About
Physical introduction is an audience format for everyone (with or without prior dance experience), where participants have an opportunity to move through various tasks informed by choreographic ideas, aesthetics signatures and above all, the “physicalities” that different performances bring to the foreground.
It opens the pre-performance space into a participatory/experiential try out, creating possibilities for gathering a variety of sensorial impressions.
A forty-five minute long guided physical exploration prior to the performance is an invitation to connect to the movement via our own bodies first, giving us an additional perceptual contact with the performance. It offers to explore the ways of preparing ourselves as spectators,
rendering our senses vivid and alert, entering into a state of kinesthetic self-awareness and sensitizing us towards resonating with the dancing bodies on stage.
We will warm up through various body and space awareness strategies, improvisational tasks and other creative tools informed by the content of the performance in question.
The Physical Introduction does not seek to reproduce either the choreographic material or scenes from the performance. Rather, by exploring the characteristic body alignments, movement principles, conceptual intentions, relationships to space and time and/or emotional atmospheres, it seeks to get closer to the bodily state of the performers in the specific context of a particular work.
This applied form of spectator education was developed by Prof. Ingo Diehl at the MA degree program Contemporary Dance Education (MA CoDE) of the HfMDK Frankfurt in cooperation with the students and has since been offered at various theaters and festivals. Anja Bornšek has gained a wealth of experience since 2014, teaching and developing the format.
Biography
Anja Bornsek is a dancer, performer, choreographer, teacher and a somatic movement educator. She graduated in contemporary dance from Salzburg Contemporary Dance Academy SEAD, holds a Masters degree of Contemporary Dance Education from Frankfurt University HfMDK and a Somatic Movement Educator’s certification for Body-Mind Centering method. She is receiver of an artistic scholarship by Ministry of Culture Slovenia, as well as a german scholarship Studienstiftung des Deutchen Volkes.
Her artistic interest as a performer, maker as well as teacher is shaped by the decade long experiences in somatic studies and performative methodologies, which focus on embodiment, perception, body states, imagery work and their communicative potentials in the context of the stage. In the recent years she collaborated and performed with choreographers such as Begum Erciyas, Joao da Silva, Matej Kejžar, Snježana Premuš, Jana Menger, Mala Kline, Matija Ferlin, Maayan Danoch and choreographed for a Slovenian theater director Sebastijan Horvat.
She is a faculty member at Academy for Dance Ljubljana and teaches at Zagreb Dance Academy, MACoDE - HfMDK Frankfurt, Tanzhaus nrw and other. During her study program in MA CoDE, she became a part of a pedagogic/artistic teaching project, initiated by prof. Ingo Diehl, called Physical Introduction. In the last 4 years Anja is deeply invested in teaching and developing this format further. Through it she is reflecting upon embodied ways watching and developing a space for a participatory/experiential try out, where a relational experience between audience and performance is based in the physical.
She has been facilitating Physical Introduction in places like Tanz im August, Konzerthaus Berlin, Saarländische Staatstheater, HfMDK Frankfurt and co-taught seminars on Physical Introduction in GothenburgOperans Danskompani, Tanzhaus nrw and Bremerhaven/Tanzland Kooperation.
She is since 3,5 years a regular facilitator of Physical Introduction in Tanzhaus nrw.
Previous events
- , SVŠGL, Plesni in gledališki center, Ljubljana, SI
- , PGC, SVŠGL, Ljubljana, SI
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