DIANE MADDEN
Photo by Polly Motley. Film: Molly Davies
Diane Madden enjoys a multi-faceted relationship to dance from the perspectives of performer, teacher, tutor, director, creative assistant, mentor and student.
Since 1980, Diane has danced, directed, taught, studied and reconstructed Trisha Brown’s work. Having originated many roles in Brown’s work she has received a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award (1989), two awards from the Princess Grace Foundation (1986 and 1994) and was honored along with the original cast of Brown’s Set and Reset collaboration with Rauschenberg and Laurie Anderson by Movement Research, NYC (2012). Diane continues to serve the Trisha Brown Dance Company as Artistic Consultant.
In 2019, she relocated to Brussels to assist Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and take a teaching, tutor and mentor position at P.A.R.T.S. She continues to find her work supporting the P.A.R.T.S. students’ artistic development immensely fulfilling.
Diane’s own performance work in solo and collaborative improvisational forms was greatly impacted by her work in the 1980’s with the New York based performance ensemble “Channel Z”, investigating the spontaneous, focused and deeply physical movement states occurring in Contact Improvisation and developing it’s compositional potential addressing all aspects of theatre. In addition to “Channel Z” her major influences have been Brown, Paxton, her study of Aikido with Fuminori Onuma and the Fascia Therapy training she’s currently undertaking with Anja Röttgerkamp.
Workshop “Movement Research and Creation”
Each day we will sequentially and simultaneously flow through bodywork – technique – improvisation – composition – performance skills.
The workshop will function as a container for the interests, strengths and curiosities of the dancers with the goal of finding freedom through form.
Referencing anatomy and physics to align forces of weight and support we cultivate a taste for the authenticity of weight and transparency of intention in our movement.
Recognizing the movement within stillness we discover the stillness that’s possible within movement and develop an embodied understanding of where to focus mental and physical effort and where it is not useful.
Building upon this mindfulness work, we layer our awareness from inward to outward, bringing our movement into relationship with our environment.
Through soloing, partnering and ensemble work, the dynamic of falling is used as a tool for experiencing the balance of release and activation, mobilizing our center of weight to provide a readiness and responsiveness to the movement around us.
Dancers will do rigorous movement research using improvisational strategies to generate phrase material which will then be formalized, studied, manipulated, shared, composed.
Play is the operative word. From a place of play we become available to imagination, ideas and impulses both within and around us.
As pleasure is a great motor we will train our contact with it.
