Call for participation · Workshop with Christopher Willes, Ellen Furey and Brendan Jensen, November 2023

OPEN CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Sounds for Dancers
a work­shop with
Christopher Willes, Ellen Furey and Brendan Jensen

Dates:

Wednesday 22, Thursday 23, Wednesday 29, Thursday 30 November, Friday, December 1
from 7pm to 10pm: work­shop
Saturday, December 2, from 3:30pm to 6pm: Sharing ses­sion / per­for­mance from the work­shop
Place : At Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche
9 esplanade Pierre Vidal-Naquet, 75013 Paris

Description:

Sounds For Dancers is a free, inten­sive six-day research work­shop with artist/musi­cian and per­for­mance maker Christopher Willes and col­lab­o­ra­tors (Toronto/Montréal) which will inves­ti­gate sonic-somatic prac­tices.

We are seeking five dance and per­for­mance-based artists to par­tic­i­pate. No prior expe­ri­ence with music/sound-making is nec­es­sary. The work­shop will con­clude with a public exhi­bi­tion/per­for­mance sharing of the research with the public at Betonsalon on December 2nd. Workshop par­tic­i­pants will receive a 170 euro fee for con­tributing to the public event.

Co-facil­i­tated with dance artists Ellen Furey and Brendan Jensen, Sounds For Dancers will invite par­tic­i­pants into per­for­mance scores and exer­cises bor­rowed from a new work the group is cur­rently cre­ating, enti­tled RADIANCE, which places alter­na­tive healing prac­tices in con­ver­sa­tion with exper­i­mental music per­for­mance. Through sound and move­ment scores, hands-on exper­i­men­ta­tion, reflec­tion and dialog, the ses­sions will explore chore­og­raphy and sound-making as a uni­fied prac­tice that cen­tres on col­lec­tive care, sen­si­tivity and aware­ness of others.

The ses­sions will oscil­late between two modal­i­ties: 1) sound chore­ogra­phies, which are scores for group impro­vi­sa­tions that invite moving and per­forming with musical instru­ments in unusual ways; and 2) sound mas­sages, in which indi­vidual lis­teners are led into direct phys­ical and tac­tile expe­ri­ences of sound through a care­fully guided pro­cess. These explo­rations will be repeated each day with par­tic­i­pants––exam­ined and refined togeth­er—and even­tu­ally shared in the con­cluding public event in a live exhi­bi­tion/per­for­mance of the prac­tices.

Hosted as part of “Un·­Tuning Together”, Sounds for Dancers reflects on the shared lin­eage of thinking and prac­tice between North American avant-garde tra­di­tions of con­tem­po­rary dance and exper­i­mental music. And the pro­ject’s title is bor­rowed from a note found in the Pauline Oliveros archives which appears to be the begin­nings of a syl­labus for a class enti­tled “Sound for Dancers 1”.

What to expect:

This work­shop will involve sound making (no expe­ri­ence required), move­ment, some con­sen­sual touch (medi­ated by objects), dis­cus­sion, reading, drawing and writing.

The work­shop will be facil­i­tated in english, but we will do our best to encourage col­lec­tive trans­la­tion and will gladly slow down when needed. Processes of facil­i­ta­tion and learning are not dis­tinct from issues of social jus­tice, democ­racy, and com­mu­nity cohe­sion. Active lis­tening, care, con­sent, and respon­si­bility to the group are values that as a facil­i­tator we will work hard to con­tin­u­ously center throughout our time together.

The approach to facil­i­ta­tion will be informed by the groups com­bined back­grounds in exper­i­mental music, dance and inter­dis­ci­plinary per­for­mance, along with studies in Conflict Coaching (Willes and Furey, University of Waterloo) and Alexander Technique (Jensen).

Performance Fee: 170 €

Expressions of interest: please send a short hello, intro­ducing your­self and sharing a bit about your interest in par­tic­i­pating (such as a short text, a photo, a link on audio or video mate­rial...)
to Betonsalon : public­s@­be­ton­salon.net

Biographies:

Christopher Willes is an artist, musi­cian/com­poser, dra­maturge, and researcher based in Canada. His inter­dis­ci­plinary work focuses on the sub­ject and prac­tice of lis­tening, and encom­passes per­for­mances, exhi­bi­tions, con­certs, record­ings, pub­li­ca­tions, com­mu­nity arts and edu­ca­tional pro­jects. Developed col­lab­o­ra­tively, his pro­jects often involve the direct par­tic­i­pa­tion of the audi­ence, to explore how music and sound can divulge new forms of sen­si­tivity and a recog­ni­tion of our inter­de­pen­dence.
He is an asso­ciate artist and artistic pro­ducer with Tkaronto-Toronto per­forming arts orga­ni­za­tion Public Recordings, with whom he devel­oped What’s Collective?– an itin­erant studio research pro­ject on the sub­ject of col­lec­tive art prac­tices. He also recently devised a pub­li­ca­tion on the work of Pauline Oliveros enti­tled Resonance Gathering, pub­lished by Art Metropole. Since 2013, Christopher has co-cre­ated sev­eral works with Montréal based artist Adam Kinner, including the one-to-one per­for­mance MANUAL, which has toured inter­na­tion­ally. And he has worked as a dance dra­maturge and sound designer for over a decade.
Christopher studied music at the University of Toronto and received an MFA from Bard College (USA). He is a former MacDowell Fellow (USA), an affil­i­ated researcher at the Milieux Institute (Montreal), and is cur­rently studying Conflict Mediation at the University of Waterloo. His work has been pre­sented across Canada, in the USA and Europe.

Brendan Jensen is a dancer, chore­og­ra­pher and move­ment teacher based in Tkaronto-Toronto. His cur­rent research inves­ti­gates ‘prac­tice as per­for­mance’, in rela­tion to his work as a dance and move­ment teacher, and his ongoing training in Alexander Technique. He is a grad­uate of the National Ballet School of Canada and has worked with many dance artists and com­pa­nies including the Toronto Dance Theatre. He was a recip­ient of the DanceWeb Europe schol­ar­ship in con­junc­tion with the ‘2008 Impulstanz’ fes­tival in Vienna, Austria.
Brendan is an asso­ciate artist with Public Recordings, a Tkaronto-Toronto based orga­ni­za­tion focused on inter­dis­ci­plinary per­forming arts research. He has worked with Public Recordings since 2010, when he per­formed in the work relay, a dance work by Canadian chore­og­ra­pher Ame Henderson. Since then he has con­tributed to numerous Public Recordings pro­jects, as a per­former, out­side eye, and facil­i­tator. Between 2017-2019 he par­tic­i­pated in a large-scale inter­dis­ci­plinary per­for­mance of Pauline Oliveros’s music, and con­tributed to a sub­se­quent pub­li­ca­tion on that pro­ject enti­tled Resonance Gathering, devised by Canadian artist Christopher Willes and co-pro­duced with Public Recordings.

Ellen Furey is a dance artist and chore­og­ra­pher based in Tiohtiá:ke–Mooniyang–Montréal, Canada. Since 2012, she has worked on and within col­lab­o­ra­tive, inter­dis­ci­plinary, dis­cur­sive pro­cesses that insist on a mess of sub­jec­tiv­i­ties. Her work uses poten­tials of dance vir­tu­osi­ties and per­former type show­man­ship as mate­rial for living, oblique rebel­lion, and debate, entan­gled with heavy ambi­guity. She col­lab­o­rates with artists such as Malik Nashad Sharpe, Dana Michel, Christopher Willes, Audrée Juteau, N. Zoey Gauld, Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, Paul Chambers, Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, Alanna Stuart, Romy Lightman, and has danced in works by Dancemakers, Daniel Léveillé, Frédérick Gravel, Marten Spangberg (Sweden), Tina Tarpgaard (Denmark), among others.
Ellen’s work has been pre­sented in Europe, Canada, in the USA and the UK. She has co-cre­ated two dance works with UK based chore­og­ra­pher Malik Nashad Sharpe (SOFTLAMP.autonomies (2018) and High Bed Lower Castle (2022, FTA)) and her most recent work Lay Hold To The Softest Throat premiered at Festival TransAmériques (Montreal) in June 2023. She is a 2014 recip­ient of a DanceWeb schol­ar­ship, ImpulsTanz, Vienna, and a grad­uate of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Ellen is cur­rently training in both medi­umship/psy­chic devel­op­ment and Conflict Management (University of Waterloo) and is a cer­ti­fied End of Life Doula. Since 2019 she has been Artistic Advisor at Danse-Cité, a con­tem­po­rary dance pre­senter in Montreal.