On Sunday, September 23, 2007, from 2:30p to 5:30p, at Dovercourt Ballroom (2nd floor), 805 Dovercourt Rd, Toronto, I will teach a CI class. This is an invitation-only event, free to participants (if you got this notice, you're invited.) This class will resemble others I've taught, including re-use of characteristic exercises; however, there's always something new.
Again and again, CI returns to the problem of how best to cultivate excellence in CI. This concern becomes visible when, for example, a beginner - which is to say, someone who finds him/herself locked into ritualized, decorative, or touchy-feely approaches to CI - partners with someone fluent in CI. How, then, shall the experienced dancer apply insight, tact, and skill to divert the beginner toward deeper conversation, while still honouring his/her spiritedness and good faith?
But experience alone doesn't quell CI's concern for excellence, and, indeed, fluent practitioners may encounter CI as becoming more challenging over time, as, increasingly, they discern the full sense of implication of its conversations. But the aim of this class is neither to instill dread, nor to be satisfied with abstract descriptions; rather, we will take a closer look at particular CI gambits and relationships, and try to be affected by what we learn.
In this work, we will be open, particularly, to the notion of setting challenges. Some challenges will take the form of obstacles and resistances - say, in the context of a CI game; others will unfold as movement dilemmas worked-out by the individual dancer. In the most general sense, our aim remains: to focus on approaches to CI which we understand to be idiomatic to how it realizes conversation (and, for that matter, interesting movement relationships.)
If this opportunity appeals, please let me know (e-mail preferred) by September 9.
-- John Faichney 519 576-5917 faichney at? personae.com