FEEL  INTO  IT 

FINAL SESSION: YOUR BODY IN ACTION

Your Performance Exercise

As a concluding exercise for this course, you are invited to create your own performance using the tools and concepts we've explored. This is an opportunity to express your artistic voice, take risks, and experiment with ideas.

• If you have a theme you’d like to explore—go for it!
• If you need a starting point, revisit one of the course sessions and use its focus as inspiration. For instance:
  • Explore durationality.
  • Investigate a meaningful site using tools from the Land and Place session.
  • Create a ritual for healing or transformation.

Below are guidelines to help structure your creative process. Use them as support, a kind of checklist, but feel free to adapt them to your vision and needs.

Guidelines for Performance Creation

1. Conceptual Intentions

• Identify Your Themes:
  • What central idea are you exploring? Is it autobiographical, social, cultural, political, or formal?
  • Themes might include identity, memory, transformation, or examining tensions within or around the body.
  • Example: You could explore identity by incorporating ancestral textiles or reenacting family gestures.
• Deepen Your Research:
  • Engage with theory, art history, or personal archives. Let inspiration guide you while creating something uniquely yours.
  • Example: Inspired by Phelan’s ideas of disappearance, you might stage actions that are partially visible and partially hidden.

2. Risks and Experimentation

• Push your boundaries—whether through personal vulnerability, unconventional materials, or experimental techniques.
  • Example: Sharing a personal story in a public space or using unpredictable elements like fire or weather.
• Surprise yourself and your audience. Let improvisation and ephemeral elements shape the performance.

3. Physical Engagement

• Embody Your Ideas:
  • Are your movements passive, active, expressive, or restrained? How does your body convey your concept?
  • Example: For themes like “restraint,” use slow, bound movements to communicate tension or control.
• Engage Fully:
  • Use breath, posture, and stillness with intention. Let your physical presence communicate as much as your words or actions.

4. Presentation Choices

• Site and Setting:
  • How does the location amplify your theme? Consider its cultural, emotional, or symbolic resonance.
  • Example: A piece on loss might be performed in an empty room or deserted park.
• Lighting and Props:
  • Treat them as extensions of your performance. Use them deliberately to enhance meaning.
  • Example: A flickering light could symbolize instability or transformation.

​5. Execution and Excellence

• Rehearse with purpose while leaving space for spontaneity.
• Ensure every element (movement, props, setting) supports your concept. Ask yourself: Does this strengthen or distract from my piece?
• Commit fully to your vision and approach the performance with focus and care.

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6. Documentation

• Capture your performance through photography, video, drawings, text, or material remains.
• You can document it yourself or invite someone to assist.

* Examples of High-Level Execution

• Conceptual Depth: Exploring cultural memory through family artifacts and soundscapes layered with personal movements.
• Physical Engagement: Embodying chaos with unpredictable movements and a cluttered space of objects, lights, or sound.
• Presentation Choices: Performing a piece about isolation in a crowded subway or within a transparent structure in a public space.

Have Fun, Take Risks, and Explore!
This is your opportunity to learn through action, share, and discover something new. Every performance offers a chance for growth and expression.

Thank you for completing FEEL INTO IT! I am delighted to have shared this processes with you.

Please feel free to leave your questions, comments, and feedback in the form below. I will be posting an advance Performance Research-Creation Course soon!
And stay in touch for more courses and news!

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