1. what is “intuitive movement”?
Cinema Antiplastique’s intuitive movement practice for the people combines techniques from Movement in Depth (also known as “Authentic Movement”), Jinen ‘Nature’ Butoh, Experiential Anatomy with other somatic dance forms including Contact Improvisation. This combines with Rania’s training in formal healing modalities including Narrative and Structural Family Therapy. In all of these techniques, there is an emphasis on “following the line” of one’s movement in a way that emphasizes subtle listening.
Much embodied activity foregrounded in western culture is not intutive. There is exertion, “mind over matter” effort, which can alienate oneself from ones own body even as one works to “improve” it. The aim of cinema antiplastique’s intuitive movement practice is enhanced connection with one’s self, and integration of brain (nervous system) and heart (cardiovascular systems) from within the body itself.
Our gentle and original moving images of nature, shared in our expanded cinema environment, provide additional resources for systemic regulation, integration and healing. Intuitive movement makes space for experiences of embodiment that are gentle yet powerful. In this way intuitive movement can be an important alternative or addendum to talk therapy or mind expanding drugs, because of its power to activate untapped, pre-verbal, non-forced and embodied aspects of our beings in ways that are naturally integrative.
3. why move with moving images?
Moving with moving images of our plant and animal relatives allows for a more effortless experience of expansion than many traditional “somatic” practices, because the emphasis does not lie soley in the participants inward facing relationship. Moving in parallel with plants and animals expands our movement beyond our own individualized inner prompts, providing a tangible source of community and connection beyond ourselves.
Secondly, capitalism, colonization and overdevelopment has strategically denied many human beings access to nature. In the stolen lands of New York City for example, many of the most vulnerable and marginalized people have the least access to unobstructed skies, trees, the transcendent power of forests, rivers and oceans.
Cinema Antiplastique draws on Rania’s research into moving images of plant and animal life. Attuning to their growth, migration and fertilization cycles reconnects us with forgotten aspects of our own emotional, spiritual and embodied cycles, and the vastness of life on earth. Observing tender nonhuman movement can calm, energize and expand our human being ness, when direct access to nature is not possible. Moving with moving images of nature in a studio setting also provides an alternative experience of earth (unemcumbered by mud or mosquitos).
4 are cinema antiplastique’s workshop for fun or for healing?
cinema antiplastique begins from an understanding that human beings have as much capacity to repress joy and happiness as we have to repress grief and sorrow. so we do not see a strict division or contradiction between fun and healing, art or therapy, work or play. We view healing as joyful, playful and embodied. Fun, self directed movement and embodiment can be wholesome and healing (rather than escapist or destructive).
cinema antiplastique is a space for expansion, imagination and reconnection not accessible within the solemn divisions colonialism has created within our lives. it is truly interdisciplinary in this way.
5. can people with phsyical disabilities participate? cinema antiplastique offers a practice of listening to one’s body that is genuine to one’s needs and abilities. because the movement we offer is intuitive and self directed, it is an ideal practice for people with varied physical disabilities. one of rania’s favorite teachers - the butoh dancer atsushi takenouchi - says: “dance can be anything from the movement of an eyelash to the twitch of a finger- a dance can take place with the person lying on their death bed.”
participation in our workshops - both in person and online - does not in fact require any movement at all.
for questions about specific disability accommodations please reach out to us at info@cinemantiplastique.org.
our space is wheelchair accessible.
6. why does cinema antiplastique offer only workshops and not classes?
we prefer the slower, deeper and longer experience of workshops to briefer, shorter classes. this work takes time, to create conditions for participants to experience feelings of safety.
like electronic dance and house music, the long duration and repetition within our moving images allows participants to drop into their own movement, in order to access it fully.
7. your workshops look pretty far out, are they for people on drugs or for medicine ceremonies?
they are far out, yet but not because of drugs or plant medicine - on the contrary - we ask that everyone who comes to our movement workshops please be alchohol and drug free (unless prescribed by a doctor) from the morning the workshop begins (24 hours is preferable). we request this so that participants can best listen to and attune to their inner selves and others in the room.
please understand that this request does not come from a moral place! we have deep respect for plant medicine and other drugs for the ways in which they allow humans to regulate, open and access positive and expansive feelings. we request this because of the specifics of our practice: being drug and alchohol free for some hours better ensures that participants can inner information with clarity and without distortion. we also ask this because we need everyone in our workshops to be self possessed for the physical and emotional safety of others in the room.
8. is there music at cinema antiplastique?
unless otherwise noted, our workshops are silent so that we can hear the sounds, songs, beats, rythms and vibrations within ourselves. available to us then can be the sound of our hearts beating, the sound of our joints or breath, quietness within that can be harder to hear in the hustle of everyday life.
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