Puppets & Design

“DANCE DESIGN” Workshop

22-23.07.2022 LOŠKA DOLINA (SLOVENIA)

FACILITATORS: Cirkokrog (SI), Biomika (IT)

The objective of the workshops was to enable creative involvement of participants at the Floating Castle Festival (July 22nd – 25th, 2021). The Floating Castle Festival is a site-specific manifestation that involves different types of arts and more than 400 artists from around the world. Many artifacts develop in the framework of the festival as a result of improvisation and collaboration between artists.

The workshops were roughly divided into a morning and an afternoon session. Focus was widely spread on awareness of space, with participants working on space design interventions, circus and acrobatics, and different voice techniques.

There were more mentors from different fields, as well as physical arts teachers, so it was all very physical. The voice opening exercises included approaches that the two guest mentors taught in various trainings and travels (such as throat-singing exercises and working on opening the voice on the floor with eyes shut, through
meditation).

The two Slovenian mentors (from the company Cirkokrog) adapted the level of the acrobatics according to the group’s knowledge and preferences. As the group was experienced they practiced contact improvisation with elements of partner acrobatics.

After two days, the focus theme was selected to work with developed skills and the exercises. The theme was memory. Through a guided meditation focusing on the voice and the body, each participant found memory, followed by individual movement-vocal presentations of this memory and group exercises. Memory thus became a guide or an “engine” from which they drew inspiration for vocal-musical expression. The meetings also included the exchange of folk songs and traditional dances. Participants learnt the GAMBUC (or gum boots) dance, which the Italian mentor (the company Biomika) had learnt at the African Diaspora meetings in Paris.

Since the festival’s territory was spread wide the results of the workshops were different spaces and theatrical interventions in different locations, enriching the complex creative expression of the entire manifestation.

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