About the technical contemporary dance approach

POWER SOURCES WORKSHOP

Different exercises, games, guided improvisations, and structured tasks are used to help participants cultivate full-body awareness and tap into intuition and instinctive motion. At the same time, attention is given to technical precision and detailed physical work, which remain essential components of the practice.

Protecting the body is a priority, drawing on knowledge of skeletal structure and muscular chains to explore physical mechanisms that make reaching extremes both possible and safe. The training environment encourages challenge without fear, offering tools to enhance fluidity and freedom in movement while also exploring ways to recycle and conserve energy. Metaphors and imagery—whether associative concepts or idealised physical actions—serve to awaken new kinesthetic experiences and deepen awareness.

Throughout the process, theatrical inputs are woven into the work: specific energies and vivid images provide meaning to movement and inspire performance rather than mere execution. In this way, the classroom becomes a space where the precise physical language of dance intersects with the emotional depth and dramatic impulse of theatre.

Tools for Partnering Work

Technical exercises, games, and improvisations with a clear framework will be the starting point for group and partner work. A fluent physical communication depends on the awareness and control of the shared balance in a couple. There will be set-up situations where you will fully trust the other, act under risk, speed, share responsibilities, play with power roles, etc.
Changing roles and couples will be a constant during the workshop. We will use recognisable human relationships to help us create images, define energies, and inhabit stories. Participants will explore some given material and specific steps as mechanical examples and sources of inspiration. Still, they will be invited and guided to look for anew materials within a defined context. We will look for creative impulses that, when released, offer us new possibilities for achievement.

Space - Conflict & Catastrophic Imagination
Laura Arís / Ultima Vez Vocabulary

“In Vandekeybus's performances, the body is at stake in a world of conflict. It is an arena of tensions and contrast: horizontal/vertical, high/low, hard/soft, virtuosity/vulnerability, active/passive, man/woman, body/mind, man/animal, order/chaos, intellect/instinct, nature/civilisation…On the basis of these types of contrasts where formal, physical and existential categories overlap”

— Erwin Jans (1999)

The workshop will approach the universe of Ultima Vez from Laura’s personal experience after spending a decade with the company. We will explore some themes and ideas from different creations and some of the energetic physical vocabulary from Wim Vandekeybus and his troupe, as well as practising with some given tools of partner work, aur of Ultima Vez's taste and flavo work.

More info at ultimavez.com