nonstopping workshop
with Jeanine Durning
Saturday, January 17
10:30-5:00 PM (lunch break from 1:00-2:30 PM)
free and open to the public
for more info or to register, email paekm(at)lawrence.edu
presented by Lawrence University Dance Series
in Esch dance studio, Warch Campus Center, 2nd fl
Lawrence University, Appleton, WI
JEANINE'S WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:
Context: Since around 2009, I’ve been working with and through a practice I bluntly call nonstopping, primarily through the modes of moving and speaking. It started as an active strategy against creative paralysis, and eventually became a practice of self- amplification and articulation in relation to conditions of the continuous present. Lately, I find the term itself, nonstopping, problematic. In the midst of exponential speed, rapid rates of change, and automatic over production of material making, I think most people just want to slow down, rest, experience sensation, and notice details. But somehow I feel if time, space, and matter are moving faster than we can track or control, I want to find ways to be more aware and present in that undeniable ongoingness. I keep on keeping on with nonstopping because it understands dance as an experiment that has the ability to resist capture, and the forces (internal and external) that conspire against expression of thought, speech, and body.
Practicals: I’ll share some simple, non-theoretical tools and strategies for nonstopping - foundationally sustaining attention to the material of yourself, while being with and in relation to others, and where you are. We’ll work on accepting, noticing, amplifying, playing, and re/choreographing the ongoing material complexities of our desires, thoughts, sensations, perceptions. We’ll notice and track how our decisions are formed and articulated in relation to ongoing shifting conditions and propositions in the continuous present. We’ll ask basic questions like: where am I, where am I going, in relation to whom and what, when and how? We’ll work together in relation, alone together, or just alone, sometimes in pairs, or small groups. We’ll watch, write, discuss, and question. Bringing our questions, concerns, and doubts into conscious action and practice, we’ll work with provisional micro-scores to frame and hold attention to our practices.
What to expect: Folks can expect to move and speak a lot as a mode of creative practice, while sometimes not knowing why or what is being produced from it. A willingness to not know as a generative tool is useful in this work while being patient with simplicity. We’ll discuss and write. The practice is built on directives, tasks, tools and strategies for moving and speaking but the ways in which that manifests is self- determined, self-motivated, and self-observed. Please bring something to write with and on. We’ll be doing some writing as a tool for tracking your decision-making.
ABOUT JEANINE:
Jeanine Durning is a Guggenheim Fellow and Alpert Award winning choreographer and performer whose work spans the disciplines of dance, performance, and philosophical inquiry. Based in New York, she is internationally recognized for her rigorous and destabilizing performance practice, most notably inging, an ongoing choreographic experiment in non-stopping speech that examines the limits and openings of language, perception, and presence.
Durning’s choreographies, described by The New Yorker as having “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster,” have been presented throughout the U.S., Europe, and Canada. She has been commissioned by international companies such as Candoco Dance Company, Norrdans, Toronto Dance Theatre, as well as by many independent artists.
Jeanine is a sought-after facilitator, guiding workshops in what she calls “nonstopping”—a practice that merges thought, movement, and language to investigate agency, responsibility, and being-with. She has been a guest teacher at SNDO/Amsterdam, Movement Research/NYC, HZT/Berlin, SKH/Stockholm and many University dance programs in the States. Jeanine’s work operates in the space between choreography, ethics, and metaphysics, and she often describes her practice as one of radical listening and responsive attention, while grappling with known and unknown Conditions.
Durning has collaborated with many choreographers over the years, including pioneering dance artist Deborah Hay since 2005.
In 2023, Durning collaborated on a book project, together with writer Jenn Joy, centered around her practice of nonstopping.
There will also be a performance on Friday, Jan 16 at 7:00 PM
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https://www.lawrence.edu/music-arts/performances-productions/performing-arts-lawrence/dance-series
Also check out other Arts events in Appleton, Workshops in Appleton, Performances in Appleton.
