© Thea Patterson

Thea Patterson — Alongside Together

December 2 to 6, 2024

10:30 am to 12:30 pm (Mon-Fri)
Full week: $66 (taxes included)
Drop-in: $22 (available one month prior)
Language of instruction: English
Questions can be asked in English and French, but they will be answered in English.

REGISTER

WAITLIST


CATEGORY

OBJECTIVE

This workshop proposes ways of working together and alongside each other through delicate frames of shared space and exploring weak methods, live composition, traversing the senses, somatic memory, anti-spectacle and a dramaturgy of micro-events. The direction of the time together will then emerge out of these frames.

Not prescribed, nor taught… but following a clear score, the workshop unfolds through the activation of the group, the day, the mood… This together alongside emphasizes slowness and an attendance to waiting and seeing. It asks that we question our definition of what is work, or “the work”, or “what is working” to make space for other temporalities or ecologies of working to arrive.

CONTENT

This workshop works against predetermined content…or the idea of the leader having special mastery or knowledge. It is there to facilitate a space of how we can be together…and work alongside each other as we engage in a durational scored structure.

We will explore various activities, some predetermined and others collectively chosen: reading, writing, napping, dancing, helping/assisting, looking out the window, rolling, making up steps (or not), following, taking things out of our bags, gossiping*, sensing…

In the score, we will mostly be autonomous in our task, but we’ll also work together and alongside, as we explore or work on things we are curious about… a kind of generative co-working entity emerges…

*gossip here is taken in the positive sense, coming from practices taken up historically by womyn, where important information is shared as a form of community care…i.e. before the patriarchy made it a pejorative word.

Workshop PaceWorkshop Features
Adaptable to the group’s needsVisual support (i.e., documentation, texts…)
Short verbal applications
Exercises are adaptable
Subgroups exercises
Physical contact between participants

BIOGRAPHY 

Thea Patterson is a Tiohti:áke/ Mooniyang/Montreal based choreographer, performer, and dance dramaturg. Her early choreographic works include Rhyming Couplets (08), and A Soft Place to Fall which was made into a BravoFact film by Mouvement Perpétuel (06) and the dance I cannot do (2013) which was presented at, amongst others, Movement Research-The Judson Church, and the Munich Dance Festival. An interest in collaborative models led to the co- founding of the collective The Choreographers (2007-2011) with Peter Trosztmer, Katie Ward, and Audrée Juteau. From 2007 to 2015 she was dramaturg, and co-artistic director with Peter Trosztmer on seven acclaimed works, including Eesti: Myths and Machines (2011) and #Boxtape (2014).

She has also provided dramaturgy for several independent choreographers including Nathan Yaffe, Andrew Turner, Lois Brown, Sasha Kleinplatz, Isabel Mohn, and Katie Ward,. From 2014-16 she completed a Master’s degree at DAS Choreography in Amsterdam Thea has several ongoing collaborations, in Montreal, Portugal, Edmonton, and Newfoundland. Her most recent work Un-nevering (in process) was presented at the OFFTA in 2023. She is also currently a SSHRC funded PhD candidate in Performance Studies at the University of Alberta.