Connect2Abilities

In April No Strings started a three-session collaborative workshop over Zoom with Culture Maru, called ConnectAbilities (based in Adelaide, Cheongju and Seoul, South Korea). The performers from both countries were supported with live simultaneous English/Korean translation, and explored movement as the common language.

Participants in both countries joined in exercises together, online, such as:
– How many ways to make a circle with your body?
– Rhythmically introduce yourselves with a dance move that represents something quirky and special about you.

Performers engaged in creative exercises like forming circles with their bodies and introducing themselves through dance moves that represented their unique qualities. The collaboration featured cultural sharing: Adelaide performers learned the traditional Korean Circle Dance (Ganggangsullae), while Korean performers mastered the Australian chant “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi”.

With each of the three sessions bringing all the performers closer together, it was like the screen between them slowly disappeared. Despite the challenge of distance, the performers made new connections and explored new movement vocabularies and interactions.

Reflecting on all the workshops, it was interesting to see how our Adelaide performers enjoyed the traditional Korean games and our Korean performers loved it when they built movements from simple objects. In the last workshop you could see how connected the performers had become and everyone exchanged intentions to collaborate in the future.

For documentation and future exploration, Edwin Kemp Attrill captured archive footage from all three sites of the activity (in Korea and Adelaide).
Be it offline or online, hopefully, one day we will get to see all of the project collaborators perform in person, on the same stage.