ABOUT DIVIJA:

Divija Melally is a movement artist trained in contemporary and Bharatanatyam, invested in taking movement and art to different spaces through performance, choreography and facilitation. Her creative practice revolves around exploring the amalgamation of contemporary dance and Bharatanatyam with text and theatre. She is interested in creating works that explore human themes, and strives to offer new perspectives and stories to her audience. Working with communities lies at the heart of her practice, and she facilitates sessions for refugees, asylum seekers, vulnerable communities, older groups, and young people. She has received the Moving with the Times commission from Pegasus Theatre in 2023 and 2024, and is currently working on the Dance East x Akademi commission exploring dance and its relation to health and well-being. Her work “One Foot in the Dark” in collaboration with writer and poet Saili Katebe, will premiere at Trinity Centre, Bristol on 13 May 2025.  

https://www.divija-melally.com/

ABOUT HOME: BODY

The workshop will offer a combination of Divija’s ongoing research around the stories our bodies carry, human connection, and ‘Home’. Starting with games and movement warm-up to familiarise ourselves with the space and tune into our bodies, the session will lead into task-based improvisations exploring some of the themes of the workshop through movement and text. We will be using props and objects as prompts for our exploration. The objects will be visually described, and the interaction with these objects can be visual, auditory or tactile. The workshop will also involve using the gestural elements of Bharatanatyam (South Asian Classical Dance) to express the stories of our exploration. The workshop will look at how our body is a home to many stories, and how one object/ word can be perceived in multiple ways based on our lived experiences. We will be working individually, in pairs and as a group. Contact and floorwork is completely optional throughout the workshop, and all participants are invited to explore only as far as they feel comfortable. 

ABOUT ANIA:

Ania Varez (they/them) is a Venezuelan dancer, teacher and community facilitator based in Bristol, making performances that live in-between the sociopolitical and the poetic. Their work is highly collaborative and experimental, straddling the mediums of dance, community development practices, live art and poetry. Ania's performances might look like a party, an installation, an immersive theatrical experience or a carefully crafted space for conversations.They collaborate with other artists and with communities that may feel art is not for them. Ania's work has been showcased internationally and in the UK, including: SPILL Festival, Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival, Migration Matters Festival, Taipei Centre of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Venezuela and Trinity Centre. They were awarded a Leverhulme Scholarship from the Bristol Old Vic (2019-2020). Ania is a proud member of Interval, an artist support network based in Bristol.

https://www.aniavarez.com/

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:

In this workshop, Ania will share their practice of Flying Low and Passing Through. These techniques have been developed by David Zambrano for the last few decades, and together they offer a different approach to moving in and out of the floor: we will use a never-ending spiralling motion to travel into the floor and back up, as well as through the space, looking to dance in constant connection to everyone in the room.

We will work with set sequences and also improvisation scores. For the improvised section of the class, we will rely on our vision and our hands to connect to each other safely as we create curved pathways in space, whilst the set  sequences are focused on finding the spiral motion in our own bodies. During the class some gentle touch might occur, as people try to safely negotiate their pathway in space. This class will be energetic, with lots of going up and down, sometimes slowly and often quite quickly, as well as an upbeat playlist to get us grooving!

ABOUT KYRA:

Kyra Norman works in dance, performance, film & contemporary visual art contexts, as a dancer, choreographer, researcher, educator and host of unique live events.  She has 20+ years’ experience of facilitating, proposing and teaching movement and dance in diverse contexts including peer-led professional movement research, dance programmes within universities, and grassroots community classes. Since 2020, she has run DISTANT DANCES: adventures in movement and dance for all bodies that like to move, which includes a weekly class in Penzance, Cornwall, attended by a great gang of movers aged 20 – 70+ (come visit, if you’re passing through). With artist Faye Dobinson, she collaborates as ALL IN, generating interdisciplinary art works and co-hosting ALL IN DISCO. DEEP TIME MOVING is a movement-led interdisciplinary art work unfolding in response to the unique geological deep time moves of the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, where Kyra lives. After 3 years’ intensive development locally, in 2024, DEEP TIME MOVING began drifting upwards and outwards with performances, screenings and workshops at Ashburton Arts, Tate St Ives, Royal Cornwall Museum and Wainsgate Dances.

https://www.kyranorman.co.uk/

https://www.deeptimemoving.co.uk/

Instagram: @kyra_norman_ / @deeptimemoving / @thisis_allin

ABOUT DEEP TIME MOVING:

This session begins with a question: What can we, as moving bodies on a moving planet, learn from an imaginative attention to the ground beneath our feet? Starting with simple movement prompts and improvisational scores, we will find our way through a series of moving environments, together: settling/ unsettling, folding, drifting, forming/re-forming, fragmenting, rest. You will be supported to find your own route into, and through, some deliciously complex, nuanced moving and thinking, and leave with an enlivened curiosity about our individual and collective embodied experience of space and time.

Participants are welcome to engage in this field of activity as a mover, or to draw/ write in response; or to shift between these modes over the course of the session. Some materials (paper, pencils) will be provided, but do please also bring what you might like to use. This workshop is for anyone with a curiosity about the themes that Deep Time Moving touches on: movement, connection, deep time, geology, climate, our relationship to the places where we live… and a commitment to engaging in a softly rigorous, physical process of enquiry. Together we will create a relaxed, playful and inspiring environment for exploration.