This workshop is an introduction to the sensation and state-oriented practice Full Drop into the Body. A practice which Icelandic choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir has been developing since 2010 alongside and in service of her performance works. Workshop is a part of Side Step Festival, where Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttirs´ work Boundless Ominous Fields is also performed.
This workshop is for dance professionals and those in professional studies.
FULL DROP into the body practice combines 24 years of research within the artistic field of dance and choreography, 14 years of studying the connective tissue and 6 years experience as a professionally practicing fascia therapist of the Fasciatherapy DB method.
The practice focuses on deep tissue release through visualisation meditations and verbal dialoging aiming to guide participants towards a so called FULL DROP into the Body, or a fully surrendered and released body state. From where the developing of heightened inner listening and awareness of the multiple autonomous systems and rhythms of the body begins. How to be guided and moved by them and experience the various altered physical states that accommodate this type of inner listening.
By fully dropping into the body and entering a meditative space where time ceases to exist, conditions have been created to release self-manipulation and control and allow active intentions to empty out. Through new subjective sensorial experiences unravelling, what was formerly unconscious becomes conscious, increasing awareness of the current as well as immanent inner states of each person. While the practice itself is gentle, the decision to let go of control and enter into the unknown, not yet discovered and unconscious parts of yourself is profound. In the greater context, the workshop offers an alternative way of approaching the body and those who work with it on a professional level, and creates a space for de-conditioning formerly imprinted body memory, both motoric and in the form of memories, through releasing the tissue on all levels. A part of this work is thus as well releasing the professional dancer’s ‘outside eye’ that observes, judges and separates the dancer from the inner experience, and to practice connecting to and becoming conscious of that which goes on within, beyond the conditioned body memory.
Working with and sharing a practice of holistic de-conditioning is a conscious political gesture. It was developed whilst creating a body of artistic works that address the mental, emotional and physical states of the citizens living within our current social political environment, and how that reality expresses itself in our matter.
The Full Drop practice has been shared at the; MA program in choreography at the Theater Academy of the Uniarts in Helsinki, MA Choreography program and BA dance program at DOCH in Stockholm, BA choreography program of the Academy National di Danza in Rome, The Icelandic Dance company, Cullberg Ballet dance company in Stockholm, Professional dancers training and workshop program at both Dansalliansen and Dance Centrum in Stockholm, Dansehallerne Copenhagen, Zodiak dance centre and theater in Helsinki, BA dance program of the University of Arts in Iceland, Praxis Festival in Oslo, Aaden Dans in Roskilde Denmark, RAVENDANS festival Norway, Kiezkieken- workshops for refugee women and children in Berlin, SKUDA Alliance for Actors and Dancers and PRODA classes for professional dancers Oslo, a. pass Research Center Brussels in Belgium, Hildesheim University Germany, Green Room training center for artists in Köln Germany, Kiezkieken- workshops for refugee women and children in Berlin. As well as at various spaces in Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Berlin, Basel and at academic conferences around Europe, within the field of dance, artistic research, performance studies and philosophy and in relation to her performance work.
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Icelandic Berlin based choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir studied dance in Holland and worked as a performer with various performance makers around Europe during the period 2001-2014. She co-founded the production house Panic Productions in Iceland which was active from 2004 – 2009 and focused on producing and initiating collaborative performance works with international artists for the Icelandic stage and beyond it. At the same time as she lived in Berlin creating and touring internationally her own performance works. Since 2010 she has been addressing the pathological imprint of the social political body within our own bodies and its de-conditioning in her choreographic works, as well as her research into the deep tissue release practice FULL DROP. She considers her work involving de-conditioning as a direct political gesture and activism. In the larger sense her performance works engage in the ongoing discussion of healing, feminism, interconnectedness and notions of energetic citizenship within the choreographic context.
The performers, the audience, and the practitioner of her FULL DROP practice can access different body states and altered states of awareness, so called HYPERSTATES. They practice being surrendered to and moved by inner and outer forces, both political and energetic in nature, both ancient and current, and of a magnitude and power far greater than all of us. These body states are celebrated as visceral denials of the externally and internally imposed imperatives to achieve, and draw a contrast with the logic of hyperactivity by presenting an alternative kind of energy and strength. Forming a corporeal language that serves as a doorway into the subconscious which allows for radical questioning of our inner and outer realities through new knowledge and perception of ourselves.
