Partnering the space: A Journey from Inner to Outer and Back Again

Several years ago during an advanced technique class with William Evans, the concept of “partnering the space” came up and my life as a dance artist was forever changed. Space suddenly became palpable….something that I could engage with and inhabit in new ways. As my experience of external space changed, my sense of inner space completely shifted. With a heightened level of kinesthetic awareness, I began to make exciting discoveries with weight, time, and flow. While my access to expressivity opened up and became a place of endless possibilities, my experience of viewing dance was also permanently altered. I became mesmerized by artists who seemed to exist in a multidimensional canvas; a moldable, pliable, shifting landscape. In this movement workshop, participants will be guided through several experiences in which we will explore space in terms of texture, lines, shape, energy, color, etc. and connect these explorations to our kinesthetic sense. Ultimately, we will journey from outer to inner and back again as we work individually and collaboratively to generate some short movement studies (creative landscapes) and share these with each other. As a dance educator, I seek ways to create multiple inroads for my students and I believe these tools can be utilized and adapted for a variety of classes: technique, introduction to dance, composition, improvisation to name a few. As a group we will explore the application possibilities across disciplines.