Rhythm, Choreography and Language - For Dancers and Actors

This online workshop will introduce participants to Zoe Katsilerou and Eilon Morris’ practices, exploring interdisciplinary approaches to choreography and rhythmic phrasing as a means of encountering, embodying and delivering text for actors and dancers

This work is a combination of Zoe and Eilon’s practices and research, whose collaboration offers a holistic psychophysical training for actors and dancers.

With each participant working in relationship to their own space, this workshop will offer a combination of Zoom-led sessions and independent tasks.

Each day will comprise of a 2 hour session each morning and another each afternoon.

Shifting seamlessly between movement, voice and text, each led session will offer tools through which performers can cultivate greater versatility and integration within their performance practices. In these sessions we will work with voice as a means of establishing deeper connections to movement, and inversely, we will draw on movement and somatic awareness to sensitise participants to their internal rhythms, the underlying rhythms of the language and text in their performances. Using these elements, we will encourage participants to tune into and draw on the temporalities of their bodies, objects and surroundings as a way of cultivating a presence with the moment, and delving into relationships with the specifics of their spaces.

Alongside the led sessions, participants will be invited to undertake personal tasks, outside the Zoom sessions, as a way of integrating the work and themes explored into their own contexts and practices.

Throughout this workshop participants will be offered a collection of tools and strategies for creating and responding to performance material with clarity, sensitivity and creativity. Encouraging play and experimentation, we will work with improvisational tools, as well as choreography, text and devising techniques for movement and language. We will draw on simple elements such as the pulse of our heart and the pathways of our movement and voice, as well as working through imaginative and creative processes.

This workshop will hold a safe environment for the participants to cultivate greater awareness of their bodies, voices, rhythms and the environments they inhabit.

The workshop is a collaboration between Dansalliansen and TeaterAlliansen.

Photo credit: Carlos Hernan

Zoe Katsilerou Zoe is a theatre maker, dancer, musician, voice coach, improviser and lecturer. Born in Greece, she is currently based in the UK and work across Europe. Zoe studied Applied Music Education at the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki, GR) and Physical and Street Theatre at Ougka Klara school. In 2015, she received a scholarship to undertake practice-based research at the University of Glasgow as part of the MLitt in Theatre Practices, where she investigated relationships between voice and movement in performance. Following on from these studies, Zoe founded the Moving Voice Laboratory, a space for actors, dancers, performers and makers to explore relationships between choreography and text. The laboratory has been running successfully since 2016 and has ongoing support by the CCA. Zoe is an associate artist with Sura Medura and DUENDE, collaborator with SBC Theatre company, member of the Natural Voice network and founding member of NoVan Theatre Group in Greece, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts at the Leeds School of Arts. 

Eilon Morris Eilon Morris is an actor, percussionist, composer and writer. In 2017, he published his first book, Rhythm in Acting and Performance: Embodied Approaches and Understandings, published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. This work built on his doctoral studies completed in 2013 at Huddersfield University, UK, investigating the role of rhythm in psychophysical actor training. Eilon is a core member and performs regularly with Duende, ICEBERG and OBRA Theatre Co. He recently performed and composed music for IBIDEM (OBRA, Théâtre de la Cité Toulouse, CIRCA) and Separated in Birth (Zoe Katsilerou), as well as working with ICEBERG to curate regular improvisation events in Glasgow, Scotland. Other performance credits including Day of the Living (Royal Shakespeare Company), These Trees are Made of Blood (Arcola, Southwark Playhouse), Gaudete (OBRA Theatre Co, Lowery), Shattering Man (Duende), and Rhein (Royal Festival Hall). Eilon has taught regularly at the DUENDE School of Ensemble Physical Theatre in Greece and India, as well as running masterclasses and workshops for actors, dancers and musicians at institutions in Australia, Argentina, Canada, France, Mexico, Netherlands and throughout the United Kingdom.