Workshops:

Merav Israel has invited three unique dance and theatre performers/directors to join her and you on a journey of investigations and revelations:

Movement Improvisation and Theatre in 3 workshops

17 February, 24 February, 15 March 2008,

10.30 – 4.30

@ Dance for All studio, St. Stephens St, Stockbridge, Edinburgh

Workshops can be taken individually though we would encourage people to take the journey with us through the 3 days (or 2 of your choice).

All three workshops - £75 (£70)

LaNua

26 Reid Terrace

Edinburgh EH3 5JH

Note: places are limited and pre-booking is required. please secure your place in advance.

These workshops are for dancers, actors, performers, choreographers, directors, and anyone with a movement/performance interest with a professional attitude. The workshops will give skills in movement, performance, creative processes, and tools for self exploration and development.

Movement & Theatre

The three workshops will have a strong focus on physical work and on bringing consciousness into movement. We will also experience and work with the art of improvisation, looking afresh at the choices we make while bringing space and time into our awareness.

Playful. Physical. Authentic.

Our explorations and creative processes will focus on the complexity of DISTANCE.

The distance between here & there

Between us

Inside us

Between now & then

We will travel far though constantly come back to Here & Now.

This workshop will focus on the personal and the collective, encouraging performers to bring themselves into the process - the paradox being in not 'performing' one touches the true potential of performance as an 'artistic' process.

In exploring the personal notion of distance on different levels of our being and by exploring the self within the ensemble we reach towards a truthful creative connection.

Merav Israel has trained in contemporary dance at first till studied Movement and Movement Notation (BA Dance) at The Jerusalem Academy for Music and Dance (1997). Her continuous studies and interest include improvisation, somatic movement methods, physical theatre, martial arts. In the past 10 years she has been performing, directing, choreographing and teaching. She has worked with Opera singers, children’s’ theatre, visual artists, musicians and film. Created improvisational and choreographed work, site specific, multi media. Worked collaboratively - recently with the Bakers. She has intensive practice and teaching in Contact Improvisation and has done initiative and organizational work for Edinburgh CI jams in the past 6 years. Currently artistic director of LaNua – Movement & Improvisation.

She has also trained in Indian Classical dance, music and yoga and has been working with Dance Ihayami since 2003.

Sheila Macdougall is an Edinburgh based director, improviser, performer, and educator. She has created site specific performances in various Edinburgh locations, worked with visual artist Katy Dove, taught Six Viewpoints classes at Dance Base, worked with acting students at Queen Margaret University College, and developed, facilitated and taught a new unique interdisciplinary cross art form course at the Talbot Rice Gallery for international students studying at the University of Edinburgh. She is Artistic Director of The Invisible Dance Society. She is also co-founder of the Bakers, a film/movement/theatre collaborative group who recently received an Aberdeen CityMoves commission to create a piece for their DanceLive! series. Prior to moving to Edinburgh Sheila was a lecturer in the Theatre, Television and Film Department at San Diego State University in San Diego, California. She has worked with Six Viewpoints innovator and dancer Mary Overlie, as well as Anne Bogart, theatre director and Viewpoints practitioner.

Elena Masoero has trained as an actress in Milan, Italy where she also worked for Teatro Obliquo Theatre Company for seven years. Her training was principally in physical theatre and voice work. She subsequently trained with a variety of different theatre practitioners including Silvia Lodi (one of Grotowski’s actors) and Eugenio Barba. In 1998 she moved to Scotland where she has since worked as an actress, drama teacher and a director, and successfully completed an M.Phil in Theatre Studies on the work of Odin Teatret. She has worked for the National Theatre of Scotland as an artist in residence, and recently founded Seven Doors Theatre Company. Her most recent enterprise was a co-direction of Donkey (a Seven Doors production), a work in progress devised from the themes of torture and dictatorship, and developed through a collaboration of dance and theatre skills.

Corinne Harris has worked with major theatre companies throughout Britain including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Exchange and the Bristol Old Vic. She was awarded an MA from RADA and King's College in which she specialised in directing and Eastern European theatre pracice. She is currently furthering her academic interests working on a practice based PhD exploring the role of the individual and the ensemble, ego and notions of self in performance. Her professional practice plays follows similar exploration in which she encourages participants to bring themselves into the process - paradoxically to 'not' act but work together as artists sharing and exploring inner truth. NB. Though not therapy, she believe in the transformative potential of truthful artistic practice for both participants and observers.

LaNua- Movement and Improvisation

Phone: 0131 332 1172, 07821 335 757