Ponderosa Open Source Scores
improvisation as a choreo-social strategy
Ponderosa, an art-centered place in Stolzenhagen, Germany has for 20 years been a site where people gather and exchange ideas and improvisation. We are now opening a digital gate into the experience of being on our ground and in our studio with these Ponderosa Open Source Scores (P.O.S.S.)
The pandemic has required the translation of a lot of performative work, learning and gathering on to digital platforms. Whilst we wish to keep creating live experiences that centre movement and real encounters with other humans, non-humans, and the environment, P.O.S.S. offers you an opportunity to engage with the spirit of Ponderosa online and for free! P.O.S.S. is a revolving, evolving, rhizome structure of growing and sharing dance knowledge and experiences of processes that have been accumulated through the years in our studios and hearts.
Our invitation...
This is an experiment of sharing: lifting, leaning bodies, synchronised bones, and hearts beating. We want you to feel a glimpse of the connection of being in a room together with other bodies. We want you to feel comfort in the idea that somebody somewhere else might be doing a score at the same time as you. So we hope you will share your process, practices and spells and find some soft virtual connection using the hashtag #ponderosaopensourcescores
P.O.S.S. is an open invitation – you can do the scores alone, or find a group of kindred spirits - in the studio, in a living room, or anywhere else. Best of all - they are completely free! Send them to your friends, rekindle a connection with your favorite Ponderosa summer flirt, do them with people who have never attended a dance class, invite your family, or your cat. Your body and your heart will thank you for trying.
What Is A Score?
Scores in dance improvisation are often used in the studio, workshop or in choreographic processes to generate movement by suggesting possibilities relating to how one might be attentive while dancing. They are a method of sharing dancing practice to find meaning in the present, inviting a way of noticing and exploring the many experiences of a dancing body both in private or in performance.
At Ponderosa a score could be anything at all. Usually it is something conveyed verbally from the teacher or workshop host to their participants. Or it might be whispered in the shower or written on the noticeboard. Scores at Ponderosa are passed on through the generations, transformed in a never ending accumulation of suggestions of how to be in and with your body.
Many fantastic dance scores have generated performances at Ponderosa through the years, P.O.S.S. instead offers elaborated workshop scores that will not necessarily produce performative moments or frames but that will create new knowledge, new experiences, and new ways to share them. These invitations create a suggestive event unfolding in the present time and in relation to non-studio space and to non-workshop time, meaning you can incorporate and alter daily life practices and personal life structures.
Teachers
10 artists with a strong link to Ponderosa's history invite you to join them for 5 days of practice:
Alicia Grant
Asaf Aharonson
Cranky Bodies
Maria F. Scaroni
Mary Pearson
Keith Hennesy
Stephanie Maher
Tove Sahlin
Yoshiko Chuma
Zinzi Buchanan
Ponderosa
Ponderosa is an art-centered place in Gut Stolzenhagen, south of Angermünde, on the edge of the Lower Oder Valley National Park in Germany. For 20 years it has been a site where people gather and exchange in and with the stunning natural beauty of Brandenburg.
Through a history of deep involvement with dance, contact improvisation, yoga, and international and regional artistic exchange, Ponderosa is a place where the theory and practices of dance, performance, somatics and contemporary art making merge. People who spend time there are motivated to step out, to show their own approaches and contribute to a kind of living library of thoughts and ideas in exchange between the independent scene and the established art and performance world.
Lovingly held across four studios, a garden, a kitchen, a library and all the spaces in between, Ponderosa offers an environment to unfold mental as well as physical potential, to develop and to try new things. Ponderosa is a community that welcomes guests - this creates a dynamic feeling of both an international gathering and a sense of home for long term residents and local audiences.
Thank You
Ponderosa photos © Ludger Storcks
Ponderosa Open Source Scores is made possible by NPN - Stepping Out and Ministry for Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg
Unterstützt durch das NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ - STEPPING OUT, gefördert von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen der Initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz
Gefördert mit Mitteln des Ministeriums für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur des Landes Brandenburg