Research Exchange: Taking place in the Research Studio, this week we’re foregrounding research-led practice and exchange between artists — both teaching artists and artist participants. This week’s teaching artist is Manuela Albrecht who invites you to be alongside the questions:
How can we disrupt habitual ways of organising the body through productivity and make space for other ways of moving, sensing, and relating? How can we explore other modes of being through embodied relations with other bodies, the more-than-human, and the environments we inhabit?
Throughout the week, participants will be invited to explore attunement to sensation, desire and ways of relating that challenge the productive and normative logics of everyday life. The practice approaches the body as porous, acknowledging its interdependence with other bodies, the environment and the more-than-human, as well as its entanglements with colonial legacies and the ongoing ecological crisis.
These classes are situated within an ongoing research practice, creating a reciprocal space where knowledge can be shared, questioned and considered together. Informed by ecological, queer and decolonial approaches to embodiment and more-than-human relations, the week asks how decolonial practices can be lived through the body. Through movement improvisation, drawing and writing, we will explore ways of practising otherwise: creating space for experimentation, curiosity, playfulness and care, while allowing the crisis to be sensed, encountered and reflected upon through embodied practice.
Manuela Albrecht (she/her, they/them) is a Brazilian movement artist, facilitator, performer, and researcher based in London. Manuela’s creative practice sits at the intersection of embodiment, micro-politics, queer practices, and arts-activism. Through theatre, dance, and multimedia performances, she explores movement as a way to reflect on the complexities of our time, with a particular interest in engaging audiences in ways that foster empathy, agency, and collective care.
They are currently entering the third year of their PhD, investigating embodied ecological awareness and queer kinship through a collaboration of dance and the fungal mycelial network. Informed by their experience as a South American artist in the UK, Manuela’s practice is rooted in decolonial perspectives, centring overlooked knowledges, disrupting the normative, and keeping things radically tender, embodied, and real.
Independent Dance is resident at Siobhan Davies Studios. To find out more about accessibility and the amenities available within the building please see here.
If you have any questions about the accessibility of our programme and would like to discuss any specific access requirements, please feel free to reach out to us via email info@independentdance.co.uk or by phone on 0207 091 9650, to speak to a member of the Independent Dance team.
During class, all participants are welcome to take breaks, observe, exit and enter the space as they wish. Lounge areas are available on the first and ground floors of the building. Yoga mats, blocks, cushions and ear defenders are available for use. We also welcome you being in contact if you would like to discuss the option of bringing your access support worker. Please speak to a member of the ID team if you require any assistance.
Prices for classes are kept very low and are subsidised by ID in order to support artists to attend. To keep admin manageable for our small team, we don’t offer refunds if you cancel or can’t attend a class, and we can’t transfer your booking to a different class/event. We hope this is understandable.
If a class is cancelled or changed by ID however, we do offer refunds/transfers to everyone who has booked.