Performance Practice Workshop

Catalog description

Looking at performance as an act of transmission rather than a transaction or production, this class will consider the differing ways we relate to other bodies moving through space. Students will be guided through the process by which Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born create performance work. Utilizing writing exercises, song making practices, and structured/improvisational movement as research tools into what our bodies may carry from ancestors we no longer locate on a map or in a history book. Reading the writings of other practitioners whose work expresses foundational tenets of Okwui and Peter’s practice will be discussed alongside active movement exercises. With a focus on collaboration and engagement, we will investigate how performance can be a way of practicing new relations to one another. The course will culminate with students creating and performing their own projects with class participation.