
Making a SOLO can be a wonderful way of meeting ourselves and uncovering what might be important creatively right now. What might need to be expressed, digested, discarded, transformed.
Making a solo work can be a great enquiry. Its a little like living with a stranger that you get to know intimately over time, learn from and are somehow changed for the better by the act of meeting them. Making a solo is another way of greeting ourselves with some of the deeper creative themes that thread through the fabric of our lives.
The idea is simple, we take a year to travel along together in making our own solo.
Its a kind of midwifing an idea from gestation to birth, and for that we need support of a community who we can lean into as we inevitably get lost along the way.
This process asks a particular commitment from us, in terms of time, energy, finances,
and being part of a group. So if you have questions/ or if we have not worked together. I would often ask us to meet or talk on the phone so that i may help you decide if this process is right for you at this time.
So we will meet as a group in person and take time to look at ways into listening deeply to our preoccupations. We will support each other in drawing out and revealing the thread of our work.
Will be dancing the questions that emerge from hunches. Those fleeting images, sense impressions, dream fragments of something nebulous that for some reason keeps returning as important. The ‘work’ part of any creative process is how we form the hunch or even get to know it a bit better and what art medium best expresses that feeling and brings it out to the world.
As we travel along any creative process we get to encounter ourselves both in the ecstasy and in the ordinary everyday struggle of trying to follow our hunches. The reason it’s a year and not a week is that something happens when we live with a process of making for a year. It’s a commitment , mostly to ourselves to draw out what might be important.
In a way what the ‘thing is at the end’ may not be that important, or it really may be, but the way we live alongside our curiosity with whatever emerges will be a good process whatever happens.
I will be leading a series of workshops that get the body and imagination in a place that is open to receive what is already there.
My sense often is that there is an idea dormant, like in a slumber, gently waiting to be woken up. Our work will be that, waking up our creative voice and bringing it out into the open.
The process will be open for up to 10-12 people, on a first come first served basis. It will be a small group so we can get to know each other and have a good container of support and encouragement in our own discovery.
You will be encouraged, should you wish to check in with others along the way and offer and receive support by phone or the odd letter during the year.
No ones work will look the same, feel the same, or share the same preoccupation but “going solo’ together’ will allow a depth and support that can be hard to find by oneself.
‘Going Solo TOGETHER’ is a year long solo making process that happens in two formats.
There are 5 immersive weekend workshops and 1 weekend of sharing our work at the end of the process.
One of the main principles of this offering is of having a good time making, although thats not a requirement , it will be emphasised that pleasure and curiosity is one of the main organising principles of choreographic practices thats on offer.
It may be a therapeutic process, but the emphasis is on creativity and creation as as apposed to therapy. We return to our creativity, our own dancing voice, and our own intuition, and trusting that in itself can be a healing endeavour.