Experiencing literature, kinaesthetically
Workshop for the 35th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf
24th of June in Istanbul by Ayşe Orhon.
Drawing on the modernist writer Virginia Woolf’s image world, this movement workshop explores how language can translate to kinaesthetic experience.
As I got this invitation to propose a movement workshop in the frame of a literature conference, the question felt evident: what would it be like to experience literature through movement? What would unfold when images move through our bodies, our senses. What would reveal when the body sets in motion through images?
The idea of Virginia Woolf’s image world getting into motion is exciting because it is another way of experiencing literature. Not only we are reading, or we are listening, but literally we are moving through it, moving through the writer’s landscapes.
The primary source for this journey is the postmodern dance method, Skinner Releasing Technique™, where the dancer is lead to movement by a spoken narration. Created by Joan Skinner in the 1960’s in U.S., the technique uses images to evoke particular kinaesthetic processes in order to help us move effortlessly in unrestricted ways with a sense of autonomy and connection. She uses image clusters to create a more complex sensation, this helps dancers deepen and expanding their sense of proprioception—where their body and body parts are in relation to space—while and also opening creative processes of movement for us as feeling, thinking and sensing beings.
I feel a kinship, a sisterhood between Joan Skinner and Virginia Woolf, and I would like to explore this through our moving bodies together in space.
- The journey is sourced in the methods of Skinner Releasing Technique™ —not as a set class, but as a practical framework to explore movement through literature.
- We will move to music moment to moment, also a time is dedicated to writing.
- Please contact if you’d like to know more about the workshop or would like to host one.
- The workshop language is English.
For more info click here
Facilitator: Ayşe Orhon
Ayşe Orhon is a dancer and choreographer based in Berlin. She graduated from Artez (HKA) in 2001 and completed a Master’s degree in choreography in Amsterdam (AHK) in 2013. As a performer, she has danced with Aydın Teker, Emmanuelle Huynh, DD Dorvillier, Eszter Salamon, Deborah Hay, Hermann Heisig, Jule Flierl, among others. As a choreographer and dancer, she collaborates with choreographers in Berlin (including Litó Walkey, Christina Ciupke, and Begüm Erciyas). As a creator, Orhon has presented her work in various festivals across Europe. She is a certified Pilates trainer (Stott/Merrithew), Shiatsu practitioner (European Shiatsu Institute, Berlin), and certified in Skinner Releasing Technique™. Moving between the somatic and the artistic—between the kinesthetic and the aesthetic— she brings together technical knowledge, hands-on experience and artistic curiosity.
Photos ©Ayşe Orhon
Lighthouse, Brazil, 2016
