Training with Delay II

No more delay! How could we react under the pandemic of COVID-19 without any cancellation of art events? How could we learn and adapt to the changing pace of the puzzling situation? Without any interpersonal interaction, how could we differentiate the issues brought by the delay of the signal online? How could we figure out and tackle the difficulties of staying in a separate space?

In the whole series of “Training with Delay” masterclass, we work with different masters starting from April. We have invited Dan Baron Cohen from Brazil, Subodh Pattanaik from India and Rogers Williams Mpaata (Otako) from Ugandan for the second batch of the whole series. Stay tuned for more!

Understanding Transformance 

--Dan Baron Cohen 

From personal storytelling to collective story-making as the performance of resilience, hope and community

Session 1: Understanding Transformance through the community mosaic 'Land is Life'

This first session explains and reflects on the two-year storytelling workshop, collective design and artistic production process of a community mosaic as a ecological 'book' involving an entire school and integrating all school subjects and age-groups. It reveals how storytelling through dance, drama and visual arts can nurture eco-cultural literacy, cooperation and democracy, and skills in questioning and building community. 

Session 2: Understanding Transformance : community dance theatre 'Life-Source on Fire'

This second session explains and reflects on the five-year creative research process which recovered a community's confidence to awaken and celebrate its sleeping roots through song, African dance and percussion, and dance narrative. It reveals how powerful personal performance can advocate and nurture a community's confidence to practice human rights, ecological awareness and alternative projects, in the home, in school, in the street and in parliament, creating policy for sustainable futures.

Session 3: Understanding Transformance : bikerides, kite-flying and children's gardens 'for life'     

This final session explains and reflects on the ten year creative process of transforming the streets, squares and house walls of a neighborhood of 380 families into a theatre, to imagine, perform and experience a Good Living Village. It reveals how community bike rides, kite-making and planting medicinal gardens are performances, and can be coordinated by brave young director-performers who began as shy children!   

Date: 2021/05/06, 13, 20（Thur）
Time: HKT 8:00 - 9:30 pm
Fee : HKD 500 
Online Masterclass Via Zoom

Dan Baron Cohen
Dan Baron Cohen is a community arts educator and eco-cultural activist of Welsh-Quebecois origin, who lives in Marabá City, Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon. After completing doctoral research in Oxford University, Dan collaborated with young people and their post-industrial communities at risk in northern England and South Wales, and with conflicted communities in the North of Ireland. In 1998, a visiting professorship in community theatre launched collaborations with landless, indigenous, trade-union, university and school communities across Brazil. He has dedicated his past 23 years to developing a 'transformance pedagogy' (sustainable transformation through performance), in collaboration with networks in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and Europe. Since 2004, Dan has applied ‘transformance’ techniques to develop community policing, solar powered media, and community cooperatives to recover medicinal plants and nurture a new paradigm of integrated education for Good Living through performance. 

Between 2004-10, Dan was President of the International Drama-Education Association (IDEA), co-founding/chairing the World Alliance for Arts Education (2006-10), collaborating with UNESCO, and co-founding the Brazilian Network of Arteducators. Today, Dan prioritizes a 10-year paradigm project in the Afro-Indigenous community of Cabelo Seco, which has won national and international awards for nurturing youth collectives whose artistic-cultural leadership builds sustainable community. Dan has published essays, poems and the books: Theatre of Self-Determination (Derry, 2001), and Harvest in Times of Drought (Belem, 2011).