Image by Michael J. Morris
About the Workshop
Ohio State University Department of Dance alumni Michael J. Morris, PhD, and Kelly Klein, PhD, facilitate a movement exploration of the question: what are possible structures for co-creating a livable future? What are the rituals and practices we need in order to support us in the ongoing work of co-creating worlds in the midst of accelerating complexity and heightened experiences of difference? In times of climate crisis, the Sixth Great Extinction, and pervasive political uncertainty, as we face the challenges of ethical co-existence, we are invested in developing practices at the scale of individual and collective bodies that can support us in personal healing and collective liberation.
We invite participants into the dance studio as a social laboratory, a place in which new ways of being and being-in-community can emerge. Bringing together our experiences in dance-making, improvisation, performance, yoga, critical theories of embodiment, and meaning-making traditions including astrology, tarot, and magic, we will engage imagination and invention as vital strategies for interpersonal relations and social change. Together we will explore: what can become possible when we open our perspectives and creative processes to include more-than-human allies and kin, when we become sensitive to intuition that is both personal and collective, and when we craft new experiences of connection that can be called art, ritual, and/or magic?
Morris and Klein will lead participants through a variety of solo, partnered, and group exercises open for people of all experience-levels and abilities. Participants will practice attuning to their own sensation and their interconnection with human and nonhuman others. In addition to discussing possible structures for a livable future, participants will experiment with the notion of democracy based on consent rather than consensus with the hypothesis that such a mode of social organization might enable the emergence of a more just and sustainable sociality.
This workshop promises to not only stimulate important conversations regarding livable futures but facilitate experimentation with embodied states necessary for co-creating those futures. How does art-as-ritual and studio practice as magic support us in co-creating livable futures? What resources become available to us when we consider dance or movement practices in these terms? With our attention, intention, and sensation, we practice living in ways that are rooted in meaning, pleasure, consent, and collaboration.