Body Weather: Body/Landscape is an intensive 7-day workshop exploring the relationship between body and landscape led by Frank van de Ven of Body Weather Amsterdam.
Body Weather is a comprehensive training and performance practice that investigates the intersections of bodies and their environments. Bodies are not conceived of as fixed entities, but like the weather, constantly changing through an infinite and complex system of processes. Taking Body Weather into the landscape, the aim is to explore and develop consciousness of the body itself as an ever evolving landscape within a greater surrounding landscape.
James Steventon will contribute to the workshop in the Lake District National Park in North West England from 6 June.
The programme will focus on MB dance training (mind/body, muscles/bones); the practice of and reflection on physical and mental training; walking and wandering; silent walking; pilgrimage and nocturnal journeys; modes of experiencing body; movement and landscape; investigating divergent senses of space and time; peripatetic records; drawing, writing and immediate contact with surroundings; mental topography of a location; myth, archaic mind and genius loci; local geology, archaeology and history.
Frank van de Ven is a dancer and choreographer who spent his formative years in Japan working with Min Tanaka and the Maijuku Performance Company. In 1993 he founded together with Katerina Bakatsaki ‘Body Weather Amsterdam’, a platform for training and performance. Since 1995 he conducts with Milos Sejn the ‘Interdisciplinary Bohemiae Rosa Project’, connecting body and landscape with art, geology and architecture. He is a regular guest teacher at the SNDO (school for new dance development) in Amsterdam.
6 – 12 June 2010
Bassenthwaite, Cumbria