Resistance – a workshop for photographers and performers

During this 1 day workshop led by Grace Gelder and Luke Dixon, we invite photographers and performers to explore the meaning of “Resistance”.

Using a mixture of exercises, discussions and improvisations in photography and performance we will create work relating to the following questions:

What does creative resistance look like?

How do we resist what is expected of us?

What are the dynamics of resistance?

A selection of the images created during the workshop will be exhibited at Conway Hall during May.

Grace Gelder is a London-based photographer and arts workshop facilitator. Since completing an MA in Documentary Photography, she has been photographing and facilitating workshops with a range of clients and groups, often collaborating with charities and organisations that support women’s empowerment and wellbeing. Since her Self Marriage unexpectedly went viral in 2014 she has been bringing her love of ritual, self-awareness and visual conversation into her work with a new understanding of what it means to be in front of a lens. Her photo-shoots promote acceptance of the body in all forms, and her private portrait commissions often utilise therapeutic techniques. Grace’s clients have included Tate, BBC, V&A and Wellcome Collection.

Luke Dixon‘s is work as a performance creator has included Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens’ ‘Blue Wedding’ in Oxford, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in South Africa, ‘Sweetness & Light’ in London and Colchester, ‘A Summer of Ecosex’ in France and England and ‘CORPUS – writings on the human body’ at Conway Hall.

His productions for theatre nomad, of which he was Artistic Director for 20 years, included all-female versions of ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Hamlet’, cross-dressed ‘Duke Bluebeard’s Castle’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘As You Like It’, and an erotic celebration of Anita Berber in ‘Triumphant Desire’. These productions have been seen in China, North America, South Africa, Germany, France, Poland, Russia, Czech and Slovak Republics, Spain and the UK.

Luke’s academic and teaching work has included Senior Lecturer at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University South Africa, Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University, Visiting Lecturer at UFRGE (University of Porto Alegre) Brazil, Dalhousie University Canada, Institute of American Indian Arts and the College of Santa Fe in the US. He has led residencies at The Banff Centre Canada, run workshops around the world and taught widely in the London drama schools and colleges.

He publishes regularly and was for some years a contributing editor to the journal Performance. Luke’s book, PLAY-ACTING, a guide to theatre workshops is published by Methuen in the UK and by Routledge in the US and is a widely used text in drama schools. His four Good Audition Guides to Shakespeare are published by Nick Hern Books, and his Creating Solo Performance (with Sean Bruno) is published by Routledge.

Luke is internationally known for his innovative performance workshops. From 2002 to 2009 Luke was Artistic Director of the International Workshop Festival bringing leading theatre practitioners from around the world to the UK to run workshops, give performances and demonstrations and create work. Highlights of recent festivals have included Kwoto, a group of young actors from the Displaced Peoples Camps of Khartoum; Falos & Stercus, the Brazilian fetish circus; and from Finland, the fire performance collective Flamma.

Luke’s Doctorate is in ‘The Performance of Gender’. Current practice and research interests include the performer’s relationship with space, eroticism and performance, and the psychology of acting.

In the summer months Luke escapes from the theatre and keeps bees across London in places as diverse as The Hilton Hotel, London School of Economics, and Ted Baker.