About
Never has the individual had access to such a variety of body-mind systems. And yet their practice is often confined to the mat, the cushion, the dance studio’s hardwood floor. We want to create a community to not only practice these systems, but also rigorously explore their philosophies and applications to life.
As part of the launch of Bushwick’s Fractal University, this course will be a research project amongst peers. Each of the 9 weeks of classes will explore a body-mind system, ranging from butoh, to clowning, contact improv, and Vajrayana meditation. The first 1.5 hours of each class will be an embodied dive into the technique, occasionally with a guest teacher. Then we’ll analyze the body-mind system over dinner: How does it structure experience? What are its mechanics? How can the ideas it presents be translated to other contexts: throwing a dinner, doing the dishes, attending a business meeting? For instance, how can contact improv’s idea of rolling be applied to a difficult conversation?
We acknowledge that the breadth of this course will come at the cost of depth for each system. Body, Mind, World will be a broad survey, in the service of drawing comparisons between the systems.
The course is $90, which will cover space rental and guest teachers.
Class schedule
Here is the current schedule (there may be a couple of changes based on teacher availability):
Sept 7 | Butoh (guest teacher: Vangeline) |
Sept 14 | Alexander Technique (guest teacher: Ulysses Chuang) |
Sept 21 | Authentic Movement (guest teacher: Lucymeg Mahler) |
Sept 28 | Vajrayana meditation (guest teacher: Charlie Eleanor Awbery) |
Oct 5 | Contact improvisation (guest teacher: Ching-I Chang) |
Oct 12 | Tango (guest teacher: Eran Polat) |
Oct 19 | Clowning |
Oct 26 | Tai chi |
Nov 2 | Closing project showcase |
Field trips
There will be a number of optional outings throughout the course, to get to explore other body-mind systems and look at the communities they happen within. At the end of each outside class we will find a place to have an informal conversation about the experience.
- Sunday September 17: Tree Rave at Prospect Park. Free. Announcement via WhatsApp group.
- Saturday October 14, 10:30-11:30 am: Gaga at Gibney (53A Chambers St, 280 Broadway, NY). $20. Register here.
- Friday October 27, 7:30-8:30 pm: Tango at Gallo Ciego (The Ukrainian East Village Restaurant. 140 2nd Ave, NY). $20; Free for students. Pay at the door.
- Wednesday November 1, 6:00-9:00 pm: Contact Improvisation (Bill Young Studio, 100 Grand St, NY). $15 for Class (6pm); $10 for Jam (7pm on); $20 for both. Pay at the door.
Closing project
Each student will create an artifact that documents or expresses their explorations, to share with the group at the final session. Students may work on a solo project or a collaborative one (encouraged!). This artifact can take any shape, such as:
- an essay analyzing one of the forms
- a poem
- a manual on applying tango to personal relationships
- a painting
- a diagram comparing different body-mind systems
- a short play
- a dance performance on how to do dishes, butoh-style
- a clown act
- a class to teach us your attempt to bring tai chi into contact improv
We’ll collect these artifacts in an online publication to commemorate and showcase our time together.
The facilitators
Alicia Botero is a writer, urban planner, and dancer from Bogotá, Colombia. Tyler Alterman is a writer, entrepreneur, and occasional performance artist from NY. Both are dilettantes in many forms of moving, meditating, and mentating with an enthusiasm for synthesis and application.