Performance Workshop: Materials for the Moment – Improvisation in Performance

Come and spend an evening with some of the best, brightest and most inspiring theatre, dance and movement practitioners in the country. Learn new skills, release hidden talents, improve your practice and create new work.

This workshop is open to everybody and is part of a series of ten on Monday evenings at Conway Hall. We’ll guide you if you are a newcomer and stretch you if you are an experienced professional.

Wear clothing that you can easily move in.

This event will be led by dance and performance artist Caroline Waters.

Studying Improvisation as performance art, we practice our ability to create movement, sound or text from our own physical experience and at the same time follow the rules of a score/structured improvisation. Building the skills of the imagination, we foster the ability to respond creatively and intuitively to a moment to moment changing reality and become ready to perform instant composition.

This is a short introduction to the way that I work, open to all art forms. with experience or not, but at least have an openness to explore. We will explore fundamental elements of composition and performance: awareness of time and space, dynamics and rhythm, form and content. In solo, partner and ensemble work.

Drawing from music, movement and theatre practices we will be blending strategies to illuminate, examine and research the process and practicality of making work together. During the workshop we will develop movement scores, imagine scenes and create stories, from this experience

The work will be grounded in that of  ‘The 6 Viewpoints‘- Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Story and Movement.  John Cages 4 Levels of Composition.-Structure, Method, Materials and Form.  Augusto Boal’s  Theatre of the Oppressed-Image Theatre,  As well as from New Dance Techniques like Contact Improvisation.

Caroline Waters is an Independent Freelance Performer, Organiser and Arts Educator currently based in Brighton. She is an Associate Lecturer on the Dance Degree at Chichester University, a Broadcaster on BHCRadio and Performer in Tanglehead Productions. Originally trained in Mime and Physical Theatre, she has constructed a body of work located in the use of improvisation in performance as a context for physical research. She first trained with Steve Paxton, whilst obtaining a Degree in Theatre at Dartington College of Arts. Mainly drawing from CI and New Dance practices, Caroline teaches, performs and directs in various situations ranging from the performic to the therapeutic, working with both professionals and non-professionals. The work often focuses on collaboration and working with other Art forms, which includes experience of working with a range of non-theatre spaces as a locus for performance. 

Caroline curates International Improvisation events, which has included 5 European CI Teachers Exchanges in the UK, Hungary and Russia. She was an Artistic Director of Contact Moscow for 5 years, as well as being on the team of Dance Connect in St Petersburg and the Altai Festival in the Altai Mountains Russia. She has also completed 2 tours of Siberia with one of her main performance Collaborators Kipling Dance based in Yekaterinburg. . She has also performed at many International Improvisation Festivals across Europe, America and South America. Amongst all the traveling Caroline was an Associate Lecturer at Dartington College of Arts UK for 11 years. Caroline continues to develop her own body of work internationally as a freelance improviser in performance, as a Dancer, Teacher/Director and Musician.