Charlie Morrissey

The Apple Returns to the Tree

The title references Steve Paxton’s early musings about the experience of the Newtonian apple as it falls from the tree. It acknowledges the time that’s passed since those early explorations, and the incredible journey and evolution of Contact Improvisation as a series of questions, experiments and discoveries; a form; a diaspora of bodies; and a complex web of extrapolations and transformations.

I will return in this contemporary moment, to some of the basic propositions and questions of CI; to how we notice ourselves as bodies/masses in relation to physical forces in a physical world – to visit them anew, to roll our bodies on the the body of the earth, to observe ourselves and simultaneously be ourselves as we fall and rise again, as we slide and jump, and bounce and tumble along with the questions, propositions and particularities of the other bodies we negotiate as we go.

I will be calling on my own versions and developments of materials I met and explored in the studio with Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson to inform our explorations, and those materials (for the spine and for the senses amongst other things) will be woven into my own questions about movement, experience and imagination – how we include in our image of the experience of the apple falling, the other parts of its journey and its return to the tree to fall again.

This is an invitation to widen attention, to include perceived impossibilities and to dive into the adventure of Contact Improvisation all over again – as if it had never been invented.

The work will be explored via scores which allow for each person’s own layers of complexity to be noticed and included; there will be physical maps and pathways to research and play with as well as perceptual/imaginative explorations in solo, duet, trio and ensemble scores.

This will be a highly physical, deep dive of a workshop. Come and take the plunge!

Charlie Morrissey’s biography:

Charlie is a performer, teacher, collaborator and director who has been working with movement for more than 35 years.
He has worked with performance at small and large-scales in theatre, gallery and site-based contexts internationally.
His work is influenced and inspired by long-term working relationships with artists including Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Scott Smith, K.J.Holmes, Kirstie Simson, Karen Nelson, Siobhan Davies, Katye Coe, Andrea Buckley, Becky Edmunds and many others.
Recent projects (23/24) include Supernature, a solo created with Siobhan Davies in response to her film Transparent at Wainsgate Chapel; Scáling, a duet with Markéta Stránska co-commissioned by Candoco and Sadlers Wells at Schwere Reite, Munich: HERD – a large-scale site-specific sound project with Artichoke and Orlando Gough across multiple sites in Yorkshire; and Anushiye Yarnell’s A Marathon of Intimacies at Chapter in Cardiff.

Charlie also organises and co-curates Wainsgate Dances with his partner Rob Hopper in Yorkshire, UK. It’s artist-led space for experimental dance with an international programme in a rural location. It includes daily open practice sessions throughout the year, residencies, workshops, performances and other events.
http://www.charliemorrissey.com/

Dates and times:
December 2-6
14:30 – 18:30

Price:
50 € registration fee
200 € total

Package deal:
In the same week Antoni Androulakis is teaching in the mornings. You get a 15% discount for registering to both workshops.