Research – Unplugged Dance

a research project led by Bratan Bratanov

Dare2Care is a laboratory for research on the available ways of connection to the inner space of carrying awareness where physical and mental obstacles can be released beyond the control of the rational mind. Once cleared, the self aware inner space can give spontaneous birth to joy, love, care, humor, nourishing rest and genuine dance.

The laboratory aims to motivate the participants to find their unique way of connection to
the inner awareness as a source of re-charging and self-healing. The process also offers supportive techniques, such as guided deep relaxation, improvisational tasks, work with empty space and silence and continuous decomposition.

The choreographic part of the laboratory is based on, but not limited to, butoh notation and hip-hop basics. The intent is to find choreographic images, textures and qualities of movement that can hold space for care and joy and give birth to liberated dance experience.

An additional tool that will be explored is the expressive value of both the audible and the hidden sound of movement (audiodance) – an open listening to the dancing process that reveals the melody of dance as not secondary to its visual representation. This approach has the power to recover the musicality of the dance itself and to connect to the silent space where conscious movement activities take place.

Short Bio

Bratan is a freelance artist from Bulgaria exploring the fields of performing arts with focus on physical theater, experimental music and vocal improvisation. He is an established performer on the independent theater scene in his country and an experienced butoh dancer working with the Berlin’s based company 4RUDE.

His research and facilitation activities are focused on the topics of ‘dealing with pain in performing arts’ and on the sound of movement as a medium of expression in dance art (project ‘audiodance’).

All Unplugged Dance workshops are open to everyone who wants to meet, share, dance and self-explore through movement and creative process. There is no need for previous experience in dance classes, although if there is one, it is welcome.

“Dare2Care” is part of the Unplugged Research Week, and shares the week with “Stilling”

Unplugged Research week is our new space to question and reflect, consisting of two research workshops, with two different artists. Our intention is to encourage artists and educators in the field of movement and dance to further explore, question and share their practices while being in a safe environment surrounded by individuals that are willing to participate in a research process.

Daily schedule:

07:00 – 10:00 Research Workshop 1

10:30 – 11:30 Brunch

11:30 – 16:30 Resting & Light lunch

16:30 – 19:30 Research Workshop 2

20:00 – 21:00 Dinner

Find the BOOK YOUR SPOT button at the end of this page.

a practice-led research by Tania Gonzalez

STILLING is an openness to being affected, a readiness towards taking form. STILLING is
not doing something, is something doing.

In this interdisciplinary workshop Tania González will share her current artistic research introducing some elements of what she calls the stilling practice. This practice-led research comes into being as a respond to the hyper-accelerated pace of current times.
It propels a quiet but forceful rebellion against the imperative to be productive, a radical quest for ways of dancing and living in which doing less or even doing nothing might be possible.

Conceived as a choreographic laboratory, it tackles affect, embodied knowledge, auto-ethnography as feminist method, and slow ontologies of movement.

The different sessions throughout the week will include short meditations and somatic exercises, movement explorations, ethnographic tasks, embodied writing, and reflective discussions. In practicing together, we will play around with the notion of affect—understood as relational moving forces—acknowledging the fact that the dancing body is always more-than-one and more-than-human.

This workshop is ultimately an invitation to slow down and move differently both as individuals and as a collective, paying attention to tiny shifts, micro-perceptions, and all the subtleties of what comes through.

All dancing bodies are welcome!

STILLING celebrates slowness and emptiness.
STILLING prioritizes intuition and sensing over reasoning and making.
STILLING questions what it means to produce, what is valid knowledge, what priorities
we have as society.
STILLING advocates for somatic and affective approaches, radical care, embodied ways
of knowing, feminist epistemologies, and slow ontologies.
STILLING aims to open the mind and the body, to interrogate our own movement
patterns, to destabilize what we take for granted, to shift our attention, to play and experiment with new methods, to rely on our thinking-feeling bodies, to slow down and even to stop doing, to (un)learn and let go.

Short bio

Tania González (Gijón, 1982) is a Spanish choreographer, dance performer and artistic researcher based between the Netherlands and Spain. She holds a PhD. in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University and a Degree in ‘Danza Española’ from the Royal Conservatory of Dance of Madrid. In 2019 Tania joined the Dance Intensive program of Tanzfabrik in Berlin where she consolidated her training in the field of contemporary dance. Her work centers around encounter, affect and response. It depicts an expanding body capable to navigate different states of being. By virtue of combining various somatic and spiritual practices she brings her interest on ethnography, care ethics and affect into choreography and instant composition. Tania is currently pursuing a Master’s in Performance Practices at ArtEZ University of the Arts.

“Stilling” is part of the Unplugged Research Week, and shares the week with “Dare2Care”