CHRIS CRICKMAY

TEACHING

Miranda in rehearsal for Where Light Meets Stone,

Appleby UK, 2006. Photo Chris Crickmay

In parallel with my teaching career in art and design I have for many years taught independent workshops linking art and dance. This teaching has mostly been with one or other of my long-term collaborators, Miranda Tufnell and Eva Karczag. With Miranda our co-authored books originally grew out of studio sessions and teaching experiences, as well as witnessing other people’s performance practices. Since the books were written, they have continued to inform our teaching. Our shared interest has always been in working strategies and ways to stimulate the imagination. For us, this practice invariably includes a mix of art forms. Based in bodily awareness and movement, it extends into writing, drawing and other visual work. Whatever the art form, the focus is to stay in the moment and to let material emerge of its own volition. Work in one art form amplifies and offers insights into work in another. We have been especially interested in the way an embodied state of being can inform and vitalise all creative activity. Our workshops encourage a sense of connection both to the body and to immediate surroundings as means of access to the wider world of one’s experiences and feelings.

Eva, studio session, Arnhem. Netherlands, 2018. Photo Iris Boer

My teaching with Eva Karczag has been largely based on our own ongoing performance work. We draw upon Eva’s long experience of teaching and her movement practice rooted in body-mind awareness techniques. We also draw on my own background in working with space, place and object, as sources for and ingredients of our work. The teaching tends to focus on improvisation and generating performance material interactively in a group. We encourage a sense of ease and flow in the work and enlarging one’s sense of possibility. As in the teaching with Miranda, the workshops develop one’s capacity to attend openly to moment-by-moment experiences and to become more imaginatively engaged in how one responds. Playfulness, and personal curiosity are primary motivators. Feeling oneself more alive and more connected to the world around are the desired outcomes to both these different strands of teaching and learning.

Chris and Eva, studio session, Arnhem. Netherlands, Photo: Sara Reed, 2018.