Register here

absurd tasks workshop
with
butch merigoni
april 24 2018, 10am-1pm
SUGGESTED DONATION $8 OR PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Brooklyn Arts Exchange

Class Description

In life, in work, and definitely in creative ventures, doubt and uncertainty are inevitable components. But instead of looking for certainty, why not play with being lost? Why not confront the unknowns without need or obligation?
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This workshop takes participants through a series of absurd tasks that oscillate between chaos and coherence. Creating a nonsensical environment, participants simultaneously create wall mounted grids, play tag, make sandwiches and read dessert recipes aloud. They hold story time, run circles around the room, duet count to 850 and stack/ climb/drag.

By enabling a kinetic and unpredictable environment, a responsive atmosphere is built. One that encourages playful audacity, momentary awareness and the permission to be lost. These nonsensical tasks serve as both ships and anchors, providing access to uncharted waters, stability when needed and a way back in when ready.

While an expanded awareness is the motivation for this project, the only imperative is the deconstruction of the rational, the interrogation of the turbulent and the willful dive into the nonsensical. By way of this, we can create space for a kind of knowing that stirs up the audacity to know more.

*Participants of any skill level are welcome.
*Wear comfortable clothes. 

About Butch
Butch Merigoni is an interdisciplinary maker, drummer and educator living in Brooklyn, New York. His work involves collaborative public actions, nonsensical performances and playing drums in the band Beasty. 

​As an educator, Butch works as an arts and athletics mentor in elementary schools and leads play-based workshops in universities. In the coming months Butch will lead workshops at the Inverse Performance Art Festival in Arkansas and the Chisenhale Dance Space in London. Following this will be residencies at De Grote Post and ZSenne Art Lab in Belgium.

about this series
This series is geared towards the professional development of dance teachers, and as a mean to offer affordable training for the dance community.

​This series is a part of the CREATING SPACE Program. Funded in large part by the Lambert Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, the CREATING SPACE Program provides opportunities to support and develop artists of all races, backgrounds, cultures, sexual orientations, gender identities and aesthetic traditions.