performance making
Performance Making Workshops is a workshop series that addresses the key stages in creating performance work: Generate, Develop and Edit & Refine. The workshops aim to support emerging and established performance artists alike to generate strong, clear material, which embodies and develops participants’ own personal ideas, vision and aesthetic.
Whether participants are new to performance making or looking to refresh and challenge their existing practice, Performance Making Workshops provide a safe and supported space for creative risk-taking and experiment with interdisciplinary approaches and compositional techniques. Constructive feedback will be available throughout, both one-to-one from facilitator Sally Dean, and from fellow participants, facilitated using established methodologies such as ‘The Field’ and ‘Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process’. The workshop-series culminates in a performance event for invited audience.
Generate provides a set of practical tools for generating original material and/or turning existing ideas participants may bring with you into performance material. It begins by cultivating a sense of play, freedom and spontaneity, and then looks at a variety of starting points for creating material, such as objects, images, texts, movement and costumes. An important aspect is how to create and actualise ideas with others, taking on the roles of collaborator and director.
Develop provides a set of practical tools for building on previously generated material. It helps participants identify the key focus of their material (e.g. theme, question, concept) and offers ways to structure the material around this focus in either linear or non-linear ways. It also supports participants to refine the details of their piece. The overarching approach is to help participants find a dialogue between their subjective experiences and interests in the material, and an objective view of how it is likely to be perceived by an audience.
Edit & Refine focuses on developing material into a completed performance work through techniques that trim and fine-tune detail to bring out the work’s essence. This third and final part of the workshop series will culminate in the presentation of work to an invited audience.
For bookings and information please email info@sallyedean.com.