Happy September, Dance Fans!
I hope this finds You happy and getting out your fermentation jars for the upcoming cold season (if You’re in my particular part of the world). This past summer was an intense ride. I taught an intensive on My Lovers, Human and More-Than-Human at the UK’s Touch & Play Festival near Glastonbury (the town that is basically my 15-year-old self in the shape of a town – the tarot shop next to the crystal shop next to the witchy candle shop), and experienced some much-needed reconnection with the practice. PhD research can be a little lonely and removed from the lived experience i’m writing about, so this was a wonderful reminder.
Here’s what’s coming up in the next weeks and months, in chronological order:
Piano department! Next week Saturday, September 12, musically accompanying the Group Motion workshop with Heidi Weiss and Jennifer Mann at Marameo Berlin. Always a pleasure!
September 18-20, facilitating two workshops at the new and exciting Moving the Erotic Festival at Soma House, Berlin:
Deciding from the Gut – an embodied approach to boundaries & consent
Sometimes we set a boundary where we think it should be, not where we sense it at any given moment. The digestive system, reaching from mouth to anus, is the locus of many of our earliest yes-no decisions – what do i put in my mouth, how deeply do i let something inside me? The second brain, located in the intestinal tract, sends as much (or more) information to the brain in your head as vice versa, giving rise to intuitive expressions such as “gut feelings”, or “listening to your gut”.
In this workshop on consent and boundaries, we will somatically explore the digestive system through visualization and movement, as well as gentle external touch. We will then approach boundary and consent exercises from this place of embodied awareness, noticing whether this somatic work affects how we perceive and articulate our own boundaries, and those of others. We will move very slowly, and the well-being of all participants will be centered at all times.
AND:
Perverted Tuning Score
The Tuning Score is a group improvisation practice developed by post-modern dance icon Lisa Nelson. It explores connections between movement and language, spectators’ expectations, attunement, and noticing what kinds of things we enjoy watching in performance. In this experimental perverted version, the twisted mind of choreographer David Bloom replaces some key phrases, bringing about an instant group composition allowing for (although certainly not requiring) nudity, consensual sensual interaction, and irreverence for dance history.
October 1-4 at Heizhaus Fürth: Facilitating a lab, A Boundary is a Point of Contact, with concluding lecture performance on the 4th:
A fundamental prerequisite for working with intimacy and desire is working with boundaries. Akin to the creation of the world as told in the bible – essentially a setting of boundaries – artistic projects can also be acts of distinguishing, separating, and creating a boundary where before there was none. In this lab, we will explore boundaries somatically and through consent exercises, as well as experience how setting a boundary can be an act of creation.
This 4-day lab will be part of a 3-part series of labs hosted by curatorial juggernaut Barbara Bess under the heading Seduce Me! The other two will be facilitated by international superstars Beate Absalon and Niall Fallon in November and December, and can all be booked for the price of one! (or attended separately) Highly recommended! Despite what it says on the website, applications are still open, so get onto yours now! It provides a great opportunity to dive into the work. More info and application here.
Piano department! October 6-8, i will be accompanying ballet classes for professionals at Marameo Berlin, taught by the magnificent Xenia Wiest!
October 30-November 1: Facilitating the workshop Dominance & Care at the Berlin festival STRETCH Imagine. I’m excited about this one!
Care and Dominance are each other’s evil twins. It is often hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Sometimes, we can even think we are receiving or providing one of them, when in fact it is the other. In this workshop, we will explore notions of Dominance and Care using an embodied approach, with attention to everyone’s boundaries and well-being – and with care for each other (or is it dominance?).
December 5 & 6: Co-teaching a weekend on Cranio & Pleasure with my longtime artistic mentor/collaborator/life inspiration Nica Berndt-Caccivio! Nica and i have been developing our dialogue on the unique presence of facilitating, teaching, holding space for many years now, using our individual and shared toolboxes of dance/choreography, cranio-sacral bodywork and explorations of consent. We have decided to self-organize and offer a weekend workshop at a small studio in Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg area) for everyone who keeps asking us when we are offering something together again! Email me directly at david@davidbloom.info for more info and to register!
Lastly, wishing all who are celebrating a joyful and tremendous 5787, rooted in solidarity and Doykait. !!שָׁנָה טוֹבָ
And please reach out and let me know what You’re doing, too!
Love and Light,
David B.
