Laura Aris

is a performer, choreographer and recognised international teacher.

She received the Award of Excellence at Institut del Teatre de Barcelona at the end of her studies, and the Lladró award to the outstanding dancer at Festival de Valencia in 1999.

As a performer she was member of the dance company Lanònima Imperial and associated with

the artists’ collective General Elèctrica, in Barcelona (1996-1999). Later, she move to Brussels and she was a former dancer of Ultima Vez / Wim Vandekeybus from 1999 until 2008. Since then she has been working as a freelance artist developing her own creative practices, always combining pedagogical encounters with the creation and touring of her own works, collaborations and commissioned dance projects.

 

Play full body

The workshop is designed to be a playful physical journey but with a focus on mental challenge and the clear goal of creativity. We will try to change the prism, looking for a different way of looking at things. Trying to create something that is not too new or familiar, but something in between.

Technical exercises and guided improvisations will be the starting point for the work that we will do in groups, in pairs or individually. Participants will be invited to experiment and play with their own vocabulary within defined but changing contexts. We will look for those creative impulses that, once released, offer new possibilities for achievement.

We will observe how extreme qualities hold tension, that tension attracts attention, and that attention becomes awareness.

“As teacher and as artist, I am committed to sharing thoughts, questions, tips, and accumulated experiences that inspire and encourage others – hopefully enhancing a collective, intellectual curiosity. Through my years of teaching, I have learned to seek out a balance between goals relating to technical mastery and abilities of individual students to make their own choices, reflect deeply, discover anew, develop personae, and encounter imaginary universes. The act of teaching and my professional artistic practice has for long been interconnected: they are in constant relation and evolving together. I often borrow ideas from my artistic work according to how relevant they are on a pedagogical level. I then invent work sessions and exercises that support the mechanisms and technical needs of the scenic idea. I select some concepts that can be taken out of context and embodied by other bodies, other minds – keeping the essence but also becoming filters for new, freshly arising materials. Teaching has undeniably become an important part of my professional life. Now, I strongly believe that the relationships between the act of teaching and one’s artistic practice is often undervalued.”