Mary Prestidge

Mary Prestidge: ‘Where are we now?’

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I would like to bring forward a few questions to ponder for these morning sessions. I am considering the interests and exploration that have taken place over many years of involvement in this movement form. What approaches and methods have been and are being investigated to further our understanding and experience of movement and particularly the art of improvisation? The sessions will cover: Basic tools and methods for developing skills and supporting safety in this open form. Working with the natural forces: weight, mass, gravity, momentum etc. Looking at ways to bring attention to relationship and interplay of image and action. Regarding the structural alignment of the bones and visualising pathways along and around their axes. Giving time for sensing small movement and changes within the body as we experience both lightness and weight as we stand and move. Developing perception and bringing into consciousness, methods to hone movement qualities and compositional possibilities What does movement look like? What does it reveal? Where are we now?

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Mary Prestidge has been involved in dance for over 50 years. She performed with Ballet Rambert in the early 1970’s and later moved toward an independent context with artists giving space and support to experimentation and research. Mary was co-founder of the radical X6 Dance Space and collective and its successor Chisenhale Dance Space in London in the late 70’s and 80’s. Specific influences were the improvisational forms via the lineages of Steve Paxton, Mary Fulkerson, Lisa Nelson and others. Mary worked as a freelance teacher of Contact Improvisation for many years attending annual European CI Teachers’ Exchange (ECITE) and co-hosting the event in the UK in 1996 and 2009. Based in Liverpool since 1995 Mary teaches and continues movement and performance research both with her dance collaborators and with others in a diverse range of contexts and communities.