Movement Workshop with Emilyn Claid

Potency of Gravity

This workshop, led by Emilyn Claid, is about body, gravity and ground – giving attention to the ever-present process of falling in everyday life. Structured as a series of safely considered movement tasks, participants experiment working with gravity rather than against, moving towards and away from contact with the ground. Throughout the day participants will have the opportunity to extend their understanding of the potency of gravity as an interactive supportive actuality of living and being.

Western culture, for the most part, endeavours to resist gravity, striving towards control, verticality, linearity and steadfast uprightness with all its moral underpinnings. Upwards is a source of pride, class status and success. This workshop advocates for an alternative understanding of the body, gravity and ground, embracing falling as a source of creativity and change. This way of living is nourished by Emilyn’s life experience as a dancer, choreographer, somatic movement practitioner and more recently as a psychotherapist.

Alongside the movement tasks there are opportunities to write and share experience in dyads and small groups, noticing cognitive, emotional and metaphorical narratives that emerge alongside the practical work. We will have time to discuss themes that are evoked through the physicality of falling such as dance, humour, failure, shame, social presence, relationality and bereavement.

As we will be working with the ground, please wear comfortable clothing that allows freedom of movement.

This workshop is for dancers, movers and people interested in the body. It is for adults (ages 16+), there is no upper age limit though participants should feel comfortable moving in and out of the floor.

Emilyn is a professor of choreographic practices at University of Roehampton. She is also a Gestalt psychotherapist. Emilyn’s career stretches back to the 1960s when she was a ballet dancer and the 1970s when she was co-founder of X6 Dance Space in London and co-editor of New Dance Magazine. In the 1980s she was artistic director of Extemporary Dance Theatre and in the 1990s worked as an independent artist. In 1997 she was awarded a PhD and published a book, Yes? No! Maybe… Seductive Ambiguity in Dance Theatre Performance (Routledge 2006). Between 2003-2013 Emilyn was Director of BA & MA Choreography at Dartington College of Arts. She is currently writing a book ‘Falling Through Dance’, which interweaves the disciplines of choreography, somatic-based movement and psychotherapy. She works internationally as practice led researcher crossing the fields of dance and psychotherapy.

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