BHB Blog

Bodystorming Hits Bangalore now has a blog of its own! All the posts and updates about the event will henceforth be available on the independent blog - here. For more details about the event you can also check the Bodystorming website. 

Bodystorming Blog Post - Day 1.

This blog post is by Anjali Vaidya, a grad student working with India Bioscience and a member of the documentation team for Bodystorming Hits Bangalore.

“If you're trying to give the big picture of a big idea, to really capture its essence – the fewer words you use, the better. In fact, the ideal may be to use no words at all.” This was how science writer (and instigator of the Dance Your PhD contest) John Bohannon introduced the idea of using dancers to explain and explore complicated problems in his 2011 TED talk, “Dance vs. powerpoint, a modest proposal,” which doubled as a performance piece with the Black Label Movement. The dance – and talk – came to the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Bangalore on Sunday April 26^th, with the role of John Bohannon reprised by Joseph Crook of the Black Label Movement.

As Crook told the audience at NGMA about the “spooky” counter-intuitive properties of superfluids, such as their capacity to slow down light, the ideas were mirrored in the movements of dancers behind him. “This is the great pleasure of science: the defeat of our intuition with experimentation,” said Crook. “But the experiment is not the end of the story, because you still have to transmit that knowledge to other people.”

Can dance help transmit complex scientific ideas to non-specialists? The spell-bound audience on Sunday suggested that it could. However, the dancers of the Black Label Movement have gone much further than just mirroring science in recent years, under the direction of dancer/choreographer Carl Flink (University of Minnesota). The dancers use movement to brainstorm scientific problems, a method they call bodystorming – and draw artistic inspiration from science in turn. Carl Flink spoke on Sunday of his collaboration with biomedical engineer David Odde (also of the University of Minnesota), all of whom are now in Bangalore for a week-long Bodystorming workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS). Odde and Flink met through the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Minnesota, through a shared interest in catastrophe – one in cells, and the other in dance. They have worked together ever since, exploring the dynamic environment within a cell through dance.

Dancers can only complement computer simulations, Flink asserted on Sunday – they cannot replace computers. What bodystorming can help with is intuition, narrowing down the potential avenues for exploration. “There are three doors you could have gone through, and now you know to go through door one,” explained Flink.

Satyajit Mayor (NCBS), who has helped bring bodystorming to Bangalore, spoke of how he gained a more visceral understanding of his research problems by seeing the dynamics of cell membranes acted out on a macro scale by the Black Label Movement at Woods Hole, Massachusetts last year. “We got a bird's eye view, and started to see patterns emerging,” he explained. The exercise also “sharpened one's own ability,” Mayor said, to break down a problem into a set of necessary mechanical rules.

The dancers, in turn, are inspired by the natural patterns that immerse them. Crystal Edwards, a dancer and choreographer with the Black Label Movement, said that bodystorming had changed her own creative process. “Instead of trying to make something happen, you set up rules and let patterns emerge,” she said. Likewise, Joseph Crook found the process of scientific collaboration stimulating, saying that it let him “think beyond the world of art for inspiration.” 

Carl Flink, as well, looks to the world around him and sees organizing principles that inspire. “Whenever you look out the window you see so much motion,” he said. “I like to capture that in my choreography.”

What does he see so far in Bangalore? Flink admitted that he and the Black Label Movement dancers were mildly terrified by the city's traffic, on their way to NGMA on Sunday. But the more that he watched, the more order he saw in the interweaving vehicles. They were guided by one rule: “If you see the space, you take the space.” Flink illustrated his words with a weaving of body and hands, making even the chaos of Bangalore traffic momentarily beautiful.

BODYSTORMING: An event to discover the physicality in science and thinking in dance.

Can body think and brain act? Bodystorming, a play on the word “brain storming”, nudges us to conceive “body” as a site for thinking, reflecting and communicating. The concept materialized when Carl Flink (Dancer) and David Odde (Scientist) from the University of Minnesota realized that they could get new insights into the common idea that they were exploring by being open and receptive to each other’s language of thinking. Bringing the two deceptively distant disciplines together, bodystorming gained momentum and was hosted as an event in many places across US and Europe.

This April, NCBS is bringing Bodystorming to Bangalore, where scientists will collaborate with contemporary dancers from across India, in an effort to exchange and understand the other’s world. Moving according to rules that govern movement of particles within a cell, the dancers gain a ‘lived experience’ of microscopic- cellular level processes. For Aparna Bannerji, an Odissi dancer who also heads the Science and Society department at NCBS, “Such an engagement can help a scientist arrive at new insights into processes that cannot easily be ‘visualised’. Bodystorming helps to visibilise the invisible.  For a dancer, the source of inspiration comes from a life-process and a scale that would not normally be explored, allowing for a new extension in their practice.”  More importantly, this concept challenges the conventional idea of science as being solely a logic and proof driven process, and opens up the importance of intuitive and inspired insights that often lead to the breakthroughs in science.

Bodystorming, draws attention to the “doing” or “practice” of science by moving it to the realm of experience. The practice of science, often pigeon-holed under the labels of thinking and theorizing, is distanced from it’s very physicality. Aparna also adds, “Thinking, investigating, creating, walking the path of inspiration that leads to new insights are all 'physical activities.” For her “There is no abstract notion of a mind that can 'think' if the body does not exist - so bodystorming helps make this connection.  If one can 'think' with mind and body aligned, then what happens to the type of knowledge that we can produce?  This is the real question I have for the process of bodystorming; will the use of a different practice, produce a different kind of knowledge?”

A scientist when she engages with her work also engages with it bodily – as she does an experiment or even as she cracks a formula. However, in Bodystorming, one is practicing science or doing science in a much deeper sense than experimenting or cracking a formula. This is because the material of bodystorming is the experience of being the object of study and not observing the object or experimenting on the object. Darius, a dancer and a Research Fellow at NCBS, emphasizes on this aspect of bodystorming “For me, bodystorming is a way to bridge the gap between me as a scientist/ observer and the object under study (a set of proteins, a cell, an organism) as you become a part of the study object.” The distance between the person and the work almost collapses as one becomes the object to be theorized about, - making body the site of scientific practice.

Science is often perceived as a body of knowledge which is separate from the scientist (the one producing the knowledge) while dance necessitates the presence of the dancer. The common epithet – of ‘Can you separate the dance from the dancer?’ can perhaps be extended to the scientist as she engages in this process.  Dance is not mere movement but reflects the relationship of the dancer with the dance. Similarly, scientific work embodies the nature of scientist’s engagement with her work. For example – we might have a better insight into Einstein’s theory of relativity if we understand his life, his reasons and the conditions in which he proposed the theory. Bodystorming exemplifies this relationship between scientist and science by addressing the process of the work. Looking at science as practice automatically entails the presence of a practitioner. The work itself embodies and is inclusive of the people involved in it.

According to Shabari Rao, a dancer and documenter of this project, “Non-scientists often tend to think of science as product as they are ignorant of the processes that are involved in the making of science. Similarly, non-artists tend to think of art as product rather than practice.” The week long residency that is organized as a part of bodystorming provides a context for dancers and scientists to understand art and science not as disembodied entities but as a way of understanding the world, as practice. Bodystorming in some sense goes beyond drawing conclusions about the cellular activities. It is a space for dancers to see science as a physical activity and for the scientist to see dance as a thoughtful activity. It is about drawing a distant world closer, familiarizing the unfamiliar and connecting the disconnected.

This Transformative Practice Residency is an Invitation to come SHIFT WITHIN by Reconnecting to the Self & your Lived-Experience. Through various Somatic exercises adapted within the conceptual model of the ancient chakra system (sacred architecture of body and psyche) we will explore our lived-body or soma as a site for Insight, Integration, Knowing and Transformation; Our Performances will inquire & research what’s most relevant to our Present Selves

This residency is a class designed as a part of the graduate thesis of the facilitator, Pushpanjali Sharma, M.A. (Embodied Studies), Lesley University, Cambridge, U.S.A. She is offering it in India for the very first time.

	Day 1 (4thApril)	Day 2 (5thApril)	Day 3 (6thApril)	Day 4 (7thApril)	Day 5 (8thApril)	Day 6 (9thApril)
10-12pm	Daily- Opening Interaction Different Somatic Exercises (Body-Mind Centering, Feldenkrais, Continuum and Ideokinesis) utilizing visualization, sound and movement. Chakra Dhyana Followed by Movement Improvisation- Play
12-12.30pm	Tea-break
12.30-2.00pm	Writing, Sharing/Discussion, Generating content and material for Performance
2.00-3.00pm	Lunch-break
3.00-5.00pm	Lab time- Each Individual will work on their own performance/creative piece supported by the facilitator; Performances will inquire into the subject matter that is spontaneously emerging during the day, as well explore/interpret what it means to move beyond frames, and peel off social-masks Closing Discussion

Take Aways:

1. Explore and Learn Somatic (mind-body) practices for self-healing, self-knowing and self-expression; Come alive to a renewed sense of embodiment; discover the joy in movement, dance and being.
2. Move away from the typical way in which the body has always been treated as a puppet, an instrument or a hired body, towards an epistemology of the lived-body as a site for insight, integration, knowing, wisdom and transformation.
3. Investigate into the seven aspects of the self represented by the chakra system through chakra dhyana
4. Let go of end-gaining and goal driven approaches, in favor of process oriented approaches
5. Find support in the self and in each other
6. Adopt approaches that promote a balance between work and rest, and incorporate effortlessness and ease in our lived-experience
7. Reclaim your creative agency and your authentic voice. Learn to create a performance piece, through your own organic somatic process, that inquires into what is most relevant to you right now.

Please Bring:

1. Bring to our first class meeting one personal item- can be a poem, an object, picture, music, photograph, anything that is significant to you which you could share with others. This could be something that has heart and meaning for you in your relationship to the arts, embodied practices and healing.
2. A towel for supporting the body during somatic practice
3. A notebook/journal and pen
4. Colour pencils/ crayons/ art items (If you like to express through art, not cumpolsory), Individuals may chose to bring anything that enhances/supports their medium of expression
5. Wear comfortable clothing, in which you can breathe, express and move freely. For those who like to improvise and move uninhibitedly on the floor and are wary of your knees, bring yourself a pair of knee pads for protection.
6. For those of you who are choosing to stay on at Antara, please carry your own bed sheet, pillow cover and towel for personal use.

Pushpanjali Sharma:

Belonging to the sea- shore of Goa and the Foothills of Jammu, Pushpanjali Sharma a performing artist and research-scholar in Somatic Education & Transformative Practice is currently on the last stage of her Master’s Degree in Embodied Studies from Lesley University, Cambridge (U.S.A). As such she is taking the opportunity to explore and examine somatic practices and its application towards internal inquiry, embodied writing as well as somatic-performative research. The residency at Antara is an amalgamation of the same. 

 During Embodied Creative Practice:

“I am free from time, effort is replaced with ease, limitations are transformed into freedom, and mundane is elevated to a heightened state of connectedness to the source of all things.”

As a contemporary dancer she has trained both in India (TR Dance company, Mumbai, Gati Dance Center, New Delhi) and for the last three years she has lived in New York training in Ballet-Contemporary track at Peridance Capezio Center and studying composition and choreography at Dance New Amsterdam (Certificate course) and Movement Research (Somatic-Performative Intensives).

Alongside being a trained pilates and yoga instructor, Pushpanjali has researched several somatic practices- Feldenkrais, Body-Mind Centering, Continuum and Ideokinesis, at Movement Research, NYC. She has interned/menteed under second generation somatic leaders Dr. Martha Eddy (Body-Mind Centering), Mary Abrams (Continuum). Studied Arts and Healing under Vivien Marcow Speiser (Expressive Arts Therapy) and has also taken several workshops under Michel Casanovas (Feldenkrais Teacher- Dance maker).

" I am fascinated by ‘true potential’, finding fresh ways to enhance the experience of life! The idea of internal transformation of the individual revolutionizing the whole, and finally creating and performing work that is palpable, resonant and shifts both the performer and the audience, drives me moment by moment!"

Kindly Note:

1. This residency is open to all interested in embodied practices and performance inquiry. Previous dance experience is not mandatory.
2. Lunch can be provided on prior notice. 
3. Residential facilities are available.

Workshop Venue:

Antara Artists' Collective

12th main, Shubh Enclave,

Harlur Road, off Sarjapur Road,

Near Springfields Apts.

Bangalore , India.

Bodystorming Hits Bangalore

A COLLABORATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND MOVEMENT

Can we reflect, remember, react and talk through our bodies?

Bodystorming is an initiative which explores this concept in action, giving people an experiential account of what it means to engage with the body as a medium of thought and communication. While we are quite familiar with brain storming- coming up with ideas rapidly in a group situation, we rarely think of doing the same with our bodies.

What happens when we collectively throw ideas together spontaneously using our bodies?

Bodystorming – which began as a way of physically committing to and testing ideas about biological processes at the cellular level, is very soon coming down to Bangalore, as a common initiative between the city's dance and the science community.

The National Centre of Biological Sciences (NCBS) supported by the Wellcome Trust is hosting the Black Label Movement for a 10 day intensive engagement with the dance and science communities in Bangalore. The fundamental idea behind this initiative is to use simple interaction rules between dancers to simulate and understand biological processes, drawing from deeply inter-disciplinary roots.

The Black Label Movement is a dance company led by Professor Carl Flink and closely working with Professor David Odde (Department of Biomedical Engineering), both from the University of Minnesota.

A series of events are planned, including a bodystorming workshop for 25 selected dancers and a residency at NCBS where in 10 invited dancers will work with BLM intensely. They will be in constant touch with scientists and researchers to discuss and articulate their work. These sessions will seek to explore the ideas for bodystorming, its potentials and limitations. The programme will also include public interaction sessions with lead researchers Carl Flink and David Odde and a final performance by the Black Label Movement. The programme is being coordinated by the Antara Artists’ Collective.

There are plans to continue this engagement beyond the duration of the workshop/residency series to offer dancers and scientists in Bangalore a way to keep the bodystorming practice alive in the city.

This program is an opportunity for dancers who wish to work with deeper awareness of body and its role in dance. At the same time it stretches the notion of what it means to experiment in science – playing with the idea that ‘to experience, is to know’.

The bodystorming workshop shall be held on 25th and 26th April 2015 from 2 to 7 p.m.

Register for this workshop by filling up this online form: Click here

Kindly note:

• Applicants need to share a link to their performance video in the form
• The last date for registration is 31st of March 2015
• Applicants will be informed about selection for workshop on or before 1st of April 2015 through email/phone
• Selected participants are requested to arrive at the venue at 1.30 pm on 25th April 2015 for orientation

Workshop Venue:

The Lewis Foundation of Classical Ballet

5th floor, Salma Bizhouse,

Manee Avenue Road,

Opp Lakeside hospital,

Above CCD, Near Ulsoor Lake,

Bangalore- 560042.

Innovation in Choreography- Workshop by Jhelum Paranjpe

  Innovation in choreography - (For dancers from any discipline and with min. 5yrs of learning experience)

As part of Antaradhi- workshop series, we bring the maestro - Jhelum Paranjape from Mumbai to share her choreographic process with young dancers of Bangalore. We aim to bring together dancers from various disciplines and help them learn, share and work with a seasoned master and explore  their own creative /choreographic selves. The participants will explore diverse ideas, creative and critical thinking , breaking boundaries of their own movement vocabulary and  eventually fitting their work into their respective forms.  

Key take away for the participants -

1. Know the choreographic process from a path breaking choreographer of a classical dance tradition.

2. Opportunity to innovate within your own movement vocabulary.

3. Learn to assess when change/borrow/modify in the choreographic process.

4. Challenge your creative self and explore the possibility of developing your choreographic skills

   under Jhelum Paranjape's mentorship.

About Guru Jhelum Paranjape –
Jhelumtai, as she is fondly called, has consistently broken new ground in the traditional odissi dance form through her innovative choreography and teachings. In a career spanning  over three decades, her body of work includes vast repertoire of productions like Leelavati, Narmada, Uma to name a few.

While maintaining the core and spirit of Odissi dance, she has effortlessly moved beyond the boundaries placed by any traditional art form. An explorer at heart, she has helped hundreds of students explore a world of limitless possibilities in movement converting them to fit in the traditional/classical vocabulary of Odissi. Using Vivaldi's music from Four seasons to show swarm of bees moving across the stage tracing beautiful patterns or to show a herd of elephants moving rhythmically in a playful mood or a flock of birds gliding gracefully in the evening sky.... and all this unveiling into solving mathematical problems in her production Leelavati based on the 12th century mathematical treatise by the same name.

Maths was never so beautiful before!

http://www.thehindu.com/2001/02/24/stories/0424403j.htm

In another production -Narmada, she imagines the river as a woman. Nurturing, purifying, life giving, yet, standing strong and fighting man-made disasters. In showcasing the many faces of the river, she uses fluid movements of Odissi and juxtaposes it with Gymnastics to showcase the might of the man-made dam. She intersperses this with folk movements to show life along the river. http://smitalay.com/Narmada.html

Besides these, she has created several productions / pieces voicing social, environmental, ecological, political, feminist, educational and feminist themes each scaling new heights. She also brought "Bollywood hangama - Odissi Istyle" taking popular classic and new age bollywood music and weaving it into Odissi vocabulary, taking Odissi to those who generally stay away from "Classical dances". She has performed and taught in many countries received many awards like Kumar Gandharva award, Mahari award, Vidya Bhushan award, Women Achiever's award to name a few.

Dates: 22nd - 26th Jan 2015 Time: 10.30 am - 1.30 pm Fees: Rs. 5000 For registration - click here
Note: Participants may bring a piece of music /poetry that they wish to work on. we will then select a few out of those and work on them during the workshop.

Jhelum paranjape will also conduct a Lecture-demonstration - "Counting, Cooperating and Creating: how does dance help?" on 26th evening 4.30 pm at Antara which will be free and open for all. 

How Do I Engage With Art?

As I was whiling away time on internet, I stumbled across an idea –treat art as if it is a human being. The idea was an image representation- of art and onlooker embracing each other in a kiss. The image spoke to me, telling me something I was struggling to articulate for a long time – how to engage with art? The answer given was simple - engage with art like it is a human being. But can we treat art like a human being- we can’t give art food to eat, water to drink, put it to sleep or actually kiss it.

I remember having left art galleries and auditorium feeling very inadequate for not having understood the painting hung on the wall or made sense of dance performed in an auditorium. Being a student of history and philosophy of art, believing that I was passionate about art, it was disappointing to realize that when it came to understanding specific art work, it was a totally different ball game. This summer, joining Antara as a Research Affiliate, I spent my time observing dance in the dance class and eventually also dancing. I listened to the staccato of the wooden taala, sometimes watching people move to it and eventually moving to it myself. As I started being in this space, how I tried to connect with art in general and dance in specific shifted fundamentally.

What was so different about how I looked at dance in an auditorium and how I looked at it here, at Antara? Settings like art galleries and auditorium do not allow us to explore art, play with it. Often my engagement with art in these places is limited by distance and regulation. Antara was a free space, it let me do what was not allowed in auditorium and galleries, it allowed me to play with it. It let me engage with dance by including me in the environment rather than excluding me from it. In an auditorium, the stage excludes the audience. At Antara, even as an observer I was inside of the environment and felt physically and psychologically close to dance.

When dance is performed in an auditorium, when a painting is kept in a gallery it is decontextualized, we do not know where it comes from, which world it was made. In contrast to this when we see a writers room full of books, a scientists room with equipments we don’t just see objects. Such environments express the relationship of the writer with her books and scientist with her equipments. “Relationship” is the word of focus here. I might buy a book and keep it without reading it. Then I am not really owning the book or have a relationship with it except in economic terms. Only when I read it, engage with it, listen to it and speak with it, can I take the text from the author and make it my own. The environment at Antara allowed me this kind of engagement- allowed me to bring dance closer to myself and establish my own spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual relationship with it.

Some audience can be really moved by a performance in an auditorium so this is not to imply that one cannot engage with dance in an auditorium at all. This is to say that community spaces like Antara facilitates one to listen to art for more closely and deeply when compared to an auditorium. What the image meant when it suggested that art is human was that it is beyond just any other physical object. What makes it more than a mere object is our relationship with it. So it is not about making art human but letting art make you more human, to let art be the stimuli that evokes your emotion, intellect, body and spirit- all the qualities that make a one a human being.