2025 dance in planthroposcene workshop
PHYTO-SOMATIC DANCE PARTY
What is
inside of us? This practice is a mixture of comparative microbiology and a
dance party. Within the session, we relax, move and sweat. Drawing on
phyto-somatic and folk approaches to dance we look for new sources of personal
and collective movement and relatedness. Hands-on exercises, guided
improvisation and sonic experiments support a deeper awareness of cellular
intelligence and a transgressive sense of community. Dance and music serve as
tools to swell out beyond our bodily contours, becoming a boundless community
of pulses, waves, and flows. We engage with traditional
polyphonies and grooves, plant studies, and ecological perception as our
methodologies. Mixing the
spirit of laboratory with the intimacy of a party, we delve into the field of microbiology
of relatedness, focusing on our epithelium as an interface and our bodies as vibrating
cellular communities, attuning to the timing of a planetary body and micro timing
of our embodied musicality.
CARRIED OUT AT:
CREDITS:
Concept & facilitation Dorota Michalak
Live music Borys Słowikowski
SUPPORTED BY:
Senate Department for Culture and Europe
Live music Borys Słowikowski
SUPPORTED BY:
Senate Department for Culture and Europe
“Every
plant seems to invent and open a cosmic plane where there is no opposition
between matter and fantasy, between imagination and self-development.”
“Every
plant seems to invent and open a cosmic plane where there is no opposition
between matter and fantasy, between imagination and self-development.”
PRESS & MEDIA
2018 becoming workshop
BECOMING BODY
A workshop focused on tuning into what we call, following Erin
Manning, a state of “becoming body” – a responsive quality, that
transcends bound and homogenic idea of identity.
It mixes a somatic approach, dance scores and philosophy. We work with movement & spoken
language, verbalization of sensations, tracing attention, tuning into
different time-spaces embedded within our bodies, playing with scales and
volumes. We focus on bodily fluidity and approach the body as a fluid archive. On this basis, we intend
to explore notions of ‘heritage’ as an embodied knowledge created
always in a relation to other bodies, in continuous movement and transformation. In this investigation we specifically focus on language as a
matter – understood as a collective set of rules and as a mean capable
of activating and integrating different perspectives. Its aim is to
practice alternative understanding of what constitutes and surrounds us,
distorting exploitative epistemic traditions.
CARRIED OUT AT:
CREDITS:
Concept & facilitation Dorota Michalak (in collaboration with Borys Slowikowski at Xarkis residency)
Conceptual support Sandra Noeth
Documentation (Xarkis residency) Emma Louise Photography
SUPPORTED BY:
Conceptual support Sandra Noeth
Documentation (Xarkis residency) Emma Louise Photography
SUPPORTED BY:
“Bodies
cannot be measured solely by adding their parts (their organs), thus creating
an ambulatory whole. Bodies engage symbiotically, incorporeally, virtually,
always becoming more than they already seem to be.”
“what the coral said. once. we were all singing. somewhere. we are still. moving. as something huge, vibrational, wet. we dance and keep the world in place. we shiver and know the orbit. if you let the body undulate you will remember. not all the waves are in the ocean. we don't know so much about soloists. we don't know so much about virtue. we don't care so much about your body. it's the body. you are already part of it because you has nothing to do with it. dance into harmony now. now is already now. time has nothing to do with it. time is up. time is over. we are love in all directions. come on, sing.”
TESTIMONIES