This outdoor class will investigate improvising as a way to expand and excite our dancing. We will begin working with information we receive from the external environment and circumstance and from our internal sensations, to prepare and warm up our senses and bodies. The class will not prescribe a particular movement style or practice but draw from our imaginations and use sharing and copying as a creative tool.
We will use writing and speaking as further tools to comment, describe, imagine and see. We will then experiment with how improvisation can be used in performance, working with simple structures in time and space and allowing an opportunity to watch each other.
I am particularly excited to hold the class outdoors, allowing for different and extra variation and expansion of vision, sound, touch, smell and movement. A chance to enjoy dancing alone and with others – all welcome!
This class will be held outdoors in parks close to Siobhan Davies Studios. Please bring appropriate shoes and layers. We will meet at the studios before walking out together. The studio will be available to keep your belongings in, and will be used in case of wet weather.
Kate Brown has practised improvisation for many years, using it as a choreographic resource and simply to enjoy and develop her dancing.
She completed MA Creative Practice: Dance Professional in 2017/18 and subsequently combined original film and live action in “What’s up Buttercup?” (Laban 2020). Prior to this she made more than thirty dance pieces ranging from solos to large group works, choreographed for opera and theatre, and has been a member of several improvisation performance collectives. She and the late Rebecca Skelton founded and ran London Improvisation in Performance (2001 – 2008).
Kate regularly dances in her own work and performs for numerous other choreographers/companies, most recently director Mira Hirtz in “to every question there is an answer” and “ORACLE II” (live on Zoom July 2020 and April 2021).
She was a participant in Wainsgate Dances’ programme of artists’ residencies in 2021.