MODULE #3

In this 5 day workshop we’ll immerse into non natural nature of body, language and performance, through devices of drag, somatics, poetry and materiality.

My practice has been evolving around the issue of the objecthood - of the body, of the dance, performance, as an anchor for feminist, queer and sensorial politics. Emancipating the figure of a dancer, I question this subject-object paradox that is her performing body.  From object I plunge into materiality, embodiment, touch, synesthesia, sensuousness, receptivity and submission (oscillating with assertion) - as vehicles for performance. I bring my practices around drag, materiality/objecthood of dance and reciprocal acts of performativity and offer different proposals for your explorations and making interests.

Each day we’ll work through conceptual and practical sequences like: make-up - face - matter - sprout; throat - text - image - utterance; body - gaze - touch - digit; somatic - fantastic - mundane - virtuous. The workshop will bring in somatic and fantastic entrances into movement on one’s own and in relation - to the group and to the other entities we can be present to.

We’ll find simple shapes to share - learn+make+practice: lines, vibrations, weight etc.

There is a couple of ideas that move my work that I am bringing in as possible inspirations for collective practice and conversation:

 <3 I am interested in imagining/creating/observing of something I call an Object of Dance - an event arising in our observing through texturality of sensations (through patience both of the mover and audience. Dancing as simultaneously moving and being moved by the world, the dance, the gaze).

<3 Also, I am curious to together look at performativity (drag) of dance:

- What does it mean to dance for / in front of another?

- Dance’s lineage, archive; it’s historicity / it’s self - referentiality / it’s image.

- What is dancing in the studio / on a site / in performance / professionally / as a gesture of seduction / as a gesture of psychological (affective) transfer.

- How is it to be dancing while self-objectified by the image culture (driven by the recording/analogue/virtual/digital dispersion and encampment of the image).

<3 Inspired by our capacity for observing as our non natural nature and by the recent experience of queer pregnancy and motherhood I want to propose to look at the idea of drag as (un)mothering - of the politics of matter by means of sensuality, that is erotics of sensing.

In thinking these terms, I am influenced by Victoria Sin, Susan Stryker, Sara Ahmed, Vivian Sobchack, Siegmar Zacharias, Maria Scaroni and Maria Silk.

I will propose looking into drag as (un)mothering by practicing:

- Gestures, arrows/(vectors/lines) and areas (in our relations, on our faces, our words, bodies, space).

- Non natural nature of language voice speech word text poetry utterance - to collide language make up and drag make up.

- Collective constellating (making condition) needed for this (un)mothering / babydom to arise.

Sonja Pregrad is a Croatian choreographer, performer, teacher and performance curator/organiser. She holds an MA Solo Dance Authorship from Universitaet der Kunste Berlin and has also studied at ArteZ institute in Arnhem, SNDO in Amsterdam and Codarts in Rotterdam. For her choreographic and performance work she has received three Croatian National Theatre Awards and 5 nominations, four Croatian Dance Associations Awards and a special mention of 26th Slavonian Biennale, and has also been awarded for the organisation and curation of the festival Improspekcije. In her work as a choreographer, dance is always thought of as a relational gesture, her choreography extending from re-inventing body-based practices to re-appropriating performance formats. Sonja makes works on her own and develops different long-term artistic collaborations, performing her work internationally. She has been involved in different initiatives within the art communities of Zagreb. She cofounded (and is director of the) festival Improspekcije (since 2007), associations Fourhanded (2013) and Object of Dance (2021) and Antisezona (2019) - a collective running a program of performance art at Contemporary Art Museum in Zagreb. As a performer she has been working with choreographers Meg Stuart, Boris Charmatz, Isabelle Schad, visual artist Sanja Iveković, and others. She has been continuously teaching at the New Media department of Fine Art Academy and Dance department of Dramatic Art Academy in Zagreb as well as at ROAR Berlin independent program, Impulstanz festival etc.

WEB improspekcije.com & antisezona.space

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