CARING FOR THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Nowadays, many dancers work in constellations under which they are receiving and giving feedback on their or their colleagues’ creative process. This require an additional reflective “outside eye” onto the process of creation.

Many of the creative processes these days are conducted in horizontal structures, in a collaborative manner, which means that feedback is a very important omnipresent tool for negotiating the creation process and making sure it goes well, both on a an artistic but also on social level. If to give feedback is to be full of care for the art in process, how do we create a careful feedbacking situation for ourselves and for others? 

This workshop will begin by the participants embarking on a new creation process, either individually or in a collective. They are to work on their pieces outside of the workshop’s session time. During our sessions themselves, each person or group will present something of their process, the stage that they are in. The point of this workshop will be to focus on feedback methodologies and their relation to creativity and the social context through which creativity is nurtured. We will review and experiment with more structured forms of feedbacking such as the method used by DAS Theater from the Amsterdam University of the Arts. We will try out “round table” discussion techniques while paying special attention to hierarchy issues. We will also experiment with devising our own feedback methods, meaning that finally the students will be able to construct the way and manner in which she or he prefer to receive feedback. As opposed to careless critique, the goal of this workshop is to understand that as an artist, one must try to create for him or herself and for others, a feedback situation that will be most fruitful for the creation process.

Asher Lev is a teacher, dancer, choreographer He has an M.A. in Choreography from the Amsterdam University of the Arts and a B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Lev is curious about spiritual practices that resonate with his artistic path. He is invested in Release Technique, Gaga Improvisation, Sufi Spinning Practice, sitting and moving meditation and ecstatic Breathwork.