La Pocha Nostra – Performance workshop

Since 1993,
Gómez- Peña and members of La Pocha Nostra performance troupe have conducted
cross-cultural/cross-disciplinary/cross-generational workshops involving
performance artists, actors, dancers and students from diverse ethnic
communities, generations and artistic backgrounds.

During the
time of workshop, two parallel processes take place:  For 5–8 hours a day, participants are exposed
to La Pocha’s performance methodology, an eclectic combination of exercises
sampled from various traditions (experimental theatre and dance, Suzuki, ritual
performance, shamanism, etc.). Parallel to this hands-on process, the group
theoretically analyses the creative process, the issues addressed by the work,
its aesthetic currency, cultural impact and political pertinence.

If
conditions allow, at the end of the process there can be a public performance
open to the local community.

The
objectives of this educational project are:

• To feed /
  stretch emerging artists and inquisitive students, helping them to sharpen and
  develop their performance and analytical skills in dialogue with like-minded
  cultural radicals.

• To create
  temporary communities of rebel artists from different disciplines, ages, ethnic
  backgrounds, gender persuasions, and nationalities, in which difference and
  experimentation are not only accepted but encouraged.

• To develop
  new models for relationships between artists and communities, mentor and
  apprentice, which are neither colonial nor condescending.

• To find new
  modes of relating laterally to the ‘other' in a less-mediated way, bypassing
  the myriad borders imposed by our professional institutions, our religious and
  political beliefs, and pop-cultural affiliations. To experience this, even if
  only for the duration of the workshop, can have a profound impact in the
  participant’s future practice.

• To discover
  new ways of relating to our own bodies.  By
  decolonizing and then re-politicizing our bodies, they can become sites for
  activism and embodied theory; for memory and reinvention; for pleasure and
  penance.

• To raise
  crucial questions: Why do we do what we do? Which borders do we wish to cross
  and why? Which are the hardest borders to cross both in the workshop and in our
  personal lives? How do we define our multiple communities, and why do we belong
  to them? What is the relationship between performance, activism, pedagogy and
  our everyday lives? What about the relationship between the physical body and
  the social body?

• To seek a
  new hybrid and interdisciplinary aesthetic, reflective of the spirit and
  tribulations of our times, and of the concerns of each participant.

• To empower
  participants as individuals to become civic-minded artists.

Concept:
La Pocha Nostra (Guillermo
Gomez-Peña, Erica Mott, Dani d'Emilia);

Production and organization:
City of Women; Coproduction: Emanat Institute; In collaboration with: Old
Factory Station – Elektro Ljubljana, Kreatorij DIC.

Supported
by: EU Culture, U.S.
Embassy Ljubljana