MPSM223 Embodied Ensembles Lab 3cr

This course is an opportunity For students to explore collaborative art-making practice while working closely with an Artist-in-Residence whose practice exemplifies an interdisciplinary approach with a specific focus on body movement and choreography. The visiting artist will direct three distinct ensemble artworks that will be professionally presented and documented. Each ensemble section class meetings will be studio practice workshops that will directly result in final artworks. Ensemble 1 - Action Theater Improvisation and the Physical & Vocal Imagination in Ensemble: Physical and Vocal Warm-ups address somatic interdependence and the play of awareness. This module explores embodied practices that develop a greater capacity for connection and artistic expression, in both individual and communal experience. Focus is on specific skills related to timing, space, dynamics, feeling, and being fully present to the moment. Participants perform structured improvisations which culminate in a final presentation. Ensemble 2 - Speaker Cluster Traveling Ensemble: Development of a series of interactive movement and sound scores that interface with a chosen site. Issues of listening and the artistic process (how we listen and what we listen to, how we speak and what we speak to/for) are examined as components of expanding communication. Field trips to designated sites are included in order to perform these interactive sound experiments. Instruction includes physical and vocal warm-ups as well as breathing exercises. Ensemble 3 - Language and the Physical Imagination: Acts of storytelling and writing, and how they are conjured from embodied practice, and are then translated into physical expression. Work with staging pieces of original text, and developing theatrical images for ensembles of body and voice to experience and experiment with in a performative setting. Conversations with space/light/architecture/music. Instruction includes physical and vocal warm-ups as well as writing exercises. [Formerly titled Artist in Residence Ensembles]