The Ecstatic Body at the Table
Coupé Décalé and Kopf Hoch / Simon Mayer invite everybody to reflect collectively about the needs, the beauty and the limits of exploring one’s own ecstatic body in a day full of physical practices, discussions, screenings, music, food and, of course : celebration! For our bodies, this day means: Arriving – Listening – Eating – Watching – Sleeping – Reflecting – Eating – Flying. Admission is free.
Programme
10.30: Morning training with Elke Van Campenhout
In this short introductory practice session, Elke van Campenhout will work on creating a shared ecstatic body through breathing and minimal movement techniques. The Tantric connection allows the individual to dissolve into the transindividual body. Losing its clear boundaries, one starts to blur into the other, their energetic bodies overlapping and vibrating together.
12.00: Introduction – What is the ecstatic body?
We will present our findings concerned with the collective experience, which we recorded during the week of workshops. What was our experience like of the cross-over between dance and other fields of knowledge in our common quest to redefine the dancing body? What was our personal path to being aware of the ecstasy within the body, and how do we define it? Corine Sombrun, Robert Steijn, Hiah Park, Simon Mayer and Ziya Azazi will share personal stories of their pursuit of accessing the pre-existing bodily tools used to reach the ecstatic state.
13.00: Lunch break
14.00: Ecstatic bodies at the table
In dialogue with the audience, we will discuss similarities and differences of one’s own individual search for transformation. The discussion will be hosted by Elke van Campenhout, an artistic researcher and experimental performer currently based in Brussels and who has quit the arts to become a tantric monk.
15.30: Siesta
Letting the body rest and the mind float, finding a home for yourself in states of dreaming, sleeping, whispering, relaxing, or simply being bored.
16.00: Panel Talk – Cultural Appropriation within the Arts with Pêdra Costa, Victor Kaleb und Amanda Piña
Working with physical practices of other cultures, we address the issue of who owns knowledge and of how to avoid colonization of something that doesn’t belong to your own culture. The panel discussion about the challenging topic of cultural appropriation features experts who have had significant experience in their work and private life. The panel is open to the public to encourage critical reflection on cultural appropriation. The objective is to find strategies of perceiving this issue as a chance for rehabilitation of cross-cultural relations after the damage that colonial hegemonies have caused and are still causing today. We are interested in finding strategies which revaluate appropriation and replace it with peaceful and constructive alternatives.
Tip: DANZA Y FRONTERA: Bodies, Movement and Decoloniality. A lecture and conversation with Nicole Haitzinger and Rolando Vázquez upon an invitation by Amanda Piña at 18.00 at TQW Studios.
19.00: Dinner & Break
21.00: Celebration – an ecstatic party*
*Admission: € 4; free admission for all workshop participants
invites artists, theorists and audiences to exchange and engage in a dialogue over a selection of works and topics developed during different cycles. The selection pays particular attention to movement, body and gestures in the context of aesthetic, cultural and/or social strategies. The project proposes a dialogue between the local emerging artistic scene and established artists by putting their works in resonance and by occasionally inviting them to collaborations and/or creations in situ. Regarding itself as a nomadic practice, Coupé Décalé invests in a diversity of spaces – artist’s studios, theaters, art centers, walls, gardens, spaces for creation and alternative lifestyles.
is an association founded by Simon Mayer representing a group of collaborating artists, technicians and cultural workers, who have been working more or less constantly with Simon Mayer. Besides creating and touring, the goal is to actively shape the scene in Vienna and Austria and bring home new ways of thinking and working from abroad. Kopf Hoch wants to enable sustainable working conditions and share their methods with others.