Gestures & Stories at the Groundfloor
For the past 6 weeks participants from the CityPlace community have been gathering in the new Toronto Public Housing community room over looking a snowy canoe park for the workshop I have been leading entitled Gestures and Stories. We have been coming together, mapping life stories; walking, dancing, and embodying the paths of ancestors and those who have impacted them most. We are gearing up to share these movement pieces next week at an open workshop as part of the Touching Ground Showcase, here at Jumblies.
Throughout Gestures and Stories, I have been guiding participants through a process of drawin
g out ancestors life journeys and then adding star to symbolize key moments and then working to create gestures for those moments. Those maps are now being turned into a movement pieces experimenting with how repeated subtle gestures can become movement theatre and how that can, in turn, be translated to express these personal ancestral narratives. We have been playing with echoing back these stories by having the group shadow specific moments from one another’s stories and seeing how some of these stories can come together to intersect on stage.
For me, as a facilitator, this group of all-women participants has been such a joy to work. Their openness and willingness to jump into the process and explore has been so moving and inspirational. I look forward to working with this group again on further Jumblies projects, developing this workshop format for other groups.
Platform A 