PR ARCHIVES
Questioning Disembodied Land Acknowledgements
Deconstructing notions of freedom in Settler Consciousness: Parcon Resilience @ Ontario Jam 2019
In this Parcon Resilience workshop at the Ontario Contact Improvisation Festival we deconstructed notions of freedom in Settler Consciousness. This class was constructed in response to an inadequate land acknowledgement at the beginning of the Festival that did not name the harmed indigenous tribes nor admit settler colonial culpability to being on their land. Participants were guided to access a sense of unbound freedom and exploration, then the history of indigenous genocide was shared, and participants were guided to refind their sense of fullness and expression knowing this history.
Thank you Sarah Jones for making such a wonderful documentary of the PR class on settler consciousness.
Ontario Jam 2016, 2017
Each year we have had the pleasure of attending the Ontario Regional Contact Improvisation Jam and sharing Parcon. Here are photos from 2016 and 2017
Javaka Steptoe taught a Parcon class at the 2016 Ontario Jam!
The 2017 Ontario Jam I taught. It was amazing! 75+ people Parconning in the park. At one point in time I looked across the whole park and everywhere I looked people were engaging in weight sharing and climbing on the objects around them.
Radical Contact (March)- led by Aurora Westerfelt
Aurora taught Parcon at the 2nd Radical Contact Gathering for 2018! “I like that it becomes like a long trip, step by step - the clear frames with a stream of improvised talk through it like a long story....” - Aurora
Class taught and recounted by Aurora Westfelt:
Where: Sweden: Blekinge Folkhögskola
Who: Two people of color and three cis-men, and four non binary persons and a bunch of cis-women, and one child
When: Mar 30- Apr2, 2018
What: "I felt most inspired in a space upstairs that had tables and chairs and doors and stair case so we spent the first of the two hours there (starting with walking up together after telling about Parcon and what you do Andrew, as well as I could..). Then I went through all the lenses, reminding and giving examples of no-s al through, as well as going for the yes-es… I like that it becomes like a long trip, step by step - the clear frames with a stream of improvised talk through it like a long story.... People where floating and playing and climbing and almost falling asleep and also laughing and giggling some witch surprised me a bit, but it was a very giggly group… A few people said they specially liked this first part. Someone said they liked that I talked all the time, someone else that they liked how I lead it. Many liked the playfulness.
Second part we spent in the dance space. I divided them so half the group was furniture/obstacles in the space and the other half explorers and then we changed. Then I told my ideas about working with borders and we did the same thing but the obstacles being borders. People where a bit sleepy and the obstacles and borders where a lot like lumps on the floor, haha. But some where really exploring.
Aurora Westfelt
When I told the idea I noticed people where first thinking of personal borders, so I said the different kind of borders I have been thinking of - inside the body the cells, the skin towards the world, borders between people – but that I mostly was thinking of borders between countries - something that is put up by those that have power over other people, power deciding who get through and who don’t, and when and how – ruling over how peoples bodies get to travel/not travel I space… When I told my ideas I realized that there where only two people in the space that gets to experience how country borders restricts their possibilities to travel because of where they come from and the color of their skin.
I’m anyway encouraged to continue working on this thing with borders… It connects with my ideas about working with directions – different directions opening up, closing in, giving possibilities, stopping possibilities, making people move, making the body move in space (and spirals...)…"
Parcon Madrid
Parcon in La Plaza de Queen Sophia en Madrid, Spain!
Where: Queen Sophia's Plaza
When: late May of 2016
Who: Offered to Contact Improvisation Community in Madrid (10 attendees)
What: Parcon exploration of the Plaza
Puerto Rico: Negotiating Boundaries
Parcon in PR with a phenomenal community!
“Testimony:
”PARCON in PR. The workshop of Parcon Resilience provide us an opportunity to explore the space and our relationship with the structures and ourselves as a group and as individuals. Andrew Suseno facilitated a beautiful and thoughtful workshop with our community here in San Juan, PR. Through the workshop I was able to explore body awareness thru the understanding of tension and non tension place when we relate to each other and our surroundings. PARCON gives us opportunities to understand relationships between bodies and structures as an exploration of self awareness and trust.”
”
Who: 14 attendees from the Danza Contacto community and others!
What: We examined how the tone in our body changes when our boundaries are respected versus crossed in space. This exploration informed the contact we made with each other and the places we occupy.
Photos from PR community
Sweden: Radical Contact Gathering (Class dynamics)
Where: Gotenburg, Sweden
When: February 15-18th, 2018
Who: 14 people from Sweden, England, the USA, Finland, and Egypt; varied by race and class.
What: Radical Contact is a gathering where individuals within the Contact Improvisation and Somatic education world share how their work connects with a body politic. The themes that were chosen by the organizers before the event were cultural mixing and race. As we shared our work, class also emerged as a point of inquiry.
I taught two workshops. The first was a one hour class on shape where we molded each other into various sculptures that held meaning for us in relation to feelings and social issues.
The second was explicitly Parcon Resilience work. After a guided exploration of doing Parcon with a blanket as if it was a loved one (in the studio), we moved to the stair well to climb and roll on couches and to cycle through the Parcon lenses in a different site. This was followed by returning to the studio to first explore movements in relation to our "loved one" as abundant and then as scarce while people could remain in a neutral zone as witness. Then we did this without the blankets and changed the needs for the loved one to needs for food and shelter. Then we explored engaging with each other while maintaining these relationships to our needs.
Lesson learned from feedback: Give people privacy to explore their relationship to scarcity and abundance without the "witnessing" eye of others. Those who may come from a scarcity background may feel re-traumatized by the gaze and judgments of others. Allow the process of being witnessed by others to come in support of a request made by marginalized members to investigate or transform their own experience.
Canada: Ontario Regional Contact Jam 2018
Where: Ontario Regional Contact Jam : Toronto, Canada
When: March 29- April 1, 2018
Who: The biggest Contact Improvisation Jam in North America: mostly from Canada and handfuls from New England and the midwest.
What: I taught a couple Parcon Resilience classes during the jam. The first took place outside the Ballet school where the jam was. We ended with a movement exploration of our embodied relationships to economic class differences in our contact improvisation experiences and subsequent dialogue. The second workshop took place on a playground built by Real Eguchi, a local Contact Improviser. This was a Parcon Generation class, so we invited parents and children who were already on the playground to join us. We became animals in our home habitat exploring the Parcon material through our needs for comfort and play. Photo credits: Savita Cupid
Testimony: