Location: Small Rehearsal Studio, Dalhousie Arts Centre
Convenors: Naty Tremblay, Sedina Fiati, Lexi Sproule (Members of the Switch Collective)
This Praxis Workshop will invite up to 25 participants to join the Switch Collective in an exploration of our methodologies for developing radical & roving queer street performance. This is open to anyone interested in street art for social change, collaborative creation using transformative justice frameworks, or simply exploring personal modes of performative inqueery in unexpected settings. Participants willing to improvise & experiment will benefit most. As the term ‘switch’ implies, we are using performative frameworks that center queer cultures, sex/desire positivity, versatility, consent practice & radical change. Ideally we will host this workshop in a protected outdoor space, with access to more public space nearby. We will queer “warm ups” using prompts to guide stretching, words & gestures to introduce ourselves to one another, describe our passions & explore transgressive bodily expressions. We will then use circle work to explore key concepts that inform our work including regenerative reciprocity, consent, switchiness, accessibility & care in order to establish sacred agreements for working more deeply together. Participants will then be led through exercises that explore transgressive movement through space, working with place & architecture, mixing mediums into collaborative performance gestures & animating political prompts rooted in the site(s) of our work. We will aim to harvest insights gained from these exercises to loosely curate a thread of performative gestures (inspired by Pocha Nostra, Violeta Luna), followed by a brief discussion returning to ‘care’ in order to then take our experiments to the streets for a roving mini performance. We hope to document this street experiment and share with participants of the workshop.