Movement And Freedom
Workshop by David Brandstätter

In this Workshop David invites participants to exchange, feel and create different manifestations of freedom through and with the body.

In his solo Fre!heit, David Brandstätter negotiates the term Freedom in its meaning and its social and personal implications.

To David the word freedom needs constant clarification:

COVID 19 has heavily impacted many of our freedoms and the way we think about it. Freedom has been constantly negotiated, often in a field of tension between personal liberties and social responsibility. The pandemic is not even over, and a new context makes up the global news: The Ukrainian struggle to maintain self-determination as a democratic country while facing the Russian invaders. Once again, People literally die in the defense of Freedom. Do the self-proclaimed “freedom fighter” in the context of the pandemic, and the Ukrainian civil resistance fighter have anything in common? What are the values we stand up for, and the virtues we need to maintain constructive relationships? How do bodies respond when faced with such questions?  What are your aesthetics of freedom? How do you express freedom, give it a movement? These questions constitute the base for the workshop’s exchange.

The workshop will start with a dialogue between the participants, moderated by David, about what moves us in relation to freedom. To prepare for the workshop, we ask that participants answer some questions David has posed about Freedom. Answer the questions AT THIS LINK.

You will be given a copy of your answers when you arrive for the workshop.

We will then continue with a warm-up: In accordance with our breathing, we will generate more movement within our bodies: liberating the fascia, loosening the muscles and joints, awakening the nervous system.

Departing from this elevated physical state we will address our writing through movement. Widening our image of ourselves and creating movements towards freedom relating to our personal life and the questions or constraints we encounter, creating movement material, bold or fragile, as well as sharpening our perspectives of the possible in actions and expression.

We will then perform these images within the group in a collaborative movement score, bouncing off and feeding back on each-others’ ideas and material, in order to share our manifestations of freedom and define new possible options.

During and at the end of the workshop we will create physical sketches. Participants will have the option to perform these movements as part of David's performance of Fre!heit the following week at Counterpulse on the afternoon of Sunday October 9.

Artist Biographies

David Brandstätter
David Brandstätter is a choreographer, co-founder of the artistic organization shifts-art in movement. David’s choreographic practice is informed by his studies in Release Dance and Contact Improvisation. Inspired by chaos theory and Eastern martial arts, Contact Improvisation is a way of moving together, exchanging weight, and redirecting each other’s movement directions. It was developed in New York in the seventies and has greatly influenced the way contemporary dancers around the world work today. CI rejects gender roles and traditional ways of storytelling in movement, and instead emphasizes on states of listening with the body, risk -taking and -management, as well as surprise. David’s past as a juggler and unicyclist, his passion for martial arts and various somatic practices, as well as the numerous encounters during his projects around the globe with various dance styles from Krump to traditional Korean folk dance are other important influences for his work.

Shifts Art in Movement
Shifts is an assembly for performance which seeks to cross between media and cultures. shifts adapts its artistic team and its form of expression according to the needs of each project, and the particular subject of investigation. In this way, therefore, it creates new and continuously evolving collaborations and connections. The shifts projects are conceived and guided by Malgven Gerbes and David Brandstätter. The foundation of shifts is based on a core conviction: that constant changes of perspective, shifting balance, the modification of starting positions and external parameters are all conditions essential to a serious and ongoing examination of the art practices to which they have committed themselves. The choreographers Malgven Gerbes and David Brandstätter present performances that put the certainties and uncertainties of their work up for discussion. Their productions don’t attempt to resolve topics, they don’t aim to beat them into submission. Each piece zooms in on the questions that sparked Malgven Gerbes’ and David Brandstätter’s interest, a close-up that they want to present to the audience.