Choreolab 2023
January 9th – January 20th 2023
Wellington
Applications for Choreolab 2023 are now open! Come celebrate 21 years of New Zealand’s most profound professional development event for dance practitioners.
Choreolab 2023 will feature tutors Leila McMillan, Brydie Colquhoun, and Forest Kapo, shared kai, lab opportunities and the return of the infamous Choreolab boat trip!
As always we are welcoming applications from professional dancers/performing artists and tertiary dance graduates.
Choreolab 2023 Workshops
Week One: Leila McMillan (US/UK)
Week Two: Brydie Colquhoun (Aotearoa)
Week Two: Forest Kapo (Aotearoa/Australia)
This year we will be welcoming our attendees into our current home at the Northland Memorial Community Centre, where we will spend two weeks of the Wellington summer delving into your physical and creative practice.
Application Details
To apply for Choreolab 2023 please complete the application form by midnight Sunday 20th November 2022.
If you have any questions about the application process please email Artistic Manager Anita Hunziker anita@footnote.org.nz
Applicants will be notified by 23rd November 2022.
Please note that you will need to pay to secure your place and payments are non-refundable.
Fee includes lunch every day and the boat trip social.
$380* Early bird fee (if paid by 7th December) or $430* (to be paid in full by 16th December).
*Fee is non-refundable. We will consider transfers case by case. If you are unable to attend due to becoming ill with Covid-19 we will refund the full fee.
Workshop details
Week One: Physical & Creative Practice with Leila McMillan
In this workshop we will work with duality and how two opposing truths can occupy the same space at the same time. In the research we will work with the shadow as a metaphor (Carl Jung) and use tools from flying low (DZ), solo improvisation and jiu jitsu drills for our physical approach to the theme. Our shadow never leaves us, it can be shaped through light within us and our understanding of who we are. It changes, transforms and morphs through time. Duality is present in how two elements can coexist whether this be abstract or tangible, opposite or complementary, working to form a dynamic system.
During the morning session we will work with a mixture of jiu jitsu drills and flying low. Jiu jitsu is a martial arts practice, within this we will approach specific concepts to feed our movement practice such grips, hooks and space. Flying low is a floorwork method using speed and efficient pathways to move in and out of the earth. We will run, slide, challenge gravity, fall, rise and command our body with our voice.
In the afternoon you will be led through different improvisation tasks, working with physical and emotional states, speed, change, pull/push, tension and transformation through solo and duo set ups. We will work in pairs to create a space where a witness, a support and a sound board exists and is available. We will move, play, laugh, sing, discuss and create something together. This research has been developing through the choreographic processes linked to 3 fingers at arm’s length (2017), Curl of hair (2021), and a current new body of work.
ABOUT LEILA
Leila McMillan (UK/US) is an international choreographer, teacher and performer. She creates work that is high-energy, yet nuanced and abstract in its choreography, drawing on personal experiences focusing on themes of identity, gender and the cultural interface. She was artist in residence at Hong Kong academy for performing arts in 2017, creating new work, 3 fingers at arms length, and nominated for outstanding choreography at Hong Kong Dance Alliance Awards 2018. Her full-length work Family Portrait, 2015, was presented throughout the UK. New digital work Curl of hair, 2021, is an intimate duet stemming from personal trauma, shame, and duality. She was a Wild Card artist of Sadler’s Wells curating, this way, that way, 2015, at Lilian Baylis. As a performer, she worked with artists including David Zambrano, Crystal Pite, Thomas Lehman, Jasmina Krizaj, and Nina Fajdiga. Since receiving a place on Zambrano’s 50 days flying low and passing through, 2010, she is one of the certified artists teaching this technique and has led the development of this approach in the UK. She has brought the methods into the curriculum at London Contemporary Dance School, Northern School of Contemporary Dance and Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She is now Senior Lecturer of Contemporary Dance at Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, lecturer at London Contemporary Dance School 2014-2020, has taught throughout Europe, Middle East, Asia, United States and South America. Since 2012, she collaborated with Angolan visual artist Isaac Carlos as co-founders of Muxima, an independent cafe in Bow, East London, awarded several times best cafe in East London.
Week Two: Physical Practice with Brydie Colquhoun
Brydie’s sessions will look at the many ways to whakaoho (awaken) the body, mind and individual energy. There will be a commitment and acknowledgment of where each person has arrived energetically each day. We will use each other and conscious, kind physical touch to explore manipulation and improvisation.
Our movement will come from place or presence with importance on the here and now. Encouragement and acknowledgement of how speedy state movement can create power.
We will use each session to wake the spirit and body through improvisation, meditative movement and contact initiations. We will allow these concepts to transition into a loose frame work when learning or exploring phrases or set movement.
ABOUT BRYDIE
Brydie is a freelance creator who has whakapapa from Ngāpuhi ki te Tai Tokerau. She grew up in Ahipara Northland immersed in the taiao (nature). She graduated from the New Zealand School of Dance in 2012 and has loved navigating a life of movement and creation in the New Zealand contemporary dance community.
Brydie is passionate about accessibility and inclusivity in dance, physically, emotionally and spiritually. She believes the way you walk through daily life hugely impacts your hauora (well being). She strives to lead with kindness.
During the past ten years Brydie has worked with Black Grace Dance Company, Footnote New Zealand Dance, New Zealand Dance Company, Atamira Dance Company and Movement of The Human. She has worked with choreographers Malia Johnston, Victoria Columbus, James O’Hara, Claire O’Neil, Joshua Rutter, Sarah Foster-Sproull and many more.
Week Two: Creative Practice with Forest Kapo
Interdisciplinary, and indigenous, how do these two spaces inform each other?
Through an indigenous lens that utilises space-time body and place, facilitator Forest kapo will joyfully provide us with a way to look at
Movement and text,
Text and imagery,
Movement and social commentary.
Using a cosmic comic approach to making work we as a collective will break open our imaginations and begin to explore movement, text, and sound, as a way to build and develop an interdisciplinary practice. While the afternoon will be spent in duets trios and small groups investigating narratives dramaturgically through score-based work.
Being a little shy about why you should come, and hang out with me, I thought this support letter written by Artist, Writer, Performer, and experimental Performance maker extraordinaire Alexa Wilson might do the trick.
See you soon,
Forest.
ABOUT FOREST
Forest's work has always interweaved politics with somatic understandings and text with movement in an aspiration toward a poetics, which is integrating shamanistic healing with socio-political content, often highly personalised.
This for me makes very compelling performance and art that is truthful and captivating, vulnerable and powerful. I have experienced and observed Forest's courageous first steps in Nz in the early 2000s breaking the mold of Nz Contemporary dance by integrating the intensity of performance art imagery with highly engaging personal texts, improvised movement, and choreography toward highly sophisticated incarnations and collaborations interweaving text, music and performance.
The integration of the complexity of personal experience with global politics comes from the strength of her work owning decolonial relationships to the body and identity in performance and art. For example, Forest's work integrates existential questions relating to death, healing and care with global ones about ecological precarity, the impacts of colonisation, and its violence, in ways that are nuanced, delicate and beautiful. The poeticism of Forest's performance work lies in its ability to decolonise a space with the fierceness of a political mind and the compassion of a loving artist.
Many of her questions and provocations come from a place of deep compassion for and understanding of humanity's frailties with an embodied offering to transform these through storytelling.
It has been a pleasure for me to watch and support Forest's artistic journey, sometimes distally as we have been in different parts of the world, and sometimes up close in Germany, India and in NZ. Her works are moving and transformative for audiences, taking them into a engaging political performance poetry, which is personal and powerful.
Yours Sincerely,
Alexa Wilson