Drawing on somatic dance practices including Skinner Releasing Technique, touch based movement explorations and Florence Peake’s visual art background, these classes guide participants through perceptions of the body. They encourage working with the imagination as a powerful resource for multiple realties/physicalities existing at once between flesh, between states, between species. These classes incorporate writing, drawing, voice, and movement.
Wednesday’s class will be covered by Rachel Lopez de la Nieta. In Rachel’s class, from a baseline of tuning into sensation and accessing embodied awareness, we will explore perceptions of internal and external landscapes by investigating the shifting compositions of self and other. Through ritual play in formal constructions, drawn from variations of Authentic Movement/mover witness practices, we will experiment with ways of seeing and being, moving and sounding that allow us to read and be read by others within the field of phenomena. There will be opportunities to voice, mark make, and process emerging content.
Florence Peake’s practice encompasses visual art, dance and performance. By encouraging chaotic relationships between the body and material, Peake creates radical and outlandish performances, which create temporary alliances and micro-communities within the audience.
Florence has taught extensively in choreography, improvisation, touch based movement work and somatic practices since 2001. She is a certified Skinner releasing teacher at both Introductory and Ongoing levels.
Florence Peake’s work is part of Hayward Galleries Touring BAS9 and has been shown nationally and internationally and; RITE: touring to Palais de Tokyo, De la Warr Pavilion and a solo exhibition at Studio Leigh. Solo performance piece Voicings has toured to Sara Zanin Gallery Rome, 2017 the Serpentine Gallery, Mysterical day 2016, Somerset House for Block Universe performance festival. The Keeners Solo show at SPACE 2015, Hall of the swell Gallery Lejeune 2015, The BALTIC, Newcastle ensemble piece MAKE; Hayward Gallery- a 3-month performance installation as part of the Mirrorcity show, National Portrait Gallery, performing group work Paper Portraits. Commissions from; Whitechapel Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Modern Art Oxford; Chapter Arts, Cardiff, Harris Museum, Preston, David Roberts Art Foundation. Peake is the recipient of the Jerwood Choreographic Research project 2016.
Rachel Lopez de la Nieta is co-director of collective performance company Dog Kennel Hill Project, with Ben Ash and Henrietta Hale. Their work is performance, dance, embodiment, choreography and lived philosophy. They develop investigative projects for specific contexts or communities including theatres, galleries, screenworks, and non-traditional or outdoor sites. Most recently they produced a 10 year retrospective of their varied practices at Brighton’s new Centre for Contemporary Art. Independently, Rachel has been commissioned by LaSalle Arts College Singapore, Maiden Voyage Dance in Belfast, Arts Cross Beijing, Scottish Dance Theatre, The Place Prize and The City of London Festival. She has worked across opera with Harrison Birtwistle and ENO, fashion and commercials. As a dancer she has collaborated for over 20 years with choreographers and was a founder member of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre.