S1 Ep14 Dance Workshop (Movement or experience as Material / Scores)

S1 Ep14 Dance Workshop (Movement or experience as Material / Scores)

In this session, the focus shifts from choreography as set steps toward movement and experience as material. Building on the previous episode’s exploration of set choreography, the workshop opens choreography back up again, asking what happens when movement is treated less as a fixed product and more as something that can be shaped, altered, abstracted, and reworked.

The session begins by proposing movement as something similar to clay: a material that can be molded, refined, reduced, layered, and reshaped over time. Participants are invited to take a movement and work on it incrementally, making small changes, extracting parts, adding texture, tone, or emphasis, and viewing the movement from multiple angles. This process can be done directly through the body or through external materials such as clay, drawing, writing, video, or images, continually returning to the experience of movement itself.

Alongside this, the workshop addresses the complications of treating the body as material. Attention is given to how choreographing on oneself can lead to over-identification with image, self-presentation, and visibility. By working with movement as material among other materials, the practice offers a way to distance choreography from personal identity, allowing movement to be handled, tested, and changed without needing to fully represent the self.

The session then introduces choreography as score. Rather than choreography only meaning set steps, it is framed as a system of instructions or written directions that inform movement. Participants are invited to write scores ranging from highly detailed to extremely minimal, noticing how different forms of instruction affect autonomy, intention, memory, and interpretation. The relationship between scoring and improvisation is acknowledged as fluid, with scores functioning both as compositional tools and as prompts for exploration.

Toward the end of the workshop, attention turns to what else might be considered material: not only movements or instructions, but also the transitions, gaps, and relationships between elements. From here, participants are invited to work with what is most readily available in their experience, allowing ease, accessibility, and external materials to lead the dance. Objects, environments, or simple external cues are used to guide movement, shifting choreography away from control and toward acceptance of what emerges.

The session closes with a reflective assignment that moves outside the studio, encouraging participants to articulate their dancing through conversation, using language as another way of shaping and understanding choreographic material.

Dance workshop
Explore, imagine, move.

A companion series to PETER, dance with. These short audio workshops invite you to explore dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity. A space to rethink what dance can be, anywhere, for anyone.

To listen to the workshops: https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music leaning by mobygratis

Support the show

For information about PETER visit stillpeter.com.

And contact PETER email peterapeterpeter@gmail.com PETER would love to hear from you.

Support the podcast paypal.me/dancepeter