Call for Participants (Movers, Shakers, Explorers)

Seeking 2-3 individuals, any gender, interested in working on a new project with Stillwater artist and choreographer Victoria Bradford Styrbicki. No previous dance experience is necessary, but participants should be active, agile, and interested in using their bodies to explore concepts, space, and situations. The ability to remember choreography and learn movement from video is also helpful. Trained dancers and performers are welcome as well.

The project involves the intersection of text and movement. Participants will extract “movement vocabulary” from narrative text and employ improvisation exercises to explore what is embedded in the story, or outside the story even. Participants will also use this vocabulary in a series to form something of a movement poem, thus tapping into the image or emotion of the original story and stepping away from its specific details. Other variations with the text will arise through an iterative process of investigation, improvisation, and image-making.

To begin this work, participants will draw the vocabulary from a narrative Styrbicki has written about the diverse communities along the Mississippi River. Through a kind of stewardship of the land and commitment to place, she listened to landscape and people, gathering stories of over 600 “voices” of the River. However, this starting point may lead into other narratives and other voices, and at this time the project is open-ended and intent on following where it goes.

For more information, please contact Victoria@ahouseunbuilt.com
To see past projects, visit: ahouseunbuilt.com
To read the story, visit: relayofvoices.com