Modern technology and spatial alignment have dramatically changed how our body functions and reacts to our surroundings. As we often found ourselves only standing or sitting in stiffly vertical positions, Liu and I, as passionate dancers and educators, wonder how we can facilitate our students to open up their physical possibilities to fundamentally renovate our ways of storytelling in theatre — led by breath, extensions and compressions, moving instincts, physical dynamics, and undiscovered spatial dimension of any given learning spaces.

In this workshop, we are going to embody characteristic movements of the most vibrant and pulsing cultures of the city - Hip Hop, Jazz, and beyond, to find our own storytelling in civic spirits. The workshop will culminate in a devised, community and collaboration-based movement piece that voices participants’ narratives in resonance with the city’s heartbeats.

How do we embody the dynamics, rhymes, and rhythms of poems into breaths of our divine temple — body? This workshop is to use the beauty of contemporary poems by Nikki Giovanni, Billy Collins, Amy Gerstler and vulnerable souls alike to spark the poetry inside our body. As we move to the music, we will explore different dimensions, pathways, speed, pacing, levels of movements prompted by literary images.

This workshop is a perfect opportunity to experiment with new movement patterns, dancing styles, muscle pathways, and refreshing and resettling our mindset to find tranquility in the world of changing.