Experience the artistic processes behind NEUROLIVE.
This five-day workshop is an opportunity to experience the processes behind the artistic investigations of liveness that contributed to the NEUROLIVE project. Each day will share the artistic research of a different NEUROLIVE commission, and will be led by different artists closely involved in that particular work.
These workshops are geared towards experienced artists, practitioners or researchers in dance, movement, choreography, performance and related fields. We encourage participants to book for the whole five days.
NEUROLIVE is an interdisciplinary research collaboration that brings artists, scientists and audiences together to study what makes live experiences special. Each year since 2021, NEUROLIVE has commissioned a public performance work that is both an artistic event and part of a scientific research process. The closing series of public events at SDS comprises a 5-day series of artistic research workshops, a 3-day symposium and a lecture performance.
In the Roof Studio
Tickets
Full 5-day: £100
Single 1-day: £20
There are a limited number of free bursary places for those who may not otherwise be able to attend due to financial barriers. Please email contact@siobhandavies.com to request a bursary place.
Workshop schedule
How Shall We Begin Again? (2022). Video still: Ana de Matos (CAMEYE).
Tuesday 27 May
How Shall We Begin Again?
Initiated by artist Jo Fong, How Shall We Begin Again? took the form of a two-day live installation, created and performed by fifty people in 2022.
On this first day of the workshop week, we will meet each other through moving, listening, recalling and embodying the creative process of How Shall We Begin Again? Jo describes the work as ‘between portraiture, protest and something like a prayer. On its simplest level it’s about how we reconnect with ourselves, our bodies and each other’. This workshop will be led by artists Elina Akhmetova and Jay Yule, who were part of the core artistic team, with workshop plans developed in conversation with Jo Fong.
Detective Work (2021). Photo: Hugo Glendinning.
Wednesday 28 May
Detective Work
Choreographer Seke Chimutengwende and collaborator Stephanie McMann will lead participants through some of the processes and material from their 2021 show Detective Work, looking at choreography as a process of creating and solving mysteries. Thinking about “liveness” as a way of investigating the present, participants will get the chance to work with movement, text, improvisation and set material in order to find their own way of unraveling the mystery of the creative process.
Performing and Not Performing, performed by Jia-Yu Corti (2023). Photo: Hugo Glendinning.
Thursday 29 May
Performing and Not Performing, performed by Jia-Yu Corti
A collaboration with choreographer and performer Jia-Yu Corti, the performance-experiment Performing and Not Performing, performed by Jia-Yu Corti was presented at Goldsmiths University in 2023. This artistic and scientific work playfully investigated a spectrum of states between performing and not performing – both in terms of how performers generate these states and how audiences perceive them.
This workshop day will share this work’s exploration of ways of modulating ‘being oneself’ while being witnessed as a performer. Freeing from predetermined movement or action to guide the performance mode, we will discern and connect the habitual and the intuitive, and watch the process unfold with one simple game plan. In this workshop we will practice total immersion into the present, into the doing, into trust. This workshop will be led by Jia-Yu Corti with contributions from scientific and artistic collaborators Albane Arthuis, Guido Orgs and Matthias Sperling.
~ snakeskin in the wild ~ (2023). Photo: Paula Puncher
Friday 30 May
~ snakeskin in the wild ~
Created by Dog Kennel Hill Project in 2023, ~ snakeskin in the wild ~ brings a combination of formalism and anarchy to the examination of liveness and the aesthetics of science.
This workshop invites participants to engage with key artistic and scientific approaches from the project, working with materials such as slime and wooden rods to investigate their role in practice and performance. Through hands-on experimentation, we’ll examine how scientific and artistic processes were deeply intertwined in the work, tackling the challenge of measuring liveness—not in the controlled environment of a lab, but in the unpredictable, wild context of a theatrical performance event. Led by Dog Kennel Hill Project artists Ben Ash, Heni Hale and Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, this workshop offers a unique opportunity to delve into these ideas through practice and discussion.
Readings of what was never written (2024). Photo: Hugo Glendinning.
Saturday 31 May
Readings of what was never written
Created by Matthias Sperling in collaboration with Temitope Ajose, Ben Ash, Iris Yi Po Chan and Katye Coe, Readings of what was never written was performed in 2024.
This workshop day will explore choreographic materials from this work that approach dancing as a process of ‘taking a reading’ – intuitively interpreting our moment-to-moment embodied experience. The ways that this work brings together dance, science and science fiction will open up an exploration of embodied ways of knowing as an intrinsic part of live dance experiences, attending to how – for performers and audience members alike – this can span a generative meshwork of our bodily capacities for knowing that are variously ‘scientific’ (rational, languaged, explicit) and ‘magical’ (more-than-rational, felt sense, intuitive). This workshop will be led by choreographer Matthias Sperling and collaborating performer Katye Coe, with live sound designer Joel Cahen.
CrediTs
The NEUROLIVE research project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 864420 – Neurolive)
ACCESS AND AMENITIES AT SDS
Siobhan Davies Studios is mostly accessible, with lifts to all floors. There are two accessible parking spaces available on site which can be booked in advance. Blue Badge parking is also available nearby on West Square and Garden Row (for a full map visit the Southwark Council website). Our main door is power assisted.
Amenities include:
- Changing facilities*
- Communal showers*
- Toilets / wheelchair accessible toilets
- Kitchen: tea and coffee making, fridge, and microwave
- Snack Bar: We have a small selection of bars, drinks and food available to buy from the front desk.
- Shops: The closest shop is Superway Supermarket on Garden Row (4 min walk), the closest supermarket is Sainsbury’s on New Kent Road (7 min walk). We also recommend the Art Cafe which serves sandwiches, jacket potatoes and meals (3 min walk).
* Our changing facilities and showers are not fully accessible. Our closest publicly available and fully accessible changing facility is at The Castle Centre, a leisure centre 0.3 miles away from the studios. You can find full details of their features here.