RIPPLE / QUAKE [Performance] & Body Maps [Workshop]
2019
Supported by the Leeway X Icebox Residency ('19), & Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant ('18)
Description:
Ripple / Quake is a multidisciplinary performance event exploring the impact of the individual on the whole, viewed through the lens of disability and an ethic of care. The event is multi-layered, inviting community to join as viewers, collaborators, and participants in our unique curriculum combining art and healing techniques.
As a performance, Ripple / Quake features environmental video animation and a 20-foot wide tensile fabric wave as a site of play and a representation of the collective unconscious. Original music is performed live, using circus spectacle (foot juggling and aerial arts) with gestural performance and dance to translate the dynamics and risk of life with health obstacles--physical or mental, seen and unseen. Ripple / Quake as a title suggests fluid and rigid moments of life in a body, and as a universal experience of structure and change. Artists explore divergence with joy and creativity as a balance to cultural shadow.
2019
Supported by the Leeway X Icebox Residency ('19), & Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant ('18)
Description:
Ripple / Quake is a multidisciplinary performance event exploring the impact of the individual on the whole, viewed through the lens of disability and an ethic of care. The event is multi-layered, inviting community to join as viewers, collaborators, and participants in our unique curriculum combining art and healing techniques.
As a performance, Ripple / Quake features environmental video animation and a 20-foot wide tensile fabric wave as a site of play and a representation of the collective unconscious. Original music is performed live, using circus spectacle (foot juggling and aerial arts) with gestural performance and dance to translate the dynamics and risk of life with health obstacles--physical or mental, seen and unseen. Ripple / Quake as a title suggests fluid and rigid moments of life in a body, and as a universal experience of structure and change. Artists explore divergence with joy and creativity as a balance to cultural shadow.
Photos by Elliot Polinsky. Click icon for full image.
Community & Healing:
With this 2-week residency, the group transformed the Icebox Project Space into a site for healing. Free community workshops, "Body Maps" and "Yoga Nidra", were taught with the intention of providing access for an under-served community. The offerings are tied in creating visual and somatic relationships between self and environment.
"Body Maps" is a structured intro to movement creation and reflection for all bodies, centered by the chronic illness experience. The curriculum was developed as an 7-week series, run at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts as the subject of Sarah's solo artist residency in Spring 2019. "Yoga Nidra", the meditative practice of "sleep yoga" uses sequenced visualization to bring about deep relaxation. It assists in uncovering and releasing habitual patterns of body and mind, providing relief for anxiety and PTSD. This workshop was taught by Elliot Polinsky, who also offered "Yoga for Chronic Pain". This peaceful yoga practice calls on rhythmic, meditative motion and stable breathing to help the nervous system to settle, the body to relax, and the mind to re-map the body.
In offering this complex and layered range of access points, from passive spectatorship to active participant, free of cost, we drew a wide range of audience and introduced new cross-disciplinary tools of expression and healing to our community.
With this 2-week residency, the group transformed the Icebox Project Space into a site for healing. Free community workshops, "Body Maps" and "Yoga Nidra", were taught with the intention of providing access for an under-served community. The offerings are tied in creating visual and somatic relationships between self and environment.
"Body Maps" is a structured intro to movement creation and reflection for all bodies, centered by the chronic illness experience. The curriculum was developed as an 7-week series, run at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts as the subject of Sarah's solo artist residency in Spring 2019. "Yoga Nidra", the meditative practice of "sleep yoga" uses sequenced visualization to bring about deep relaxation. It assists in uncovering and releasing habitual patterns of body and mind, providing relief for anxiety and PTSD. This workshop was taught by Elliot Polinsky, who also offered "Yoga for Chronic Pain". This peaceful yoga practice calls on rhythmic, meditative motion and stable breathing to help the nervous system to settle, the body to relax, and the mind to re-map the body.
In offering this complex and layered range of access points, from passive spectatorship to active participant, free of cost, we drew a wide range of audience and introduced new cross-disciplinary tools of expression and healing to our community.
Short Excerpt: Reflecting the choreographic approach of "Body Maps"
Ripple Quake - 3/5 from Sarah Muehlbauer on Vimeo.
Leeway x Icebox Resident Artist Sarah Muehlbauer acts as concept artist, performer, maker, and community organizer navigating horizontal leadership to seed and blend disparate practices. Ripple/Quake is created in collaboration with artists Dan Cole (video art, music), Anne Weshinskey (performance), Simon de Aguero (tensile fabric design), Will Turnbull (sculpture fabrication), Dan Bogan (music), Mieke D. (strategic support), and Elliot Polinsky (photography, videography, yoga instruction), as well as previous participants from the Body Maps workshop series held in early 2019. All work copyright the artists/ producers. 2019
