Listening in the Dark: equilibrium

Anne Bourne, Germaine Lui, Lesley Greco
ArtsEverywhere Festival, Guelph
Sunday, May 4, 2025; 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm

In this three-hour gathering with Anne Bourne, participation stems from Deep Listening practice and the Sonic text scores of Pauline Oliveros, with standing meditation by artist/osteopath Lesley Greco, as well as sound interventions by composer/percussionist Germaine Liu. The practice of Deep Listening offers embodied listening, extreme slow walk, attunement, and collective creative expression.

The experience invokes notions of interstitial places of rest, sonic presence, listening and equilibrium in darkness. No experience necessary. The intention is to create a choral sound field in a particular moment in time, with movement influenced by the temporality of the wave patterns of water. The workshop invites a deeper attunement to each other, ourselves, our bodies, and the more-than-human by expanding sensory listening imagination. “In listening within my field recordings I propose an environmental attunement experience leading towards the algorithmic text score, The Tuning Meditation by Pauline Oliveros when we sing!,” explains artist Anne Bourne. “It is transmitted aurally. I invite participants to listen, and find equilibrium within the surroundings.”

BOOK RELEASE!!

Resistance and Support: Contact Improvisation @ 50 is a ground-breaking anthology that collects twenty original writings that elucidate critically important somatic and political perspectives on Contact Improvisation (CI). This form of partner dancing that was started in the United States in 1972, has spread into a vibrant global community in the twenty-first century. Resistance and Support is edited and includes an introduction by veteran CI practitioner and dance studies scholar Ann Cooper Albright.

Ann Cooper Albright, Michele Beaulieux, Emma Bigé, Aaron Brandes, Dena Davida, Joseph Dumit, Ariadna Franco, Huichao (Dew) Ge, Lesley Greco, Lisa Claire Greene, Kristin Horrigan, Dorte Bjerre Jensen, Ming-Shen Ku, Carol Laursen, Shuyi (Candy) Liao, Adrianna Michalska, Aramo Olaya, Esmeralda Padilla, María Paz Brozas Polo, Robin Raven Prichard, Gabrielle Revlock, Elisa Romero, Brian Schultis, Paul Singh, Joy Mariama Smith, Guru Suraj, Ana Carolina Teixeira, Mariana Torres, Laura, Villeda Aguirre, Sarah Young, Yuting(Elsie) Wang, Rosalind Holgate Smith, Xiao ZHANG

senSing

Erwan Noblet and Lesley Greco will be sharing their research together at the Improv lab at the University of Guelph on Saturday November 23rd. This three-hour facilitated lab will begin with Lesley leading body-focused listening and hands-on attention to breath, movement, and sound through simple improvisational scores. Erwan will then lead us as a collective to explore joyful, creative, spontaneous music-making.

WHEN: Saturday November 23rd 1-4pm
WHERE: Improvlab, MacKinnon Building, Room 108, University of Guelph, 87 Trent Lane
COST: $65

Erwan Noblet is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Critical Studies in Improvisation and an international voice and vocal improvisation teacher.

REGISTER HERE

MT SPACE PHYSICAL THEATRE INTENSIVE

The MT Space Physical Theatre Intensive (in partnership with The Registry Theatre)
January 15th to 19th 2024
for more information and to register visit MT Space HERE

MOVING & BREATHING

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER VISIT US HERE

Through information sharing, guided improvisations, individual hands-on attention, movement scores and motifs we will inhabit our breathing-bodies in motion and stillness.

DOUBLE TIME

From Katie Ewald, the curator and organizer of Short&Sweet: Guelph Edition comes a new event called Double Time. In a casual and fun setting, Double Time opens up the creative process and invites you in.

Twelve artists are randomly paired up. Each pairing creates a short work of 2-5 minutes and then they show it twice. How they show it is up to them! It could be the same (is that even possible?) or it could be totally different (how is it the same work?). It is an experiment in presence and listening. Curated by Katie Ewald and presented by Guelph Dance, local artists and artists from across Canada open up their process and invite you in to see what they can make over a two-day period. The process will include workshops with local artist/osteopath Lesley Greco to explore concepts of listening and responding. The artists will encounter each other and each pair will make something to share with us by end of those two days. Join us to witness exploration, vulnerability and risk-taking.

Meryem Alaoui
Leelee Oluwatoyosi Eko Davi
Haley Dimeck
Leanne Dyer
Meghan MacNeil
Allison Blakley
Kaelin Isserlin
Theresa Kretsch
Ishra Blanco
Tara Butler

LOVING GRAVITY

REGISTER: inbodyguelph@gmail.com

to bring attention, breath and movement together in the moment while moving and resting in gravity is a listening practice that influences:

our capacity to receive pleasure
our ability to move well and with ease
the feeling of being awake and at home in our own skin
the balance of tone, release and tension in our body
our ability to learn from our own experience
our capacity to stay with ourselves as we interact with others

the listening practice sessions will be held on zoom but will not require you to be screen facing and interacting online. this is an opportunity for you to be guided in the privacy of your own practice space. the sessions will be audio recorded for you to revisit during the week as you wish.

i will be guiding the practice according to what I’m seeing and sensing in your body during the live sessions. if you’re unable to attend, you may still sign up for the series and receive the recordings.

read more here

listening body at array space

as part of the quantum listening series held by composer anne bourne, this week special guest artist/osteopath lesley greco will present- listening body

ARRAY SPACE
155 Walnut St, Toronto
MAR 18 2023 1-3pm
doors open at 12:30
Register here to attend

physiologically, our ears share two distinct sensory functions. the cochlea, as the ear of hearing, translates vibrational information from our environment(s) into the spiralling internal ear facilitating the metabolism of sound vibration.
the ear of the body, or the vestibular organ, is another part of the internal ear that receives information about our position in space, our movements and the motions of those we are in contact with. it helps us listen in to the ongoing dialogue between gravity, the counter-gravity contact forces of the ground and the internal suspensory/tensile forces supporting our bodies.

in this session we will share some neurobiological perspectives and listening scores bringing attention, breath and movement together within gravity, inviting the coherence of our systems to arise, flow and interact in spontaneous, responsive and adaptive ways.

https://www.annebournemusic.com/

movers writing writers moving

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listening/dialogue

morning movement labs

listening

weekly labs exploring the physiology of listening with, to and through our bodies. foundational skills for body practitioners, improvisers, movers of all kinds and levels of experience. $10-15 sliding scale

42 Quebec st. Guelph

dialogue

weekly labs exploring physical dialogue, agility and adaptability through the practice of contact improvisation. all levels of experience welcomed. $10-15 sliding scale

42 Quebec st. Guelph

3 Week Contact Improv workshop May 10 – 24 2020 with Mark Young and Lesley Greco

The Functional Anatomy of Listening

Morning classes with Mark focus on structured technique designed to build skill, strength and competence in a full range of partnered movement from floorwork to flying. In the afternoons with Lesley we slow the pace of our inquiries and focus on the subtle qualities, attentional strategies and internal supports that we bring to those structures and techniques.
We begin with ourselves, slowing the pace of our listening, tuning to biological rhythms, and considering ways to cooperate with the dynamic, self-organizing processes of our bodies as a basis for partnering with others.

In this three-week workshop at Leviathan, we will explore the subtleties of CI through various lenses such as; osteopathic philosophy and principles, perspectives on the physiological bases of human interchange and the experience of our developing perceptual systems. We will be drawing upon these and other viewpoints to support nuanced physical listening and dialogue in contact improvisation.

for information please go to: http://leviathan.lasqueti.ca/3week-contact-improv-workshop-with-mark-young-and-lesley-greco-may10-302020

12day Contact Improv workshop Sept 15-28, 2019 with Mark Young and Lesley Greco

for information please go to: http://leviathan.lasqueti.ca/12day-contact-improv-sept15-28-2019

Contact Improvisation: exploring gravity and sensation with Pam Johnson and Lesley Greco September 2018

This workshop will explore the dynamic engagement of gravity and momentum that is an essential aspect of Contact Improvisation. We will focus on bringing our attention to the kinesthetic/proprioceptive sensations created by the invisible force of gravity that is always acting on our body. We will explore our bodies in motion and how we navigate gravity as we move. We will investigate the sensational difference between balance and off balance and how this dynamic is in play whenever we locomote.

42 Quebec, Guelph
$65 (students and arts workers, ask about sliding scale pricing)
register at: https://lesleygreco.com/contact/
or email: inbodyguelph@gmail.com

Pam Johnson
Pam Johnson has been dancing and teaching Contact Improvisation for over 30 years. She has led dozens of master classes and workshops at institutions, festivals, jams and community settings in Canada and the US. She is a faculty member at Humber College and the School of Toronto Dance Theatre.
Lesley Greco
Lesley Greco has been practicing contact improvisation for more than 17 years and manual bodywork for over 20. She loves to translate osteopathic principles into functional skills aimed at developing perception and cooperative relationship with our bodies.

PHYSICAL LISTENING – The practitioners body

Weekly small group sessions focused on the anatomy of listening and practices to develop cooperative relationship with your body. Small class sizes allow for hands on and one on one attention. Open to everyone, may be of special interest to arts practitioners, bodywork practitioners, movement educators, anyone who works with or through the body

STILLNESS AND MOTION

a contact improvisation lab
sunday july 4 2016, 10:45-11:45
dovercourt house 3^rd floor

image: NASA

“The stillness is that which centers every molecule of being of that living body.
The body physiology is the outward expression of that stillness.
They are in total unity, in balanced interchange. “
–Rollin Becker (2000) The Stillness of Life

Stillness is not inertia, it is the potency out of which all motion arises, it is an extraordinary mystery and a state of grace. Although we have no control over the stillness that is the organizing force of life, we can create doorways into stillness. In this lab we will be experimenting with ways of accessing stillness in the body through listening strategies and breath, exploring the relationship between stillness and motion through the stand or the small dance and finally, moving into contact, we look for ways to invite stillness to inform our movement with another person and within the group as a whole.

BOOK RELEASE!

Anthology of Essays on Deep Listening – Monique Buzzarté & Tom Bickley, editors

In this ground-breaking work, twenty-three authors investigate and discuss composer Pauline Oliveros’ revolutionary practice of Deep Listening. From an education program reaching 47,000 San Francisco school children to electronic dance music (EDM) events held in remote desert locations, from underwater duets with whales to architectural listening, the multifaceted essays in this collection provide compelling depictions of Deep Listening’s ability to nurture creative work and promote societal change.

Edited by Monique Buzzarté and Tom Bickley, with a forward by Pauline Oliveros, the anthology’s essay authors are Anne Bourne, Viv Corringham, Renee T. Coulombe, Lara Davis, Stuart Dempster, Fred Frith, Heloise Gold, Lesley Greco, Lawton Hall, Ione, Susan Key, Norman Lowrey, Miya Masaoka, Paula Matthusen, Thollem McDonas, Kristin Norderval, Jann Pasler, Fabian Racca, Dana Reason, David Rothenberg, Scott Smallwood, Suzanne Thorpe, and Gayle Young.

Price: $24.95
To order: http://deeplistening.org/site/featuredreleases