As we approach our 100th Open Movement workshop, we continue our tradition of providing an open platform for movement exploration and artistic expression. Curated and organized by Monica Mirabile, Open Movement is a free program open to all ages, abilities, and levels of experience that offers both space for self-guided movement practice and artist-led workshops.
Every Sunday from noon to 4pm, we welcome you to the Performance Space New York theaters where Open Movement is held. Here, participants are invited to move in whatever way feels comfortable to them—stretching, drawing, dancing, rehearsing, and observing if they don’t feel called to move. Many in the Open Movement community describe this environment as a sacred space for self-discovery, connection, and feeling present in their bodies.
At 4pm, our program shifts to feature workshops guided by artists and practitioners. Each week, these sessions offer a unique opportunity for participants to engage in two hours of participatory practice, exploring a range of themes from movement techniques, to performance philosophies, wellness practices and beyond. Open Movement workshop facilitators are a part of our extended Performance Space network: many of these artists have been regular participants in Open Movement and have created or hosted programs in our theaters. This season will feature workshops by Elliot Reed (who presented a performance commission, You can hear footsteps, as a part of our 2023-2024 season), BE HEINTZMAN HOPE, Alexandra Tatarsky, Sigrid Lauren, Samer Ghadry, Zion the 83rd Lion, Morgan Bobrown-Williams, Reed Rushes, Danyela June Brown, and Whitney Mallett who will also participate in this season’s performance program.
As part of our commitment to process-focused initiatives, throughout the year we also host WIP Feedback Front, a showcase of works in progress from emerging artists, many of whom are part of the Open Movement community. Artists present their projects in a casual, supportive atmosphere to get feedback while the works are still being developed. Audience members are invited to share their responses anonymously, creating open exchange between creators and observers.
At Open Movement, performance is for everyone, whether you’re experienced or a newcomer. Our mission is to provide a welcoming space for curious-minds to reconnect, ground themselves, and expand their perspectives, wherever they may be on their journey.
Alex Tatarsky, a clown by trade, is interested in all the ways we can fall apart on stage, break down, break things down, be in the brokenness, decay, decompose, and uncivilize ourselves. Let’s stop workshopping. Let’s stop working. Let’s stop shopping. No more development. Time to undevelop. What might that look like? Sound like? Feel like? In this class we will embrace the rude child and the elemental: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon. And especially where and how these elements encounter and transform one another. Water meets earth and becomes mud. Now duet with the mud. Speak from the mud. An attempt to seek pleasure in impossible circumstances. Take delight in the dirt. Turn our shit into gold.
A workshop for sluts and goblins who wanna get a little messy, in the name of making dances!
With a playful approach this workshop explores socialized notions of sexiness, while referencing the concept of the ‘hungry ghost’. In eastern philosophy the hungry ghost represents the insatiable hunger alive in people often associated with craving and addiction. It is represented most popularly by the spirit character ‘no face’ in the Hayao Miyazaki movie Spirited Away and is a focal point in Gabor Maté’s book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. The hungry ghost can also be found in the Gollum/Sméagul character of J.R.R. Tolkein’s novel, The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings.
Impressions – i press on you, you press on me. we press on it and it on us.
This workshop uses daydreams, visualizations and image making to generate free movement and embodied experiences that challenge what we experience as inside and outside, internal and external.
Using impressions – how we impress on each other and are impressed on by the textures, architecture, objects, sounds of the room and how we in turn impress on them – this workshop will explore and undo the edges of things. Undoing and moving through the edges between walls and space, bodies and thoughts, emotions and objects, messing up any natural order of “things.”
Maybe we will reach a collective feeling of boundless interconnectedness or maybe we’ll hit an edge thats just too hard to budge..
For the session the room is a room that we move through. For the session the body is a room that moves through us.
Inside us are rooms of multitude.
A 2-hour expansive sound journey to incite creative exploration between waking and dreaming
This practice combines meditation, sound bathing, and psychedelics-informed experiencing, using sound as the medium. Learning to incorporate the entire soundscape into our daily practice, and taking this into a darkened room as a group exercise to amplify the acoustics and become sensitive to group energetic synchronization via shared audible experience. Ideally we will craft a “waking up ” segment at the end to bring light back in slowly, or have a tea and humming moment in the cafe afterwards to further reinforce the quietude and simplicity of the state of being after 2 hours of sound meditation.
We’ll be workshopping ensemble scores, playing with ways to quickly assemble group choreography.
The Power of First Thought: Lessons only intuition can teach.
The Untapped Power of You: Cellular Regeneration, Healing the UnHealable.
(Includes healing foods The West will never teach, healing techniques for your teeth and healing movements for the Spine)
A series of somatic and relational exercises exploring the relationship between movement and language.
Zero point energy is the past present future. It is endless possibility. Initiation. Endless resource. Endless potential. Maximum capacity. Fullness of being. Freedom and play. Multi dimensional sensation. Fluctuation. Being.
Zero point energy is everything and everywhere.
In this workshop we delve into Sigrid’s four principles of performance. The performance of the everyday and the performance on the stage. We explore concepts and techniques to activate collaboration of our inner organs to the exhibition of 5,6,7,8’s. This workshop includes breathwork, duet exercises, moving meditations and choreographic phrases. All levels of movement experience are welcome.
*16 years old+
PUMPDABEAT extends our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported us over the years—through every click, listen and dip! This program is a tribute to the vibrant community of musicians, dancers, commentators, and sponsors who have contributed to the preservation of PUMPDABEAT artists and productions since our inception in 1999.
Join us for an unforgettable afternoon starting with a panel discussion unpacking the evolution of ballroom music production and vogue femme; followed by a ballroom mixer connecting artists, writers, and supporters; and culminating with live participatory performances in which you will experience the incredible talent represented by PUMPDABEAT including exclusive sets masterfully mixed by Capital K’aos, VJtheDJ and DJ Delish.
We are excited to see you there as we look forward to many more years of nurturing the spirit of ballroom!
PUMPDABEAT
*Preserving the Vogue Beat*
Co-curated by VJtheDJ and Danyela June Brown