Curated and organized by Monica Mirabile
Every Sunday from noon to 4pm, we invite you to our theaters where Open Movement is held. 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. Here, participants are invited to move in whatever way they choose—stretching, drawing, dancing, rehearsing, and observing if they don’t feel called to move. Folks in the Open Movement community describe this environment as a sacred space for self-discovery, connection, and grounding towards personal and collective practices.
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 features workshops by Poncilli Creación, Simone Conrad, DonChristian Jones, Katya Borkov, Shamar Watt, Iliana Penichet-Ramirez, Ryan McNamara, CyX, Remy Maelan of Goodwitch, Summer Breeze, Emily Allen & Leah Hennessey, Charmaine Bee, Camilo Restrepo, Angela Trimbur, and Performance Space New York’s Production Manager Sarai Frazier (presenting a workshop as part of their Alternative Education series).
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. This season WIP will be showcased on February 23 (Performance Dinner with Halo Perez), April 6 (Round Robin Play), and June 8 (Open Mic).
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.
Free with RSVP
Where are you? What’s going on dans l’intérieur question mark
Free with RSVP
Who are you on the dance floor? What does this liminal space allow us to embody or cast off? How can we move through the tension between who we are, who we once were, and who we long to be? And what does it look like to do this together, in relationship with the other moving members of this ecosystem?
Together, we’ll engage with standard tango choreography and learn about the varied musical and cultural influences which shape the dance’s origins and evolution. We’ll better understand how the desire to assert power and pursue passion in the face of loss and othering has motivated ballroom styles across cultures, using this context to explore how we might break from or expand upon tango’s traditions with reverence and intention. Through movement, we’ll consider the hotbed of tensions which defined tango’s birth in the newly industrialized, late 19th century Buenos Aires, and explore the pursuit of glamor which colored the instructor’s study of ballroom dance as a first generation American of Russian descent.
2/9 Free with RSVP
2/16 Free with RSVP
Living notes…
I’m devoted to Krump forms, Animist forms from the global south, and experimental/avant-garde forms : these forms are all articulations of the underground. For me they have the capacity to express pure potential and essence that lies in the deep of the dark. …in which WE will share with you.
I have lots of questions and lots of feelings of desires — untold!
“being ready” as practice.
Body = a site that articulates “language of landscapes” (Glissant) and “points of collisions”
(We) = “really” expressed in baby talk = deep passionate desire to mobilize and connect
I (we) wanna be ready for the incarnation and the rapture, into another mode of relation!
I’m curious about how bodies and collective bodies has the capacity to (we) TRANS-form into gargantuan organisms through plugging into the earth wide web. (eww.we.rhiz)
I (we) wanna get caught UP
I (we) wanna get DOWN into something.
I (we) wanna go to that guttural dark ugly place of utter beauty in me and make sweet hardcore love. Why don’t we (we) embrace the gargantuan shadows of our spirit in our dance, to have a fighting chance against economies of destruction?
..You (we) want to be ready?
What does it mean to be human. ??
– Reproduction of destruction
– Economy of commerce
What does it mean to be a beast/primitive ?
-embracing all of one’s sensuousness-
– Reproduction of life
– Economy of life
Free with RSVP
Humans have an innate ability to read layers of meaning into gestures. What are your moves giving? Any performance is acting, any movement is dancing. We will look at how minute shifts in gesture and tone can change audience interpretation.
Free with RSVP
Enter a world of gaps, voids, and openings.
Cavities, gaps, mouthfuls. Inhale, exhale.
We will map the soft edges of inner spaces.
Cruise the contours of openings and pauses.
Hollow. Swallow. Hover on the brink of no-space.
Bodies talking through silence, through holes—
What does it mean to be filled? What does it mean to stay open?
Free with RSVP
In my process as a lighting designer I explore the presence of black bodies, disappearing bodies, and isolated bodies under light. In this workshop, we will navigate the unlit, the black body, the disappearing body by exploring the relationship between body and light. How can we highlight darkness? How can we isolate the body from space through light? What colors or moods are we evoking? Are we too literal in our metaphoric assessment of light? We are trying to tell our untold story, but how can we see the things that are too hard to see that aren’t physically there? This workshop is a part of a series of workshops being presented under Art Workers Art Artists Too: The Process.
Free with RSVP
Hawthorn guides as we meditate + move to awaken body awareness. Digest plant stories. Feel the entanglement of our “internal” + “external” worlds. Ground gently or dissolve into ecstatic unity. We are Nature.
Bring Hawthorn in any form (tincture, tea…) or buy a bottle at the workshop for $10.
Free with RSVP
A blend of voice and movement to release all that keeps us tir3d and burned OUT.
Free with RSVP
Participants will come together as an ensemble to unlock creative impulsivity and develop new work. This workshop is open to performers, writers, artists and anyone willing to explore the limits of physical expression, get into their feelings, and precisely memorize text.
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” – C.G Jung
Free with RSVP
During our time together in Liver Submersion Dream Workshop we will deep dive into the space that is our livers and think about how our relationship to our livers impact our sleep dream worlds.
Our livers support us in so many regulatory functions, it is a filtration organ and supports in regulation of digestion or hormonal system and in TCM systems the liver is ruled by Jupiter and is an organ that holds and filters emotions such as anger. As we filter and process so many changes, shifts, in terms of climate change and our ecosystems, multiple wars and genocides, deaths, transitions, births, there is no denying that this impacts our mind, dreams and internal organs as we process. I find this time incredibly important to come together to support one another and process.
We will discuss our current dream states as well as herbal support and dream practices that can hold us during this time!
Together we think about deep diving into our liver as a way to reclaim and remember our dreams and to use our dream space to speak to our liver. What do we want to gently support in releasing? What do we want to justifiably sit with a little longer?
We will look at ways to use herbs that support liver health and visualize swimming through our liver to support us through shifts and changes.
Over the course of two hours we will reflect on our recent dream worlds, talk about liver function, practice visualizations to support our dreaming and relationships with our liver and sip on tea together
Free with RSVP
We dance trusting in the intelligence of the process and the body. How do we expand that same trust in other life processes?
The Fool does not know the way, but is open to what life offers them.
The Page Of Wands does not have the experience, but trusts that they can do it.
Let us dance to uncertainty, find joy in it and celebrate life with movement, oracle, play and imagination.
This workshop proposes to create an experience in the body and a memory in the unconscious through a somatic and symbolic journey.
Practice based on psychosomagic, more information in camarstudio.com/workshops
Free with RSVP
Join Angela Trimbur on a passionate adventure to unlock the blocks that hold you back from true celebration in dance. Through imaginative confidence exercises and unapologetic movement, this workshop invites you to break out of your shell and rediscover the joy of being fully, wildly yourself.
