IMAGINE
Dance
IMagine Background IMAGINE art encounter was a youth arts event bringing young people together to explore and express their ideas about a better future for themselves, their communities and their world. These are the questions that were explored What kind of future can you imagine for yourself, your community and your world? What problems do we need to challenge to create this future? What values are important in shaping the future you imagine? In our “Imagine- Exploring the Theme” pamphlet you can see how the young people started to engage with the questions and issues around this theme. Following on from exploratory introduction workshops the young people divided into groups to use a wide range of art forms to explore the theme further and express their ideas and visions. The young people worked with dance, theatre, visual arts, music animation and creative writing. This pamphlet is a case study showing the process with the dance workshop which was facilitated by Patricia Peña Mazo and Sophie Breuker. Find out more about this event at www.globalfestcork.com following the link for Globalfest 2012
The process The objective was to stimulate the creative and dance expression of the participants through a ludic, inclusive and participative methodology. The workshop introduced the collective creation technique. As an opening activity for each session we did different games and warming up exercises (which were good for team building), to be able to relax and work creatively. The main point of the workshops was to emphasise the importance of team work. That is why all the process was based in the “Collective Creation” technique. Even though this technique is used mainly for theatre construction, it can be applied to dance. After the warming up activities we started the creative process. In the first session the group came together to decide, in a democratic and collective way, which song and rhythm they wanted to work with based around the theme of Globalfest and the three questions (“How do you imagine your future? What kind of future can you imagine for yourself, your community and your world?). This part of the workshop was important for the young people to debate and engage in the discussion about how they see their future, what they would like to change about those apocalyptical visions and, what it is more important, what can they do for a better future. During this discussion the young people came across what would become the concepts for the dance piece: War and Peace.
Technique development The “collective creation� technique allows the participants to be the owners of what they do. It gives them a sense of belonging, reinforces their leadership and allows them to realise that every input is valid. This makes them think about their social commitment and the repercussions of their actions regarding the community. In this dance production process there wasn’t any imposition, as the role of the facilitator is to offer an external and general vision of the work, give advice and support. A numerical music score with the dance piece was divided into beats and the participants had to fill it in with the movements that they created. With this technique and the work attitude of the young people, the piece was completed faster than expected and they had more time to rehearse. Those rehearsal sessions were accompanied by cooperation games and relaxation moments.
Collective creation
The outcomes In the final piece we can observe an interesting mixture of personal movements, according to personal experiences, and movements that come from what they have observed and felt. The dance created by the young people was performed in front of the public during the Globalfest Main Event at Bishop Lucey Park, in the heart of Cork City.
“There is no need to know how to dance, you simply have to dance, disconnect the body from the mind and allow the body to be the only one that thinks”, Patricia Peña