Movement Research lab

CONTACT: emiliagunduz@gmail.com to ask about available places. Please write your name, surname and telephone number in the email.

This collaboration was bound to happen. Agata is a psychologist and a musician, Emilia is a dance and movement therapist. Agata is fascinated with the impact of music on the human body and mind, and she explored the topic of movement to music in her doctoral thesis. Emilia highlights the role of breathing in the process of regulating our emotions. We both see the voice as deeply embedded in the body and mind, and we believe that a combination of singing and body work can help nourish the relationship with ourselves.

We would like to invite you to a personal development workshop comprising two parts, one focusing on body movement, and one on exploring your voice.

● ME IN RELATIONS WITH MYSELF AND OTHERS- MOVEMENT RESEARCH LAB – Facilitator EMILIA GÜNDÜZ

The process of recognizing, tolerating and naming somatic states is a crucial element in working with the body. Thanks to this, bodily sensations can be linked with emotions, and emotions with circumstances that cause them. The beginning of the journey where we are able to regulate our emotions and integrate disassociated experience is usually through the body.

This movement lab will be based on improvisation and will not require any prior skills. I am offering structured improvisation, which is a mixture of conscious choices and spontaneous reactions. There is no right or wrong. You will follow your body impulses, embracing movement, but also stillness, whichever will feel right for you in a given moment. ​ I believe one of our pristine needs is to belong somewhere, to be part of some community. I would like to invite you to explore together how to melt our personal boundaries and use movement to express ourselves, to communicate staying independent as an individual, but also utilising our bodies to build bridges for communication with others.

We will try to find the answer to the question of how to stay attuned to our inner world while staying open to other people. ​ We will be observing how we initiate relations with others in non-verbal ways. By playing we will try to get rid of immobility and rigidity, soften the armour that we commonly carry with our bodies, very often unconsciously. ​ We will be reminded of what it means to have freedom of movement through the entire length of the body. We will be reminded of how it is like to feel good with our bodies.

● EMBRACING THE VOICE - facilitator AGATA ŻELECHOWSKA

No matter how it sounds, your voice is a treasure. How do you use it in everyday life? Do you allow yourself to speak and express yourself with your voice freely?

Maybe you believe your voice is not good, or not as it should be. Maybe you were told your voice is unpleasant, that you cannot sing, and that it’s better if you keep quiet for these or any other reasons.

Or maybe you can sense the power and beauty of your voice, but you feel like something is blocking you from making it heard.

Or… maybe you feel the longing for letting your voice spontaneously play and intertwine with others?

Whatever reason brought you to this workshop, I would like you to use it as an opportunity to listen to your own voice, celebrate it and deepen the connection you have with it. We will pay attention to its physiological and psychological needs, and to the breath that is the birthplace of your voice.

In this workshop I would like us to leave any expectations we may have about how we should sound and dare to listen to our most authentic selves. We will also explore the communicative power of the voice and the synergy that happens when we sing together. We will do that through various exercises, as well as vocal improvisation and singing traditional songs. You don’t need any previous experience to take part. Prepare for some movement and for sitting on the floor. Take a bottle of water, comfortable clothes, and something to write with.

ABOUT FACILITATORS:

EMILIA GÜNDÜZ – during her years of studying acting in Poland she was involved in a local theater group and worked on topic of the relationship between body and mind. In 2011 she went to eastern part of Turkey for a project where she worked with visually impaired people. Since 2015 years she has been dancing Contact Improvisation. She attended courses of Dance Movement Therapy, sessions of Authentic Movements, workshops of Axis Syllabus, Butoh, Improvisation Techniques and others. She completed the training of Educational Modern Dans of Rudolf Laban in Cieszyn (Poland). Inspired by Laban method she continued exploring his research by attending the Developmental Movement of Veronica Sherbourne training particularly tailored to be applied with the work with children in the autism spectrum (Warsaw, Poland). Between 2016 and 2018 she has been leading Awareness in Dance and Movement classes in Izmir ( Turkey ), based mainly on movement improvisation. In 2018 she prepared and co-led 2-days workshop of Movement and Contact Improvisation for people from Visegrad group countries in Izmir, Turkey. She also worked as occupational therapist with the elderly in a nursing home in Poland. In 2021 she finished Dance Movement Therapy postgraduate program at Polish Institute for Dance and Movement Psychotherapy in Warsaw, Poland. She gained her practice working with children with learning difficulties in the school for children with special needs and psychiatric hospital where she led DMT sessions for patients with depression and anxiety disorder.

AGATA ŻELECHOWSKA - after over a decade of a formal music education, she graduated with a classical pianist diploma in 2010. She spent the last years trying to reverse the effect it had on her spontaneous musical expression and creativity, still embracing the in-depth knowledge and experience of music gathered throughout the years. In 2015 she dived into traditional songs from the Slavic regions of Europe, and immediately felt that working with the voice can be a great means of self-discovery, connecting to the softest, truest places within oneself and finding meaningful connection with others. Since then she practiced singing in numerous workshops, jam sessions, parties, sang at birthdays, weddings, and other ceremonies, celebrating encounters in various constellations of people and marking important moments of their and her own life. She learned that passing songs to people around her tends to break superficial barriers and critical beliefs about one's own voice.

Apart from her artistic side, Agata is also a researcher and a psychologist. She holds a master degree in psychology from the University of Warsaw (2015), and a PhD in music cognition from the University of Oslo (2020). In her doctoral thesis she explored the topic of embodied music cognition and the natural human tendency to move to music. The knowledge gathered during her doctoral project together with personal experience of singing strengthened her perception of the voice as intimately connected with the body and dependent on the relationship with oneself.

PROGRAMME:

● 11.00–13.30 Me in relations with myself and the others - Movement research LAB facilitator Emilia Gündüz

● 13.30–14.30 Launch break and free time / potluck (if you can bring some food, we will eat and share this time together)

● 14.30–17.00 - Embracing the voice facilitator Agata Żelechowska

CONTRIBUTION:

Suggested donation - min. 450 NOK. If you feel like paying more than 450 kr, either before or after the workshop, we greatly appreciate your generosity.

VIPPS: 47308197 ( please write: movement and voice)

You guarantee the place by paying the whole amount before 24.06.22. The minimum number of participants is 6, the maximum is 15.

First come, first serve basis.

CONTACT: emiliagunduz@gmail.com to ask about available places. Please write your name, surname and telephone number in the email.