With an increasing capacity to concentrate, to listen to inner impulse, the mover learns to recognise the channel within which the creative or authentic energy flows. 

– Janet Adler (1987)*

 

Penny Collinson and Amy Voris are offering a series of six professional development workshops for movement/dance practitioners to support the exploration of spontaneously-emerging movement and inner-witnessing skills.

 

The series will have an overall focus on ‘tracking’ bodily experience. The explorations will draw on somatically-informed methods from Experiential Anatomy and the mover-witness framework (also known as ‘Authentic Movement’).  Each workshop will offer an investigation of a different ‘channel’ or realm of perception.  The series will follow an overall progression from working with sensation, and how sensation accompanies movement, into awareness of emotion, image, and story.  Each channel will be explored with some guidance/definition in relation to what it may encompass, while also supporting participants to source the style and depth of descriptive language which resonates with their own experience.  Movement explorations will seek to illuminate the richness that attending to these realms (both distinctly and in conjunction with each other) can bring to our subjective and collective realities.  In this sense, we understand ‘tracking’ to be a process of attending which evolves from the moment of moving into the process of shared-reflection.

 

Within each workshop we will shift between somatically-informed ​solo movement and reflection, simple hands-on (or touch) work in pairs, and group moving and witnessing explorations.  Each day aims to offer movement/reflective frameworks for participants to listen into and work with their individual inquiries and needs, while acknowledging the companionship of others.  We hope that the activities offered will create space for attuning to your movement, energy and imagination and for cultivating internal resources.

 

Who is it for? 

Movement practitioners who work within teaching, therapeutic as well as creative and performative contexts.  Please note that this series is suitable for those with prior experience of in-depth somatic movement processes. 

 

Practicalities

The workshops will take place monthly between September 2023-March 2024 in Lancaster and Cheshire.  Participants can sign up for the entire series or for stand-alone sessions.  See below for the dates, location and theme of each workshop:

 

• Saturday 23 September 2023, 12.30pm arrival/1.00pm-7.00pm (The River Room, Halton nr. Lancaster): Introduction (or ‘taster’) to the series which will weave principles underpinning the methods of moving/witnessing and touch — with a focus on tracking proprioception and orientation
• Saturday 28 October 2023, 09.30am arrival/10.00-5.00pm (Winsford Library, Cheshire): Tracking sensation – the sensory organ of the skin and the special senses
• Saturday 18 November 2023, 12.30pm arrival/1.00pm-7.00pm (The River Room, Halton nr. Lancaster): Tracking interoception and emotion – the presence and movement of mood and feeling
• Saturday 6 January 2024, 09.30am arrival/10.00am-5.00pm (Winsford Library, Cheshire): Tracking the emergence of image – the presence (and movement) of metaphor
• Saturday 10 February 2024, 12.30pm arrival/1.00pm-7.00pm (The River Room, Halton nr. Lancaster): Story – the presence of personal and collective narratives
• Saturday 9 March 2024, 09.30am arrival/10.00am-5.00pm (Winsford Library, Cheshire): Qualities of presence revisited – a recap of the series

 

Locations

The River Room, Halton Mill, Mill Lane, Halton (near Lancaster) LA2 6ND

OR

Winsford Library, High Street, Winsford, Cheshire CW7 2AS

 

Payment

Full series cost: £330.00 waged / £270.00 unwaged

(payment in instalments is possible – contact the organisers to arrange)

 

Cost per workshop: £55.00 waged / £45.00 unwaged

 

For ENQUIRIES, contact:

Penny: hello@pennycollinson.com

OR

Amy: info@amyvoris.com

 

For BOOKING, contact:

Amy: info@amyvoris.com

 

Penny Collinson has worked in dance and somatic practices for thirty years. She lives in Morecambe, Lancashire where she teaches somatic-informed movement in the community, and also one-to-one therapy sessions. She is a registered Somatic Movement Educator & Therapist with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA), and offers professional supervision, mentorship and consultancy to independent practitioners and organisations.

 

Amy Voris is a contemporary dance-maker, facilitator and somatic-movement therapist based in Manchester.  Her practice is process-oriented and collaborative, driven by the desire to develop enduring relationships with people, places and movement material.  Alongside her artistic practice, she has worked in higher education for over twenty years and completed training in Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy with Linda Hartley.

 

 

*Adler, J. (1987/1999) ‘Who is the Witness? A Description of Authentic Movement’. In Authentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow. Edited by Pallaro, P. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 141-159

(Photo credit: Christian Kipp)