Touch as Technique

ABOUT

A four-part workshop series exploring consent through relational practice and touch-as-technique. Working through the truth of the body we will explore the art of giving and receiving, the clarity of our yeses and nos, and our attachments to various kinds of pleasure and suffering as points from which to flourish and grow. Movement practices in contact improvisation will help increase our capacity for real-time exploration and our ability to read and respond to more nuanced and complex relations.

2nd September 6-8PM

9th September 6-8PM

16th September 6-8PM

23rd September 6-10PM*

• The final workshop is run as a lab, and includes two hours of instruction and revision followed by a two-hour jam where participants are invited to explore all they have learned in open improvisation with each other.
• Old students are welcome to attend the lab without repeating the whole course. To do so please book through the Lab event directly.

Reviews from the previous workshops:

'Nico facilitated this important work around Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent with all the embodied clarity and insight of one who has been working actively for years with conscious movement, performance and sexuality. I really feel like I have more practical tools for my engagement with others more meaningfully in the sensual and other arenas.' - Adam Salmon

'I just finished Touch as Technique, the last weekly series that Nico hosted... It was really really really amazing to realize how much the body is able to consent to things or not consent to things that we think we are okay with. That the brain and the body can sometimes differ with its yeses and its nos. Consent is really about tuning into the body, and letting your body tell you what its yeses and nos are, and Nico gives really wonderful exercises to help you interrogate and investigate those sensations and emotions without being prescriptive of what they should and shouldn't be. It's a guided and held space to figure out your own process with these concepts surrounding embodied consent. I REALLY recommend going and seeing where it lands for you. It is deep and was very illuminating for me.' - Astrid

About Nico:

Nico Athene is a performance artist and ex-sex worker, with training in various movement modalities including butoh, family constellations technology, and contact improvisation. She has degrees in Social Anthropology, Fine Art, and Public Health, and has exhibited with various galleries including the Stevenson (Cape Town), Kalashikovv (Johannesburg), Pretoria Art Museum (Pretoria), and worked on commissions for the Institute for Creative art and Brett Bailey. She has been Artist in Residence at Sante Fe Art Institute (NM), Vermont Studio Centre (VM), Arts Letter and Numbers (NY), Arteles (Finland), and Any Body Dance Lab in Cape Town.