Category: Teaching « Page 10

Performing Shibari Express @ UNITHEA #18

Performing at UNITHEA Festival in Frankfurth Oder at Theater des Lachens yesturday. This time with Schnucki das Rennpferd.

The audience was sitting on stage, close by, in a ritualistic way. I guess the challenge of this Shibari Express episode was to present the ‘male’ as the object of lust (is this correct English?;)

Exposing and exploring him/the ‘male’ body and its feminine side. Doing that in a floor work situation was more challenging than we thought. The last two gigs with Schnucki being suspended, overwrite a lot of the sensitive moments, and silent details. Its more spectacle. ‘But this one dealt with intimicy in a very different way’, we said, when the Polish journalist asking us later, while we were still pulling the ropes of the body.

UNITHEA is a German-Polish Theatre Festival, held in Frankfurth Oder, Edition #18. So the topic was somewhat becoming adult.

The folowing three hour workshop was very. 8 students did rope work for the first time, and there was a lot of laughing and chatting while step by step learning the technique.
Here some performance moments.

Yoga Shibari Workshop Berlin June 30. 2015

Hours: 7-11 pm

Costs: 30 Euro per person (social price 20 Euro)
At Teatris/Alte Kantine or in our ‘Mini- Dojo’. Both locations are at
Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt in Wedding. Staircase b/c, Uferstraße 8-11, 13357 Berlin
U8 Pankstr/U9 Osloerstr
Please call when you are in the court yard, in case you don’t find it, or the door is locked:
+ 49 174 393 70 49.

PLEASE REGISTER BEFOREHAND, THAN WE SEND YOU THE DETAILS!

GENERAL DESCRIPTION: English + GERMAN

NEWS: Costs & program of the evening have has changed, please read below.
Roughly the schedule will be this:

19 – 20 h yoga
20 – 20.30 pause
20.30 – 22 shibari/technical input
22- 23 h open space to play and exchange ideas or just watching.

Plus we will go outdoors in the summer, or do experimental specials like
ropes & painting etc.

Our performance baby Shibari Express is growing, and we want to focus more on performance ideas as part of the workshop, than on basic rope technique. That means YOU – the participants who like – are invited to bring your ideas to the workshop. You could for example bring an instrument, books, pots or other devices, which you always have wanted to combine with rope work. (Sounds more challenging than it is :).

There will always be a small team or free floating people to stage/with, unless you want to make a solo :) This is an experiment to involve poetic/thatrical thoughts around rope work, and to have an open space situation to try out ideas.

Podcast: Ropes & Roles

Ebba, Tova & Gabriel host a conversation with the Berlin-based choreographers Dasniya Sommer and Frances d’Ath, that visited Nyxxx & KokoroTwo & Rökridån for a working residency the 28th of April-4th of May in 2015. When the conversation starts, we have just participated in a shibari yoga class guided by Dasniya. From this point of reference, we go on to discuss among many other things exoskeletons, religious metaphors and the invention of rope as a parallel to the invention of the wheel. Listen to the podcast here

Yoga Shibari Workshop Berlin June 2nd 2015 + News

Attention: there is no Y/S in May the next workshop will be on Jun 2nd!!!

Hours: 7-11 pm
Costs: 30 Euro per person (social price 20 Euro)
At Teatris/Alte Kantine or in our ‘Mini- Dojo’. Both locations are at
Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt in Wedding. Staircase b/c, Uferstraße 8-11, 13357 Berlin
U8 Pankstr/U9 Osloerstr
Please call when you are in the court yard, in case you don’t find it, or the door is locked:
+ 49 174 393 70 49.

PLEASE REGISTER BEFOREHAND, THAN WE SEND YOU THE DETAILS!

GENERAL DESCRIPTION: English + GERMAN

NEWS:

Due to an event in the Alte Kantine I unfortunately have to cancel the Yoga/Shibari workshop in May, I am sorry for that, but we will catch up with ropes on June 2nd, 2015!

I am looking much forward too it, and also want to use this mail to announce some changes: We will shorten, the duration of the workshop. It will now take place from 7 – 10 pm, three hours! So that there is more space for experimenting and play until 11 pm, or just more light afterwards.

Since our performance baby Shibari Express is growing, we want to focus more performance ideas as part of the workshop, than on basic rope technique. That means YOU – the participants who like – are invited to bring your ideas to the workshop. You could for example bring an instrument, books, pots or other devices, which you always have wanted to combine with rope work. (Sounds more challenging than it is :).

There will always be a small team or free floating people to stage/play with, unless you want to make a solo :). This is an experiment to involve poetic/theatrical thoughts around rope work, and to have an open space situation to try out ideas…

So yea, ..please kick start your body–brain-dreams, bring ropes, good vibes and a collective snack.

Another change concerning the costs: for the whole evening yoga, shibari & open space it will be 30 Euro. Single parts of the evening such as only yoga (10 €) or shibari + open space (20 €). If this is not feasible for you at all please let us know! Its mainly about fun but we also need to cover rent etc.

Many thanks for Your understanding!
Grosse bisoux and greetings,

Shibari Express

Shibari Express in Stockholm

After a full week of workshops and rehearsals at the NYXXX collective at Rökridån, Frances and I had worked on a couple of new performance ideas with ropes and with masks. This is a slightly new enterprise I started in recent performances. Exploring the theatricality using latex masks. There is a distinct perception of the material and the combination with domestic settings and quotidian actions, which I think are worth investigating. The way we used them, they generated a sort of anthropomorphic quality in the movement and the reading of animal relationships. It was not about animal play though. They are also an interesting tool to generate choreography from a different mode of body awarness, because of the slight deprivation of either the eye sight, or the hearing ability. How do we move, dance if these primary senses for orientation are reduced? How do we eat, bike, wait and so on.

Two weeks ago I taught a workshop at Meg Stuarts/Damaged Goods new production ‘Until Our Hearts Stop’, dealing with topics around intimicy. After a three hour warm up, they got the masks to improvise, and most dancers were in one or the other way flashed or inspired. Mostly I think they experienced a certain freedom and strangeness in motoric impulses. Allowing a strange way to move and a different sense for timing. Something shifts when the cat, pig or the dog become personalities. When they encounter or make human decisions. We will continue this research! Here are a couple sweet moments from the performance.

10 Shibari Express at Rökridån Stockholm

11 Shibari Express at Rökridån Stockholm

12 Shibari Express at Rökridån Stockholm

Intermediate Ballet class at Motions* Berlin

Pretty pretty Grunewald! This was a shooting by Ursula Scheid for Asmara last year.

Two Saturdays, April 18 + 25 I will teach Jo Siska’s ballet class at Motion*s Berlin:

Hours: 12 – 12.30 h
Location: Motion*s, directly at Moritzplatz (U8 und M29),
Access via ORANIENHOF coming from Oranienstraße, staircase B1
Costs: 6 € More info here

Info here

Yoga Shibari Workshop Berlin April 21st 2015

Hours: 7-11 pm
Costs: 20 Euro for the evening.
At Teatris/Alte Kantine or in our ‘Mini- Dojo’. Both locations are at
Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt in Wedding. Staircase b/c, Uferstraße 8-11, 13357 Berlin
U8 Pankstr/U9 Osloerstr
Please call when you are in the court yard, in case you don’t find it, or the door is locked:
+ 49 174 393 70 49.

PLEASE REGISTER BEFOREHAND, THAN WE SEND YOU THE DETAILS!

GENERAL DESCRIPTION: English + GERMAN

Viennese Rope Festival 2015

Some time last year Flora invited us to the Viennese Rope Festival. Reading the program, I absolutely wanted to meet Kamijoo Saki. She is a most interesting rope master, owner of a bar by Osaka, guitarist and singer of a rock band. She is considered one of the fastest riggers (truly fast! :) and she gave me most precious insights to her way of using ropes, and some secret tricks for performance.

Schnucki das Rennpferd and I performed a new version of SHIBARI EXPRESS on Saturday night. For these 30 minutes we tried an unconventional progression in the air, with an super high suspension point. Discussing late into the nights how to integrate more circus-like suspensions into a theatrical setting and still finding a sensual connexion.. We ended up a cat tying dog :)

The festival a slightly challenging frame, since the audience was rather traditional (even though the organisers are not!). Which yea, in bondage terms still means strong guys tying girls!
Except there was this really sympathetic group from Düsseldorf who came across as frankly open :) , and of course the experimental group Vienna Thermostat, and also Yoroi Nicolas with his partner I much enjoyed watching.

Another favourite performance was Barkas’ and Manuela’s. Both being simply good performers, and super sweet in how they made a sort of tango-seduction story around advanced and playful Shibari, I love seeing how clear Barkas guides his ropes.

We also did two days of Kamijoo Saki’s workshops. One was meant to be a masters class with focus on ‘Japanese Torture Bondage’, a rather different approach than Yoga and Shibari.
Together with Joy, her translator, and a Japanese ‘model’, they made an extremely charming team! She talked a lot about the historical reasons for this rough (especially from the outside) idea of bondage, which for her is still the real Shibari, in contrast to a sort of wellness approach prevalent in Europe.
(Yes! I am reconsidering my ‘general care approach’ at the moment, but certainly keep valuing it for the right moments! ) Unfortunately the masters class was quiet poorly attended, and non of the other Viennese masters were there, and I keep wondering why?

Other than that I thought a spontaneous self-suspension workshop on Saturday. A funny and mixed crowed of people. Some of them kept tying themselves all afternoon. Especially this younger guy, which was touching, since normally its still more a woman thing. But yea, things are changing ;) !

Back to Berlin with a stack of new input to experiment and digest. Here are some moments, and more photos to come…