Oblique/Switch & Ensemble Improvology with Meagan O’Shea
A workshop for all improvisers
Saturday, October 28, 2023
11am-2pm
At The Output, 2nd Floor, Video Pool Media Arts Centre, 100 Arthur St.
(For building accessibility info click here)
Payment is sliding scale – $5-$50
Click here to register!
About the Workshop:
O’Shea’s Oblique/Switch is a generative research practice that frees the body-brain and encourages unexpected relationships between ideas.
Ensemble Improvology proposes a shared lexicon of parameters that allow for the unimaginable yet expected to emerge in spontaneous choreography.
In this 3 hour workshop we’ll warm up the solo body, sourcing our own material and expanding to the social and group body. Then we’ll move into Ensemble Improvology, introducing parameters to create shared vocabulary and lexicon before moving into open scores where everything is possible.
About Meagan O’Shea (she | they) Canada/Germany:
Working across forms and borders, queer, contemporary dance+ artist Meagan O’Shea devises “Uplifting, energetic and totally out of the ordinary” performances for real and imagined spaces.
Working with Oblique/Switch as a generative research method to reach beyond the Obvious/1st Impulse and Opposite/2nd Impulse to discover The Oblique/3rd Impulse; the potential to disrupt dominant paradigms, and offer an alternative to binary systems, she creates content-driven, problem-finding, contemporary solo work, treating the process like a science experiment, she uses body and the interaction with the audience as test site.
Meagan’s award-nominated solo work has been presented across Canada, in New York, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Austria, Greece and Germany. Meagan has also refined an ensemble improv practice through the ongoing “dance like no one is watching” performance project, which animates/disrupts public space, has included over 200 dancers and reached 30,000 incidental audience. She is currently working on Anatomalia (anatomy+anomaly+femalia), 7 choreographies set in immersive, installed environments tracking the transformation in healing trauma to find joy.
Meagan teaches Interdisciplinary Solo Making and Ensemble Improv in North America, Europe and beyond. In 2007 Meagan founded Stand Up Dance as a platform to amplify her vision, giving voice to her own work and that of other artists and communities. She has created art and possibility in her roles as co-founder/co-artistic director of hub14 in Toronto, International Associate Artist at Dance Ireland, Associate Artist at Theatre Direct, Artistic Collaborator at BIDE, and as guest artist at many international residencies. She is a recipient of the KM Hunter Award in Dance and twice been shortlisted for the Guggenheim Fellowship.
YLDE thanks Winnipeg Arts Council, Manitoba Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts for their continued funding support
Photos: Supplied by artist, Meagan O’Shea