Author: Thomas Johannsen

9-13 March 2017 – save those dates for International Improvisation Meeting in Amsterdam

| Thomas Johannsen

Dear all improvisers,

I have been in a long term conversation with improvisers from other European cities about how we can connect the different communities working on interdisciplinary improvisation practices in Europe and beyond. Now for the first time, we will come together, in an informal ‘festival 0.1’ of four days, playing and researching together for what should become annual meetings in different European cities.

9-13 March 2017 – mainly during the day, 10:00-17:00

The program is not yet decided for these four days, and you are welcome to get involved. Especially musicians with a vision on interdisciplinary work are still a bit under-represented in the core group that is thinking about this.

More info will follow soon, but save the dates if you like to be part of it!

Sunday gathering while hibernating… 

| Thomas Johannsen

Dear everyone,

due to all professionals of the Carpet Sessions being rather occupied with other work and projects at the moment, the regular sessions on Thursday are in hibernation mode.

However, we will meet tomorrow, Sunday November 13th, from 13:00 on Natanja’s boat around a table full of food to talk and eat together and hear how everyone is doing.

All improvisers, whether old or new to the Carpet Sessions initiative are very welcome to join this table. Just bring something that you really love eating which can be put in the middle for everyone to share. Natanja will make soup!  🙂

Sunday, 13 November 2016, 13:00-…

Place: boat “LOFRA”,  Levantkade 176, Amsterdam.  

On the ship, the door is an aluminium horizontal door on the front deck. No need to wander towards the back in the gangway. Just lift it and come in. There is no bell… Tel. Natanja if you are lost: 06 38062307

See you tomorrow!


a living/moving Wikipedia for Improvisation

| Thomas Johannsen

image

For the end-of-season gathering of the Carpet Sessions coming Thursday, what are your wishes to spend the afternoon?

My own proposal would be to toy around with ideas and work forms how improvisers (from different disciplines) could build a dictionary of their work, together.

Backed by the foundation behind the Carpet Sessions, and in collaboration with Instant Pudding in Paris and ImproXchange in Berlin, I am preparing a project in exactly that gist, and this could be a way to give direction to the Carpet Sessions organised by different people in the coming year, if we would feel like it.

Making such a Wikipedia of improvisation (like a dictionary of everything relating to improvisation) is actually taking the open improvisation knowledge base that we started here on this website to a professional level and making it editable and adjustable for a much bigger community.

It is also provoking several questions, amongst which
– how can you define at all things about improvisation (that by nature likes to be undefined)
– in which way the words/media in such a dictionary can relate as closely as possible to the actual work being done on the floor (rather than the dictionary becoming a purely academic exercise)

Let’s speak/play/dance/sing about it further on Thursday. Looking forward to it… 13:00-17:00

See you there!

Thomas

What are the Carpet Sessions? / Where is the studio? Click here.

Gathering to close the season: 30 June 2016

| Thomas Johannsen

Dear improvisers,

let’s gather next week Thursday (13:00-17:00) to play / improvise / talk and close the Carpet Season of Interdisciplinary Instant Composition together.

We can look back and ahead, or just enjoy each others company in performing and being. It’s up to us!

For an idea of how big the group will be, please announce if you want to come as well by writing a comment to this post below.

There will be at least 11 of us: Johnny, Kristien, Weijke, Suzan, Tanaquil, Thomas, Zwaan, James, Esmeralda, Manuela & Natanja

See you then!

Thomas

The speaking body and the speaking bubble

| Thomas Johannsen

Inspired by a recent Action Theatre workshop Maria Michailidou and me joined with Sten Rudstrom, we wanted to dedicate a number of sessions on looking at the act of speaking/producing words in Improvisation context.

We will do this for the first time in a Carpet Session on the

10th of March 2016

13:00 (doors open/warming up) / 13:30-17:00 work session

Not only improv theatre has usually lots of ‘speaking bodies’ on stage, but also in music, dance and other performative events, someone speaking tends to appear ever so often. Sometimes prominent, sometimes only as a minor event.

We will look at both the enjoyment and pitfalls of speaking in improvisation performance and depart from a physical/body approach to the act of talking.

More so than maybe other Carpet Sessions, this will be a truly open research, as we just feel the necessity to train and research this aspect of improvisation from an interdisciplinary (rather than a purely theatrical) context more deeply.

The session is open to everyone and we are very curious towards all knowledge/experience to the subject that will be shared by other professionals who will join.

What are the Carpet Sessions? / Where is the studio

The session will be facilitated by Maria Michailidou and Thomas Johannsen, in collaboration with the group who will gather.

Please let us know if you want to come by writing a comment to this post, below.

 

 

Call for research sessions 2016

| Thomas Johannsen

Fireworks-1Happy New Year to you all!

We are looking back at a buzzing half year of virtually every Thursday a session on a specific theme, lead by our pool of improvisation professionals from various disciplines. Thanks a lot for that!

So what’s up for the coming months?  Esther Eij will do at least one more “Can I go solo?” session about the dynamics of group vs. soloists, and Bettina Neuhaus and me are brooding on a fitting follow-up for the very fruitful “Groove & Ground” research we had. Are there other plans that I don’t know about?

Do you want lead a research? You are welcome!
The agenda is still very open. Please let us know if you would like to make use of the Carpet Research Studio to facilitate a session on a theme that you are interested in between now and June 2016. A one-off session or a series of multiple sessions, all is possible.

Get in touch here.

With warm greetings and a big hug to everyone!

Thomas

(What are the Carpet Sessions? click here)

 

(Dis)connecting the dots – The Report

| Thomas Johannsen

The very fruitful research of working with musicians, dancers & actors on equal footing in Instant Composition Performance has culminated in a detailed review article that can be found here:

(Dis)connecting the dots – Merging dance, theatre and music in improvisation

 

connecting_dots2_pusteblumen_grey_light3Parts of the article were used to extend our Knowlegde Base with another main chapter (Material) and a subchapter (Phrasing). Please let me know if you see anything that you cannot agree to from your own practice.

Also, if this inspires you to write more subchapters to the Knowledge Base, or contribute your knowledge in any other way (we are still looking for a gifted website person to make our improvisation.wiki more ‘3D’  🙂  )  – do get in contact.

Thanks to all the performers, to allimprov and to Anja Boorsma for making (Dis)connecting the Dots possible! (click here for the original session invitation post)

The performers who contributed their time and expertise to our extending knowledge on interdisciplinary improvisation work in this project were:

James Hewitt
Bernt Nellen
Wouter Snoei
Tanaquil Schuttel
Zwaan de Vries
Anja Boorsma
Esmeralda Detmers
Jurriaan Kamp
Edgard Geurink
Maria Michailidou
Annabel Garriga
Stefania Petr
Thomas Johannsen