Andrew De Lotbinière Harwood – Compositional Awareness
21 ⇾ Sep. 25 2026 (Monday – Friday)
09:30 to 12:30
Weekly rate:$95
Drop-in:$28
French, English
#Toolbox
© Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood
Objective
This workshop will focus on several specific areas of research in solo improvisation, ensemble work, and contact improvisation. Through perception, imagination, principles of design, and sustained attention, we will consider how a global spacial awareness and a sustained compositional sense can support our efforts to connect, find meaning in our dancing, and engage in innovative possibilities for individual and collective improvisation. This work is viewed not only as a method of creative expression but also as a way to develop our creative capacity to collaborate and build a community that maintains space for each individual.
Content
We will begin with a period of personal awareness through various somatic practices, sensory adjustments, and explorations of the dynamics, textures, and subtleties of touch. Each session serves to create containers for focused inquiry, encouraging each participant to engage in the dynamics of self-care and empathy for others. Our time together will be dedicated to enhancing and developing our physical, perceptual, and imaginative capacities. Each session will be punctuated by different dance scores to help us focus our attention and collaboratively create a harmonious work, while also broadening our compositional perspective. Lots of time will be spent dancing during this workshop.
Workshop Rhythm
Accessibility Features
Biography
Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood is currently celebrating his 50th anniversary as an internationally recognized pioneer of contact improvisation (CI) and a master teacher/performer in both real-time composition and CI. For over half a century he has dedicated himself to the research, development, education, collaboration and dissemination of these rigorous artistic practices as sophisticated movement disciplines and performing art forms. He first studied and then taught and/or performed CI with (among many others) Steve Paxton, the instigator of CI and his closest associates and collaborators Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, Kurt Siddal and Daniel Lepkoff. While constantly deepening his roots in contact improvisation, Harwood also pursued other dance interests in solo improvisation and ensemble compositional work. He also danced in the companies of Marie Chouinard, Jean-Pierre Perreault, Jo Lechay, Joint Forces and Fulcrum, as well as the improvisational dance collectives Discovery Bal, The Echo Case and The Improvisational Movement Fund.
“Amazing composition tools, observations, you can feel that the teacher is very experienced and interested in his subject. Brings different inspirations, points of view. Relation to space, people, and objects. Developing a sense of time, visual effects, etc.”
— Jeimy Oriedo Quesada
Partners
This workshop is supported by the Conseil de la formation continue arts et culture de Montréal (CFC) in collaboration with Studio 303. The CFC’s continuing education activities are supported by the Intervention-Compétences program, thanks to the financial participation of the Quebec government.
