June 9 to 13, 2025
9:30 am to 12:30 pm (Mon-Fri)
Full week: $95 (taxes included)
Drop-in: $28 (available one month prior)
Language of instruction: English
Questions can be asked in English and French
This professional workshop is supported by the Conseil de la formation continue Arts et Culture de Montréal (CFC), with the financial participation of the Government of Quebec through the Intervention-Compétences program.
CATEGORY
OBJECTIVE
Lifting the Ceiling is a workshop dedicated to recognizing latent dreamscapes for life, work and art making, as big and as good-feeling as we can; stretching to include the too big, too much, too ambitious, the idealistic, currently impractical. We’ll navigate building a deeply affirming experience for each other that might validate who we are as more than individual humans, allowing us space to explore possibilities in current conditions (personal, interpersonal, societal- i.e., collapse, genocide, division, overwhelm)
CONTENT
The workshop rehearses imagining and believing the possible worlds (or moments) we desire—not through a framework of reform, but through one of grounded fantasy, and a belief in dignity. What is our desired future and present, and how can we rehearse it into life right now? We will practice alternatives to a mindset of precarity. Exercises will include adapted writing prompts, movement scores, work-outs, short meditations, structured sharings/discussions and paired reflections aimed at nurturing potential and courage.
| Workshop Pace | Workshop Features |
| Variable Adaptable to the group’s needs | Intense emotional work Visual support (i.e., documentation, texts…) Short verbal applications Exercises are adaptable Subgroups exercises Cardio exercises High music or sound level |
BIOGRAPHY
Ellen Furey is a performer, choreographer, psychic guide and death doula working in experimental and contemporary dance. Her practice has been sustained by an interest in discursive, collaborative processes that emphasise both the mess and power of our subjectivities as individuals and as temporary collectives. She is finding ways to centre an idea of creativity as an infinite, yet often quashed or relegated, resource that can support us relating to this world through avenues that are multiple, unexpected, renewable, powerful, and purposeful, within and outside of the arts.
