THE WORK
40 People dancing, learning, teaching and creating together. One week of hard work from 14-20th November, ending in Fenix Festival 20-22nd November.
We will be all working on three main subjects:
Dance Technique: investigate and deepen our balfolk knowledge.
Balfolk promotion: organising is not easy, doing it sustainable is even harder. Let's share some useful knowledge
Pedagogy: sharing and exploring pedagogical approaches with our artistic coordinators.
During the residency we will see at least 6 Dance exploration workshops with collaborative labs, 3 balfolk promotion workshops, plus 6 pillars of Balfolk (pedagogy-oriented) and 6 Balfolk out of the box and movement workshops. Moreover, we will build 3 cooperative workshops that will take place during the Fenix Festival.
Every contribution is valuable, opinions are precious, feelings are worth telling.
We will explore the techniques of our favorite dances, go through all the details, try some mixed and ideas, crazy stuff. We will also explore how to teach, explain to each other where do we teach from, where do we want to go, and try different approaches through laboratories. We will spend some time to think about how events are, what are their fragilities, which new models can we make work.
And, of course, we will dance. A lot. And we will have fun. A lot.
LANGUAGE DISCLAIMER: The Residency will be only in English. The Fénix Festival will be in English and Spanish.
SCHEDULE
The schedule will be (almost) every day:
ARTISTIC COORDINATION
Pic by Veronique Chochon
Rom Brook-Hart
Based in Berlin, Rom is a physiotherapist, balfolk teacher, and occasional event organiser. His teaching is focused on the physical mechanisms behind specific dances and styles, using simple principles as a jumping-off point to build complexity without losing clarity - in other words, his goal is to make dancing feel easy.
In this edition of Cenizas, he will explore how slowing things down leads to better, more enjoyable dancing. Working with couple dances from France and Sweden, you will learn to ground yourself in your own body and in space, improve the clarity of your movements, put value into every moment of a dance, and create more space for playfulness and stylistic flourishes.
Aurora Cavazzin began dancing in Turin (Italy) at six, studying ballet, contemporary, hip hop, jazz and, since 2011, balfolk. After training with the Hallet Eghayan Company in Lyon and graduate in community dance and pedagogy in Turin, she now collaborates with dance companies and teaches balfolk across Europe. In 2021 she joined Collectif Matières Vivantes to promote gender-based violences free spaces in social dances. Her approach blends contemporary tools with folk dance, centering tradition and consent. We are not talking about numbers and formulas... we’ll work on body, movement and have fun while at it!
We will borrow Rudolph Von Laban’s theories from early 20th century to go deeper on the analysis of the dances we practice: a lot of traditional dances has similar steps, but they dont look the same at all. What changes is the whole way of moving the body, the "dynamic". Each day we will focus on one particular topic: weight, flux, time, space and rhythms to understand how to read, feel and use each one of them while learning and teaching dances. Because once you know the dynamic of movement it's easier to recognize it in the dance, then repeat and vary it in order to enrich your array of expressions. Up to you then to stick as much as you can to tradition or use them for impovisation.
Francesco and María are balfolk teachers and producers. Located in Madrid, they organise loads of events, workshops and stuff.
Among other events they organise the Bailando Entre Montañas festival and Cenizas.
As folk dancers and teachers, they’ve specialised in couple dances, studying their most intimate features and exploring the possibilities from fusions with other dances. Their approach, based on creativity, active listening and roles switching, has been recognised in these years with workshops in many balfolk festivals in all Europe (they still miss some country, though).
They’ve also participated as teachers in other balfolk residencies such as Folktemporary, Resitrad or Sustainabal and they wish to bring the spirit of these encounters into this new gathering.
