Rakesh Sukesh

Please note: This is a two-week workshop. Preference will be given to participants who register for the full two weeks, as this allows for a deeper and more immersive experience. If you have previously completed a one-week workshop with Rakesh Sukesh, you may register to attend the second week only. We will be building depth and continuity in the work. If you wish to participate in the second week only, please email info@tictacartcentre.com with details of your previous workshop experience with Rakesh.

DECOLONISATION OF DANCE

This course invites participants to explore their unique dance identities through self-reflective practices, focusing on how personal history, cultural background, and societal expectations have shaped their expression in dance.

The journey begins with exercises in personal reflection, where participants examine their own training histories to uncover the origins and influences of their current dance identities. Through this process, they question how their style reflects broader cultural, political, and historical factors, considering the ways in which social status and accessibility have influenced what is accepted as “high” or “exotic” art.

Participants are encouraged to engage in critical inquiry into the traditional categorizations of dance—such as “sophisticated,” “exotic,” or “primitive”—and how these labels are often rooted in colonial perspectives. They are prompted to examine how societal acceptance of certain dance forms has historically been intertwined with socio-economic status and explore what these labels mean within their own dance experiences.

One example used in this exploration is Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a ballet that, in its time, disrupted conventional ideas of beauty and pushed against societal expectations in early 20th-century Europe.
Each session provides tools for participants to experiment with and deconstruct their movement patterns, encouraging them to question familiar forms and deepen their understanding of dance beyond traditional categories. Through collaborative exercises, participants are invited to explore diverse perspectives, cultivating a dynamic exploration of form that challenges the rigidity of colonised dance frameworks.
By the end of the course, participants will have not only identified their evolving dance identities but also developed the skills to continually question and redefine their understanding of dance. This reflective journey fosters an appreciation for the complexities of cultural and historical influences, encouraging a dance practice that remains open to growth and transformation.

POWER OF BREATH

This workshop integrates contemporary scientific findings with ancient breath work practices to support dancers in enhancing their physical and mental abilities.
Recent research, as highlighted by Jerath et al. (2006), underscores the significance of breath in regulating physiological and psychological states, emphasising its role in reducing stress and improving cognitive function.
Building on this scientific understanding, the workshop introduces traditional breath work techniques such as Pranayama, including specific practices like for example: Kapalabhati and Nadi Shodhana. These ancient techniques aim to develop breath control, optimise respiratory pathways, and enhance breathing capacity, thereby facilitating dancers’ performance improvement.

How to begin?

Participants will go through structured improvisation stages, synchronised with specific breathing patterns, illustrating how breath can drive movement, create rhythm, and deepen the connection between dancer and environment.
Our warm-up exercises blend dynamic fluid and dynamic movement patterns with deep, rhythmic breathing to enhance oxygen flow to muscles, preparing the body for versatile activity.

How to apply?

Performance is profoundly impacted by different breathing rhythms. Various breathing patterns create different impacts on physical movement, emotional, and mental states.
Practicing these rhythms in various contexts helps dancers understand how breath modulates emotion. We analyse how breath patterns affect the body and mind, teaching participants to set performance intentions and use breath to transform these intentions into physical and emotional expression.
Techniques such as breath visualisation and breath- gesture synchronisation will be employed to amplify expressive power.

Intact is a training method generated through years of research, observation and adaptation to our current times, while also based on intrinsic human characteristics: breath, movement, emotion, thought, intention, environment.

Its main goal lies on enhancing humanness in its most raw and genuine form. This method creates a safe and honest place that embraces and acknowledges our inner world, both weaknesses and strengths, to learn how to use them through reflection and striving for further development.

It is an interconnected training system that utilises movement as a base to create, confront and play within crisis. It provides the time- space to get to know one’s personal form and how to use the body to broaden the range of movement vocabulary.

As an holistic form, it is inspired by tools from specific lineages, such as breath, meditation and the inner mechanics of yogi principles, while also utilising the movement and philosophies from kalaripayatt.

This interwoven structure combines and rearranges these tools and ideas in a proposal for a new approach. In these classes, one can expect a dedication to raising awareness to individuality and inner workings, an awakening of the senses that leads to an ability to control and manage external triggers.

In other words, taking charge of ones self.