“I want to open a space where participants can take a ride in their own bodies/imaginations. I guide a series of physical exercises/experiments and scores – explorations informed by anatomy, reading, performance practice, observation. I try to find frames or structures – physical maps that can be connected to as much as is useful or supportive.
I play with how the world is experienced through bodies in relationship to what they meet, and the extent to which it’s possible to work with experience as material – something that both shapes and is shaped.
I work with physical contact because I think it heightens a certain kind of physical listening. There’s a reach to someone/something else, and listening to the other often brings sharper attention to yourself, and movement is always about being in relation to something.
Contact can also stimulate the activity of the reflexes. It also points out something of the physical substance and materiality of bodies and moving whether in contact with another body or not.
My classes are for people who like to move, who are curious about how humans experience things through their bodies, and for people who like to experiment and dive into the edges of what they think they know.’ Charlie Morrissey
Note from ID : In the interests of safety, we are encouraging everyone to take a Covid-19 lateral flow test before coming to the building to attend class.
I think how things get made is as important as what gets made.
Charlie Morrissey has been performing, teaching, directing and organising projects for the last 30 years. His work is influenced by collaborations/creative working periods with Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Becky Edmunds, Scott Smith, Katye Coe, Siobhan Davies, Katie Duck and many others. Since 2017, Charlie has been developing a project called Wainsgate Dances with his partner Rob Hopper at Wainsgate Chapel in Yorkshire. It’s an experiment in low-tech, admin-light dance programming away from institutional models. It’s about making space for artists to get on with their work. Charlie teaches a lot and it is fundamental to how he makes sense of and develops experiments around movement/performance.