1. what is “intuitive movement”?
Cinema Antiplastique’s intuitive movement practice for the people combines techniques from Experiential Anatomy, Movement in Depth (also known as “Authentic Movement”), Contact Improvisation, Modern Dance Improvisation, and Jinen ‘nature’ Butoh with training in formal healing modalities including Narrative and Structural Family Therapy. The dance techniques offered are most commonly practiced by dancers yet can be learned by anyone. The aim of cinema antiplastique’s intuitive movement practice is enhanced embodied connection with one’s self and integration of brain (nervous) system and heart / muscle (cardiovascular) systems from within the body itself. Our gentle and original moving images of nature provide additional resources for systemic regulation, integration and healing.
Movement workshops at Cinema Antiplastique, led by Rania Lee Khalil (DFA; Doctorate of Dance, Video and Postcolonial Ecologies; MSW; Master of Social Work, MA Master of Performance Art; BA Dance and Video) work by reconnecting participants with their own spontaneous and inwardly motivated movement. Because of the intuitive nature of this movement, it is often pleasing and productive, because it is automatically in tune with each participants own specific needs for release, rejuvenation and embodied reflection.
Western culture tends to applaud activities that seem embodied, yet which can actually involve as much disconnection from one’s body than connection with it. The theme of this disconnection is forcing one’s body to move in certain ways. This long list of activites includes various forms of dance, sports/ athletics, sexual expression, fitness, and more. External results - thinness, muscle, speed, virtuousity, etc - do not always signal connection with ones body and can sometimes emerge from cultivating the opposite conditions within oneself.
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, as well as 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 relationship with themselves. 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.
Cinema Antiplastique’s moving images draw on Rania’s research into plant and animal life. Attuning to plant and animal movement during growth, migration and fertilization cycles reconnects us with forgetten aspects our own emotional, spiritual and embodied growth cycles and attunes us with the vastness of the many beings of earth. Observing tender nonhuman movement can calm, energize and expand our human being-ness.
3. 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.”
So, participation in our workshops - both in person and online - does not 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 (at minimum; 24 hours 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 require everyone in our workshops to be self possessed for the physical and emotional safety of others in the room.
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6. 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 as they have to repress grief and sorrow.
over oover dwe do not see a division or contradiction between fun and healing, art or therapy, work or play. We view healing as joyful, playful and embodied. Fun can also be embodied, wholesome and healing (rather than simply escapist or destructive).
cinema antiplastique is a space for expansion, imagination and reconnection not accessible within the solemn divisions between healing vs art, intuitive movement vs dance parties, etc. it is truly interdisciplinary in this way.
7. 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, the secret words of our hearts or information our ancestors wish to share.
we move gently and silently through this space
as the planet we are on moves
silently and gently through constellations.
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