June 4-8. 11:30 am to 1:30 pm
A compelling and virtuosic performer in dance and music, Susanna Hood is the Artistic Director of hum, an interdisciplinary performance company whose work draws on an integration of movement, voice, live music, and theatre. Independently, as both a dancer and vocalist, she has performed the works of, and collaborated with, various Canadian choreographers, filmmakers, and composers. Her collaborative projects as well as her own choreography and music compositions have been presented throughout Toronto, nationally, and internationally on stage and in film since 1991. Susanna has been the recipient of numerous awards for choreography and performance and most recently, she received the 2008 Victor Martin Lynch-Staunton Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Dance.
Susanna has been teaching and coaching individuals and groups in voice and movement integration since 1999. Her teaching practice has drawn on her in-depth work with such teachers as voice masters Richard Armstrong and Fides Krucker, Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theatre, Emilie Conrad’s Continuum Movement, as well as from her own evolving creation process.
Since 2005, Susanna has also been teaching Improvisation at The School of the Toronto Dance Theatre.
Having received her certification in Open Source Forms (OSF) in 2010, Susanna will offer this method as a the main container for an exploration into the moving, sounding, creative self. As an “open source” system, OSF combines some of the intrinsic ideas and spirit of the Skinner Releasing Technique with the evolving practices of its teachers.
This five-day cumulative workshop will be focused on the creative empowerment of the individual through the shedding of layers and unnecessary tension. Several ideas will orientate the work: we are all natural movers and sounders with a vast capacity for expression; movement and sound are both physical manifestations of our whole self; this combined physicality opens a doorway into experiencing our primordial being; we are the source of our own wisdom. The workshop will guide participants through different states of consciousness in an improvisational setting, using imagery as a powerful tool for transformation. Beginners, newcomers, and professional performers alike will be welcome to participate at their own pace.
