St/itch

          the f/old as somatic\artistic practice

 

      

image collage Susan Sentler, dancer Stella Papi, from Sfilare II 2011

 

     an online event/workshopping with Susan Sentler & Glenna Batson

        April 20th & 21st 2024

What is a fold, but a joining of surfaces.  This event invites the curious to enter and re-enter the ephemeral fabric of folds/folding. Like a gesture of needle-to-cloth, the f/old as somatic\artistic practice is a tactile confabulation with the pliable, thingy-ness of pleated materialities. The first prick is generative – it gives rise to a stain, that gives rise to a process.   Rummaging into the juxta-folded surfaces of the somatic moment, we are inducted into liminal space. Nothing is lost or absent in the encounter … micro-fibril, grain, grit, hair, string, tendril, thread. Lapsing into the unknown, we meet the filigree of making, the irreverent remains of a baste stitch – a vein, a faint imprint of muddle, mystery and memory. Come join this gathering and enfold into the soft cuff of the f/old, a corporeal toile of co-creation.

 

Saturday – Sunday, April 20th-21sr 2024 Online with Susan and Glenna

8 am – 11 am EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) – 3 hours each day

Please check your local time zone.

Fee: $60 both days, $35 for one day of participation (Saturday or Sunday)

For further information & payment: thefoldcourse@gmail.com  or glenna@glennabatson.com

Participants will be sent a list of materials and zoom link within 2 days of the workshop.

The workshop was inspired by a quote from English author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941, Orlando: A Biography). ‘Memory is a seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after…’

 

Biosketches

 

Susan Sentler, BA, MACP (she, her) is an independent artist working in/around the fields of dance, choreography, performance and visual arts as maker/choreographer, teacher, researcher, mentor, director and performer. She has taught and practiced globally for over 30 years. Susan’s creative, pedagogic and research practice is inter/trans\post-disciplinary, anchored by a honed somatic relationship to image. She focuses on gallery/museum contexts creating/collaborating on ‘responses’ or ‘activations’ within exhibitions as well as durational installations orchestrating moving/still image, objects, text, sound and absence/presence of the performative body. Her work has been exhibited, screened and/or performed in the UK, Ireland, USA, Europe, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

 

Glenna Batson, ScD, PT, MA (she, her) is an independent lecturer, researcher, mentor and performer. For five decades, she has honed a trans-disciplinary approach to the study of embodiment, bridging between dance, science, phenomenology, and somatic studies. Glenna currently teaches Somatics: embodiment for the 21st century at Peabody Institute for the Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

http://glennabatson.net   https://thfold.net/Workshops

 

Special Summer Events

 

Throughout June and July, Glenna will join a team of veteran dancers this summer for a project called KODA – keep on dancing – an arts-for-health project funded by the Erasmus + foundation. The project takes place at Artis Umbria – a gorgeous retreat center in Umbria Italy and at the Impulstanz Dance Festival in Vienna, Austria.

From May 29th – June 5th, Glenna will offer an open playshop at Artis Umbria called

Un/Folding and Rewilding: Entering the Fold 

The playshop will be shared with dancer and Myoflex practitioner, Kerstin Kussmaul on fascia ; Rewilding You Matrix.

Here’s a chance to dive deeply into exploring the somatic body in its infinite connectivity!

 

Alexander Technique Teachers

Join Glenna for an unforgettable summer workshop in Slovenia!

4th International AT Teachers Convention 

August 25th – 31st 2024

https://www.alexanderconvention

 

 

Spring into Fall 2024

Having moved back tot he Washington, DC area after a 35-year hiatus, Glenna has resurrected a number of wonderful colleagues from the past, both in dance and in the Alexander Technique.  Meeting up again with veteran community dance artist Nancy Havlik, Glenna has readily joined in improvising with Nancy’s  Quicksilver senior dance project.

 

Glenna and decade-long colleague Susan Sentler (London, UK) put the finishing touches on their book

artmaking as embodied enquiry: enterubg the f/old.

We await publication fall 2024,(Intellect Books, UK).

 

Glenna took on a project with Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, as guest editor for a special topics issue in dance, embodied agency and neuroplasticity in aging. Frontiers is an open access journal and the third most cited among similar science journals. Editorial team includes Drs Aline Haas (Brazil), Bettina Bläsing (Germany), Christina Hugenschmidt (USA) and Joseph DeSouza (Canada). We aim to meet the manuscript minimum to publish an E-book on a topic that advances current evidence on dance and quality of life.