Liminal Berlin: Exploring the Interface of Movement, Writing, and Cityscape

We will explore the liminal spaces of Berlin by traversing the city, conducting movement explorations and detailed observations of the built environment. Participants will read and reflect on the city’s cultural history and create their own written responses.

The etymlogy of the word liminal can be traced back to the Latin term limen, meaning threshold. This intangible “in-between” is a ripe space at the precipice of a boundary. In this interdisciplinary workshop, co-taught by a professional dance|theatre artist and poet, Nicole Nigro, and a professional dance artist and lighting technician, Cathy Walsh, we will immerse ourselves in the in-between. Exploring the interface of movement, writing, and cityscape, with Berlin in all its diversity, as the territory of our artistic research. We will go looking for liminal spaces: in the capital, our bodies, and our practice. Participants need not have any previous experience in theatre, dance, or writing. They only need to be open to new experiences in an exciting city.

As keen observers we will move through Berlin drawing on the work of the situationists, whose focus on the spectacle emphasises how the city can actively transform its explorers. Participants will spend their time traversing neighbourhoods, while completing a series of movement experiments based on situationist theories of la dérive (drift) and keeping a liminal record of their findings. Simple choreographic devices are explored while employing Rudolf Laban’s efforts to shape our experiences: gliding, pressing, wringing, punching, floating, slashing, flicking, and dabbing through the architecture. These durational exercises will open an “in-between” space - shifting our state into a heightened awareness, generating detailed observations, and creating an accessibility for sensitive writing.

Excursions into the city reflect on cultural history with additional readings from Berlin-explorers, such as Christopher Isherwood and Audre Lorde. Like these writers, we respond to the built environment with our own observations. As part of the revision process, participants will spend one day participating in a formal writing workshop. Our prose - reflections on liminal spaces - can be forms as various as poetry, the essay, diary writing, fictional narrative, or docu-fiction. Observations, intimate movement explorations, and situationist experiments in the German capital distil as polished creative written work.

Schedule

Day One: 10am-4pm

Morning 10am-12:30pm: Introduction to the course and to one another. First in-class movement portion - somatic sensing. We examine our senses and environment. The heart of the work is found in the simple act of observing, both self and space. From this perspective, we allow the lexicon of daily experience to shape our movement and writing.

Afternoon 1:30pm-4pm: In class lecture: Introduction to the city of Berlin, its liminal spaces past and present - examine examples of liminal writing set in Berlin: Tucholsky, Isherwood, Lorde.

Day Two: 10am-3pm

Morning 10am-12pm: Second In-class movement portion - introduction to Rudolf Laban’s Theory of Efforts & Guy DeBord and the situationists.

Afternoon 1pm-3pm: First excursion in the city, exploring through situationist experiments.

Day Three: 10am-3pm

Morning 10am-12pm: Third in-class movement portion – further practice of Laban’s efforts.

Afternoon 1pm-3pm: Second excursion in the city, exploring through movement exercises and experiments.

Day Four: self-guided day

Participants spend the day walking, moving, and writing on their own in and about the city. They submit their drafts by 8pm to a group email so that we can read the drafts and make notes for the next day.

Day Five: 10am-3pm

Morning 10am-12pm: We spend the morning workshopping and exchanging comments on each other’s work using the Iowa Writers Workshop Model.

Afternoon 1pm-3pm: We spend the afternoon workshopping and exchanging comments on each other’s work using the Iowa Writers Workshop Model.

Late afternoon (no class): Is free for revision. Students are asked to polish their work, aiming for publication standard, for presentation the next day. They email their final work by midnight.

Day Six: 10am-12pm

Morning 10am-12pm: The anthology of our work is published. We reflect on moving through the liminal spaces in Berlin, how the interface of movement and writing affected our work, our dynamic as a group, and what we can take (or leave) for our artistic processes. Students are encouraged to spend the weekend in Berlin, exploring the city, moving and writing more!

Prior application requirements

Participants will be asked to read a number of short texts before arriving.

Knowledge requirements

This movement and writing workshop is open to everyone – regardless of native language or level of writing or theatre/dance experience – because we all have a story to tell.
 

Equipment requirements

No special materials are needed except a course reader of short extracts of city-writing, which is distributed in advance, and comfortable shoes for city explorations.

Nicole Nigro (she/her) is an international dance|theatre artist, currently based in Berlin. Nigro is a graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre (CA), York University (CA), The Royal Academy of Dance (UK), with an MFA with Accademia dell’Arte (IT) and Mississippi University for Women (US). She has been a guest artist with Anandam Dancetheatre, Broken Jump Theatre, The Danny Grossman Dance Company, Divadlo Continuo, Dance Theatre David Earle, Peggy Baker Dance Projects for Nuit Blanche, Die Wolke Art Group, Diyar Dance Theatre, and several independent choreographers. Her work has been presented in Canada, the United States, Europe, Mexico, and the Middle East. She was a long-time faculty member at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre (CCDT), a guest lecturer at York University, George Brown College, and Rose Bruford College, as well as the Artistic Director of CCDT’s Core Apprentice Company. 

https://www.nicolebnigro.com

 

Cathy Walsh is a dance artist and lighting technician based in Berlin. She has a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from University College Cork, an MA in Contemporary Dance Performance from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick, and a diploma in Ensemble Performance Practice from Queen's University Belfast. Her work has been presented in Berlin at Dock 11, nGbK, and FELD Theater; Dansehallerne Copenhagen; Zodiak Helsinki; Seoul Performing Arts Festival; and at Dance Limerick, Firkin Crane Cork, Project Arts Centre in Ireland. She works regularly with artists Cécile Bally, Meagan O’ Shea, Kareth Schaffer, and Tino Sehgal, and has improvised on stage with Bobby McFerrin. She has been supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin, the Berlin Senat, Neustart Kultur, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Cork City Council, and Culture Ireland.