Valentina Desideri: Studio Practice

What if study is what we do with others?

What if study is a social practice that needs rehearsal?

What if we study in the studio?

What if the studio is a dance studio?

What if we consider the “dance studio” the place, any place, where a multiplicity of proposals, spoken or simply enacted, follow one another and travel transversally through bodies and different dimensions (physical, intellectual, emotional and social)?

What if in Vilnius the dance studio shrunk and we, too big now, go back where the first study began?

What if the dance studio is a kindergarten?

Once in the studio our task will be to activate the potential and knowledge that is already there in the room, in people and their tools. A condition to enter the studio is to set the intention of studying, without knowing how to do it. This means that the main thing we do in the studio is paying attention to anything that happens in and around us as we allow ourselves to enter a continuous sequence of proposals, actions, silences, discussions, attempts, banalities, conflicts, excitements, reflections, deviations, distractions and anything that could possibly happen.

Although the proposal to study in the studio is the most direct and banal proposal possible, it is only a way to create the conditions for an indirect approach to knowledge. In fact, what we can learn from a very straightforward exercise only comes from the sideline, from what we misunderstand, what we have practiced before, and the neighboring of this knowledge with another one.

Participants are welcome to bring in their tools, practices and desires. I’ll bring mine. But no stress, everything is already there.

The workshop is conceived for Rupert’s Educational program participants and residents, but there are a few extra spots so if you would like to participate please register at monika@rupert.lt by 19 January, 2014.

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Valentina Desideri was best defined by a friend who called her a 20 year old on tour.  Although this was meant as a reproach she found this definition more suiting than performance artist or anything like that. Lately she has also been called a psychic, which, if added to the previous description, makes of her a psychic 20 year old on tour. She trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre in London, she did a MA in Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, she does Fake Therapy and Political Therapy, she co-organizes Performing Arts Forum in France and she writes biographies by reading people’s palms. She writes other things too but mostly she’s around.

Workshop partner: Vaikystės sodas

Workshop will take place on January 22-23, between 5 pm – 9 pm in a location in Vilnius’ oldtown. Exact location will be confirmed to registered users.