siegel
Copyright 2012, SBDNY, Inc.
www.sidrabelldanceny.org/workshops

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Peridance
• Capezio
• Center