The School of Disobedience will come to Newcastle between September 12-16, at Dance City, and build temporarily a radical and experimental playground to practice out-of-the-box thinking-creating-being.
A playground, where we learn how to occupy space.
A playground, where we liberate our body and raise our voice.
A playground, where we progress together and grow together.
Where we gain confidence, courage, and strength from trust and togetherness.
Participants don't have to follow the whole program, they can register independently to each class.

about

Have you ever felt yourself being put in a box or being judged because you don’t fit into it? Outside of the Box is an intensive week where we first unlearn western aesthetics, academic canons, beauty norms, manners and patterns in contemporary dance and art in general. We then relearn collectively how to dare to behave differently, create unconventionally, think outside-of-the-box.

The week is organized around four topics (Identity, Fear, Passion, and Unreason) and wish to help you to disobey to other's gaze, and judgments, handle the profession's pressure, free yourself from gatekeeper's and standard-bearer's expectations. You will be guided to unblock your barriers, get unstuck in your creative process, break your fears, gain motivation, new inspirations, insights and perspectives.

your benefits

  • Get unstuck, unblock your creativity: break blockages and barriers;
  • ​Free yourself from limiting patterns, other's gaze, and judgments;
  • Handle pressure and expectations;
  • Accept your uniqueness, find and develop your own style, artistic voice and personal aesthetic;
  • Practice critical and out-of-the-box thinking;
  • Get inspired, boost your imagination, gather materials, notes, drafts, new ideas, unexpected inspirations for your artistic practice and projects.

schedule

SEPTEMBER 12
Topic: "IDENTITY"
Activities:
  • 10.00-11.00: Improvisation
  • 11.00-12.00: Repertoire
  • 12.00-13.00: Movement research
  • 14.00-15.00: Composition
  • 15.00-16.00: Creation

SEPTEMBER 13
Topic: "FEAR"
Activities: 
  • 10.00-11.00: Improvisation
  • 11.00-12.00: Repertoire
  • 12.00-13.00: Movement research
  • 14.00-15.00: Composition
  • 15.00-16.00: Creation

SEPTEMBER 14
Topic: "PASSION"
Activities: 
  • 10.00-11.00: Improvisation
  • 11.00-12.00: Repertoire
  • 12.00-13.00: Movement research
  • 14.00-15.00: Composition
  • 15.00-16.00: Creation

SEPTEMBER 15
Topic: "UNREASON"
Activities:
  • 10.00-11.00: Improvisation
  • 11.00-12.00: Repertoire
  • 12.00-13.00: Movement research
  • 14.00-15.00: Composition
  • 15.00-16.00: Creation

​SEPTEMBER 16
  • 10.00-13.00: Creation
  • 14.00-16.00: Rehearsal + ​Public Presentation

methodology

These classes hold a strong emphasis on generating non-verbal language and connection. Movement instructions, creative tasks, phrase work, discussions, improvisation, movement research, composition, creation, and final presentation center around each day's topic. 
Improvisation
Far from academic and canonic contemporary improvisation classes, the School of Disobedience's improvisation method is directly inspired by photographic processing:
  1. observing life;
  2. exposing to light;
  3. fixing the moment;
  4. developing the image.
Following this intuitive and very personal research, you will explore how personal mythologies, memory, and identity are formed and constituted. Guided by creative instructions and tasks, you will challenge your body as a political-affective geography, a historically shaped and colonized archive, where power is constantly contested and negotiated.
​Sessions begin with a short dynamic warm-up to awaken the senses and bring awareness to the body and mind. Then guided by creative instructions and tasks, you will playfully delve into improvisation and instant composition. You will compose dance in the moment, develop your unique artistic voice and personal aesthetics, improvise as soloists, with partners, and in group forms, lose yourself in a safe space free from judgment where anything can happen.
Repertoire
You will learn some choreographic phrases from the Gray Box Repertoire, focusing on CLASH (2020), Desire Club (2021), MÖBIUS (2021), and Right for Fight (2022), the company’s latest works. You will discover the maker's, Anna Ádám's movement vocabulary, her choreographic approach, and working method. Through short sequences explore your own strength, physicality, and creativity , focus on your feelings and intuition, place your sensations into physical form. You will also learn how to interconnect your emotions, movement qualities coming from the practice of thematic improvisation, and the given choreographic language.
MOVEMENT RESEARCH
This thematic class will invite you to step out of your comfort zone, transform your imagination and open yourself to new forms, aesthetics and inspirations. During the class you will discover different techniques and tools to generate new movements and movement qualities. So as to stimulate different parts of the brain and the body, you will move back and forth between choreographing, performing, writing, and drawing. 
COMPOSITION
Stay for an additional hour to delve into composition. Using movements from the "Movement Research" class, this extra time will enable you to put together movements into phrases and sequences through creative tasks and instructions.
CREATION
Stay for an additional hour to delve into choreography. Using movement phrases from the "Composition" class, this extra class will enable you to play, tinker, craft, and put together your sequences into choreography through creative tasks and instructions.
​Following a short introduction and group discussion based on readings, life experience, self-examination, you will be invited to reflect and work as soloists, with partners, or in group to create a performance in relation with the topic of the day. You will also receive a choreographic toolbox together with one-on-one mentoring (including critical feed-back in the analysis, application of the method and the clarity of details).

practical information

Fee (in British Pound Sterling):
​-50% for Newcastle-based applicants.
  • £10 / class
  • ​£40 / day
  • £180 / week
Venue: 
Dance City
Temple St, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4BR
United Kingdom
Unlearning facilitator: Anna Ádám
Flexible commitment: You don't have to follow the whole program. You can decide to attend only one or several classes.
Organized by: 

about the unlearning facilitator

Anna Ádám
UNLEARNING FACILITATOR
Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1983, Anna Ádám is an interdisciplinary artist working within the expanded field of performance art, community activism, and choreography.