SMASH#9 Morning Training
asymmetric autonomies: a technical approach to embodying gravity
Andrew Wass

Drawing on concepts from release technique, yoga, Alexander technique, Material for the Spine, and developmental movement, we will explore specificity to increase the potential of the solo body.  Accessing weight, concepts such as momentum, duration, repetition, speed, and loft will be investigated. Choreographic riffs will be used as points of departure to investigate listening and multiple forms of flow – mechanical, cognitive, and empathic.

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After graduating from University of California, San Diego with a degree in Biochemistry in 1997, Andrew Wass replaced the chem lab with the dance studio. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, he finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. He formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious processes of composition that are the generative source of much of his works. Andrew works by creating a defined, almost crystalline palette in order to generate a myriad of possibilities. The possibilities are reduced and concentrated in the moments of execution and reception. Vital to his development has been the phrase. The content lies in the structure(Impro:110) and combining the methods learned in the laboratory with performative practices.

His performance work has been shown in San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Marfa, Tokyo, Tijuana, New York, and Seattle. Teaching has taken him to festivals and universities in Japan, Germany and throughout the United States. He has performed in work by Nancy Stark Smith, Mary Overlie, Jess Curtis, Nina Martin, among others. A member of the performance groups Non Fiction and Lower Left he is a graduate of the MA program of Solo/Dance/Authorship at the Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum für Tanz in Berlin. Currently, he is an MPhil/PhD candidate at the University of Chichester in the UK researching the rhizomatic and fractal nature of decision making in improvised dance-making.


websites
www.wasswasswass.com
www.lowerleft.org
www.nonfictionperformance.org

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