Photo credit : Christa Holka

SPLIT BRITCHES (USA/UK) – Making It Together, a workshop on collaborative performance

Sept. 12 to 16, 2022 – 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Mon.-Fri.)
Full week rate: 90$ with Services Québec / 500$ is non-eligible
Drop-in class rate: n/a – full week registration only
Language of instruction: English
Capacity: 23 people, priority to full week attendance
Open to artists of all disciplines

REGISTER >

By registering for a workshop, you agree to cancel your participation if you have symptoms or suspect you may have COVID-19. Please read the Participant Engagement before registering. Thank you!

CONTENT // Seems like now, more than ever, we need to find creative ways to be together, talk to each other, and make collective efforts to thrive and survive. In their 4 decades of working as Split Britches, Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw have been creating collaborative performance with diverse communities while, at the same time, developing ways of using performance as a method for meeting their own life challenges. Their workshop will share these tried-and-true techniques and explore old-and-new possibilities for making collaborative performance for this current moment. They will encourage independent vision and skill while cultivating an interdependent cohort of creators. In a relaxed yet structured environment, they will work with impulse movement techniques, impulse writing, autobiographical and found text, music, personal fantasy, popular culture, and conversation to give performers of all abilities – even non-performers – the tools to create a collective performance from individual issues and concerns.

ACCESSIBILITY // Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw have experience running inclusive workshops and facilitating participants with diverse needs due to age, disability, and neurodivergence. Although not officially provided, the workshop can accommodate additional support such as ASL interpretation and Audio Description. Each day will begin with a ‘go round’ session during which participants voice their personal concerns and needs for that session. The day will then be divided into two parts: 1) a series of exercises-writing, movement, and material gathering- that will be conducted individually or in pairs; and 2) collaborative sessions designed to share, collate, edit and create as a group. All exercises, including movement and impulse work, will be guided by each individual’s capacity and pace. Part of the collective performance-making process will focus on incorporating diverse visions, needs, and abilities into a group offering.  

BIO // Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw are co-founders of Split Britches . Since 1980, they have created an interconnected repertoire of performance and social engagement work, which is part of a larger, lifelong project to facilitate communication, wellness, and social change through performance. Recent projects include Ruff (2013), a performance exploring the experiences of having a stroke; Unexploded Ordnances (2018), a combination of performance and public conversation on subjects of anxiety, ageing, and unexplored potential; and Last Gasp (2020), a meditation on demise – demise of ageing bodies, civil conversations, and a sustainable planet. Over the 40 years, they also remain committed to collaborating with diverse communities. This manifests in the founding of WOW Café in NY; developing projects in domestic abuse safe houses in upstate NY and in LGBTQ+ communities in Minneapolis; collaborating with seniors on a performance about sex and ageing; working in women’s prisons in Brazil and the UK: developing performance with Taiwan Women’s Theatre Festival and creating therapeutic workshops for stroke survivors. Both Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw are Guggenheim Fellows and Peggy was the recipient of the Doris Duke and USA Artist Awards.

 

DETERMINE WHICH RATE TO PAY >
OPEN REGISTRATION FORM IN NEW TAB > 
WORKSHOP BURSARY >
WAITLIST >
STUDIO 303’S ACCESSIBILITY >

YUMIKO YOSHIOKA (BER/JAP) — Body Resonance, based on Butoh and Organic Movement

May 9 to 12, 2023 – 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. (Tue.-Fri.)
Price for the 4 days: 150$
*Drop-in class rate: n/a – full week registration only
Language of instruction: English
Capacity : 23 people, priority for full week attendance
Open to artists of all disciplines

REGISTER FOR THE FULL WEEK >

By registering for a workshop, you agree to cancel your participation if you have symptoms or suspect you may have COVID-19. Please read the Participant Engagement before registering. Thank you!

CONTENT
The main focus of this workshop is a conscious research of our body/mind/soul unification, so we can deeply enjoy the intrinsic process of metamorphosis in the spirit of dance.

Through a continuous exploration of our past collective memories, we can strike a vein of abundant creative resources, enriching the essence of our dance and life.

Everything is in resonance with each other.

Body Resonance is a key to opening up the doors of an ever-changing world inside and outside of ourselves, which helps the body to unfold its potentials, holding them up until they shine and tremble.

Through a dialogue with our body, we can learn to be moved by inner and outer forces, thus realizing we are a part of the wholeness.

A dance of metamorphosis inevitably appears. 

ACCESSIBILITY
My workshop content which can be made accessible to the people with physical disability:

  • – Release exercises, inspired by Noguchi Taiso (Gymnastics), using a sense of gravity. They can be done either standing, sitting or on a chair.
    – Breathing exercises, with sounds and voice, but they are also doable without any sound.
    – Organic movement, where the participants can adjust the position, dimension, speed and quantity according to their physicality.

The workshop is:

  • – A combination of images and physical movements with exercises such as the figure 8, waves, drawing a circle with each body parts.
    – A structured improvisation and choreography which can be adapted according to the physical level that I can guide.

BIOGRAPHY
Yumiko Yoshioka is a Japanese Butoh dancer, dance teacher and choreographer originally from Tokyo. Since 1988 she has been based in Berlin. 

Yumiko was a former member of Ariadone from 1974 to 1982, the first female Butoh company. In 1978, she performed with Carlotta Ikeda and Ko Murobushi in Paris Le Dernier Eden- Porte de L’Au-Delà, the very first Butoh performance to be presented in a public theatre outside Japan.

Between 1995 – 2016 she was a core member of TEN PEN CHii Art Labor, an interdisciplinary and experimental art formation as a dancer and a choreographer along with Joachim Manger (visual artist) and Zam Johnson (composer and musician) .

Since 2016 she has been working as a solo dancer and in many collaborations with international artists. Dancers encourage Yumiko to unfold her own personal style of dancing and choreography.

www.yumiko-yoshioka.com

POSTPONED / TEOMA NACCARATO & JOHN MACCALLUM – Interstitial Listening

2023 – 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Mon.-Fri.)
Full week rate: 85$ with Services Québec support / 190$ regular rate
*Drop-in class rate: n/a – full week registration only
Language of instruction: English
Questions can also be answered in French
Capacity : 15 people, priority for full week attendance
Open to artists of all disciplines

REGISTER FOR THE FULL WEEK >

By registering for a workshop, you agree to cancel your participation if you have symptoms or suspect you may have COVID-19. Please read the Participant Engagement before registering. Thank you!


CONTENT
Interstitial Listening (IL) is a somatic technique designed to hone awareness of the continual discretization of events in spacetime, such that performers may intervene aesthetically in the intervals out of which rhythms in movement and sound emerge. IL involves the repetition of a seemingly simple yet impossible task, that is: to synchronise one’s behaviour—tapping, breathing, walking, dancing—with the tempo of a metronome that starts out regular, but becomes increasingly unpredictable from one beat to the next. Rather than subjugating the temporality of one’s own movement to that of the metronome via anticipation or imitation, IL explores strategies to perform in continual relation with another(’s) temporality even as it remains beyond immediate control. The somatic dimensions of IL involve bringing awareness to the behaviour of one’s own awareness, and to the effects of disciplinary habits, to engage more fully with the inherent musicality of movement itself. www.interstitial-listening.com


ACCESSIBILITY
Open to performers with diverse training and abilities. Much of the practice is self-directed, within clear guidelines, so individuals can make choices about how to engage in each moment. Feel free to contact us in advance if you have any questions about accessibility!


BIOGRAPHY
Teoma Naccarato and John MacCallum have been collaborating since they met in 2013. Their collective work draws on their backgrounds in music composition, choreography, computer science, and creative writing, as well as their deep interest in performance art and philosophy. Together they have created numerous video and performance works which take as their starting point the materiality and temporality of the heart. Recent projects include III: Once Removed, III: Tangente, Synchronism, and Portraits, presented in Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco, Phoenix, London, Hamburg, and Berlin. Since 2016 they have developed the practice of Interstitial Listening (IL) through intensive residencies and workshops with dancers and musicians world-round. Teoma holds a PhD from the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University, and an MFA from the Ohio State University. John did his PhD in Music Composition at UC Berkeley, and his MM at McGill. They currently live in Berlin with their cat.

 

WAITLIST >
DETERMINE WHICH RATE TO PAY >
WORKSHOP BURSARY >
STUDIO 303’S ACCESSIBILITY >
OPEN REGISTRATION FORM IN NEW TAB >

Photo Credit: Mother and Child by Skeena Reece

POSTPONED / [online] SKEENA REECE (BC) — Performance & visual arts: Context and Content Development Workshop

Dates à venir 2023 –
Full week rate: 45$ with Services Québec support / 105$ regular rate
*Drop-in class rate: 11$ with Service Québec / 23$ if non-eligible 
Language of instruction: English
Capacity : 12 people, priority for full week attendance
Open to artists of all disciplines

REGISTER FOR THE FULL WEEK>

*Drop-ins welcome. Payment by credit card or e-transfer. Please arrive 15 minutes early if you plan to drop-in.


By registering for a workshop, you agree to cancel your participation if you have symptoms or suspect you may have COVID-19. Please read the Participant Engagement before registering. Thank you!


CONTENT
This series of workshops will focus on creating and developing your new performance and/or visual art piece. The first two days will cover an overview of our collective arts practices. This can help define for yourself and others the way you work. Understanding how we reach our final art pieces, examining process and learning about how others work can inform our practice to help us achieve greater success. We can then move to the development of our own pieces, assist each other and use this time to workshop our ideas in a group setting. This opportunity is ideal as working together collectively will give us immediate feedback and allow us to gather more resources more quickly. You can leave this workshop with a better understanding of the way you work and the best practices of others and perhaps leave with a new work or the development of a significant idea.


ACCESSIBILITY
This workshop is online, using the Zoom platform. There will be discussions and visual sharing. The work will be done individually and in groups.


BIOGRAPHY
Skeena Reece is a Tsimshian/Gitksan and Cree artist based on the West Coast of British Columbia. She has garnered national and international attention most notably for Raven: On the Colonial Fleet (2010) her bold installation and performance work presented as part of the celebrated group exhibition Beat Nation. Her multidisciplinary practice includes performance art, spoken word, humour, “sacred clowning,” writing, music, video/film, photography and visual art. She studied Media Art at Emily Carr University. She was the recipient of the Reveal – Hnatyshyn Award (2017), British Columbia Award for Excellence in the Arts (2012) and The VIVA Award (2014). For Savage (2010), Reece won a Leo Award for Best Performance in a Short Film. She performed at the 17th Sydney Biennale, Australia. Recent exhibitions include, Interior Infinite at the Polygon Gallery 2021 and the Women and Masks Research Conference for the Boston University, Massachusetts.  

.

WAITLIST >
DETERMINE WHICH RATE TO PAY >
WORKSHOP BURSARY >
STUDIO 303’S ACCESSIBILITY >
OPEN REGISTRATION FORM IN NEW TAB >

 

 

KEITH TREVOR FERNANDEZ

PROJECT // Landings – exploring identity through musical theatre, drag, lip sync and South Asian dance.

QUINLAN GREEN

PROJECT // Quinlan Green x Thea Patterson Art Volt Mentorship

photo credit: Sammy Chien

LO BIL

PROJECT // Post-Clown Compass

SALON LAB


Some years, Studio 303 hosts a recurring Salon Lab for resident artists (and sometimes others). Salon Labs are mutable and emergent: the group decides on their frequency and format. Since 2011, the lab has provided a safer space for deep conversation, for peer feedback, and for exchanges with invited speakers. In 2020-21, the labs provided emotional support during a troubling time, shapeshifting between casual hangouts and participant-led structured workshops.

We generally invite artists involved in our current season but if you would like to participate in Salon Labs just let us know!

ANGIE CHENG

PROJECT // We don’t know, and we’re doing it. Portals

KAREN FENNELL

PROJECT // I Want to be Alone but We’re in This Together

ADDENDUM

PROJECT // Addendum Actions Criticality with Care (AACC)

Studio 303’s Fundraising Campaign

Photo credit: Kinga Michalska // Photo edit: Noel Vezina

Dear friends, colleagues and community,

Thank you for your solidarity this past year. It’s been intense, and your presence, creativity and care has kept us moored and hopeful. You have also helped us prioritize and make the most of this unprecedented disruption.

While governments, funders and large institutions are working to anticipate and respond to large scale trends, we remain focused on the micro. In a time of difficult social contexts marked by violent inequality, we see a wealth of possibility in rethinking our relationship mechanisms and emphasizing trust, supported by an active process of transparency and listening. 

How can we better relate to one another? Trust is key to good relationships, and we believe that transparency and listening support trust. For instance, rather than adopt a blanket approach regarding accessibility, we have been consulting with disabled and Deaf artists who want to participate in our workshops, to build a pilot project (21-22) tailored to their specific needs. This has been a very enlightening process; we’re learning to move through discomfort, and (to try to!) let go of our assumptions. 

Other behind-the-scenes activities involve taking a good hard look at equity across all of our pay scales – including staff, artists and contractuals – as well as how wage transparency could support open discussions around money, and improve accountability. We believe that these incremental efforts will lead to important positive shifts. We are proud of our steadfast, though mostly invisible, labour over the past year, and are keen to experience its outcomes with you all next season and beyond. 

Your donation allows us to pursue our unorthodox trajectory – to go where we are not expected, to think differently, to sometimes confront and to often take care. Your unconditional donations support Studio 303’s independent thinking and doing. 

Thank you for believing in us!

Love,

Team 303 💛

DONATE

ONLINE: AIMEE LOUW ET SEELEY QUEST (MTL) — #Queer Disabled Joy (an improvisation and dance experiment)

Feb. 7, 2021 – 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Sunday)
Open to artists of all disciplines / In English
Facilitated by seeley quest (sie/hir) + Aimee Louw (she/her)

Included in the QPC pass. Buy your pass here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/billets-queer-performance-camp-2021-138363828937

CONTENT // A two hour workshop of a participatory relay game, especially for disabled-identified folks, but also non disabled queer friends and allies.

Sharing playful queer possibilities, crips can build joy across virtual space and mixed mediums.  Using a projector and extra webcam, participants can get views of our joy projected on a large scale.

Attendees take turns sharing prompts:  propose a dance move, a line of drawing, writing, orating, singing, and everyone’s invited to follow along in your own ways.

Respecting consent, we invite you to participate interactively:  try mirroring gestures, contributing phrases for an exquisite corpse, and physically expressing yourself with what inspires your body-minds for a group posi vibe.  This play-time session has Music by disabled artists, captioning, and traduction en Francais if needed.  Disabled folks and buddies near and far are welcome!

Contact us for any questions or to receive a welcome adapted to your needs. 

BIO // seeley quest is a trans disabled performer, facilitator, writer and environmentalist.  Working primarily in literary and body-based composition, and curation, sie presented with the Sins Invalid project 2007-15, and has toured to Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and many US cities.  Find hir via email at https://questletters.substack.com

Reimbursement policy – No reimbursement possible without a good reason (ex: sickness or injury).

Studio’s accessibility – Consult this page for detailed information.

LUCY M. MAY

PROJECT // The Conditions (working title)

STUDIO 303’s COVID-19 PROTOCOL

Last update: August 4th, 2022
Our protocols will be regularly updated with the most recent health guidelines. If you have any questions please be in touch.

EVENING CLASSES PARTICIPANT ENGAGEMENT

To attend one of these classes, you agree to cancel your participation if you have symptoms or suspect you may have COVID-19. You must notify Studio 303 if you test positive for COVID-19 after having visited Studio 303.

Preparing to come to the studio
– Mask-wearing. Studio 303 is an indoor, public space. Wearing a mask is required. You may exceptionally remove your mask during physical activity if you maintain a distance of 2 metres from others.
– Clothing. If possible, arrive in comfortable clothing for movement, as our dressing room is small and poorly ventilated. There are designated areas along the studio wall for your belongings.
– Registration and payment should be completed in advance if possible. 

Arrival
– Please arrive at least 15 minutes early.
– Please disinfect your hands upon arrival.
– Find a spot in the space 2 metres away from the others, and relax!

During the workshop
– Take breaks when you need them (rather than in a group).
– Avoid touching curtains, windows, switches, doors – please let the teacher do it.
– Don’t hesitate to share any concerns or discomfort you may feel.

Navigating comfort zones We recommend a maximum capacity of 15 people. Some classes may welcome up to 20 participants, if there is little movement in space.

Please try your best to maintain a distance of 2 meters from the others. We realize this may be frustrating, but bear in mind that each individual has a different level of comfort and this needs to be honoured. Some questions to ask yourself:
– What is my comfort level in relation to physical distancing in the studio? In general? Today?
– Do I need more information about the content of the workshop?
– Am I comfortable being surprised by the teacher’s proposals?
– Do I need to get to know the participants in order to feel comfortable moving with them?
– What conversations am I willing to have with the workshop group?

Please read Studio 303’s COVID-19 Protocol, for more details about studio cleaning and our special measures.