Krista DeNio and Iskra Shukarova will give a workshop for members of the community, students and professionals from dance, theater or any discipline in North Macedonia where they will explore interdisciplinary approaches to site-specific performance making. Utilizing dance and theater methodologies, DeNio and Shukarova will bring together embodied practices and site-specific devising techniques, that support participants in exploring storytelling and creative making, investigating the architecture of the Yadro gallery and engaging the nearby park, trees and nature in our explorations. DeNio will draw on work and research from her project: the NETWORK project, inspired by ecological systems of communication, resource-sharing and survival employed in tree communities and what human communities can learn from them. Shukarova will bring her work in subsystems of Non-Verbal Communication to guide somatic practices as a framework for artistic expression.

The workshop will incorporate movement and voice training that includes somatics and developmental movement, some partnering and weight sharing skills work, based in the Contact Improvisation and some Action Theater techniques, bringing together voice and movement through the use of strongly structured improvisational exercises. The workshop will culminate in short performance scores that the students create.

Iskra Shukarova as an artist has been interested in the relation between body and voice, as well as finding connections with nature and animals. She also explores new ways of relating to the audience as part of the performative process. Shukarova is especially drawn by the interdisciplinary approaches where she can explore mediums intersecting as part of the research process which she shares with the community, professionals, as well her students. 

Krista DeNio works with movement, sound and narrative storytelling. Her performance work currently explores the creative design of interactive, participatory experiences. The research and performance experiences include the site where they are housed and often include both scripted and choreographed work as well as improvisational interactions. She is interested in how interdisciplinary exchange can create new kinds of experiences, rather than replicating predictable performances.

In the performance MOVING INSIDE OUT Krista and Iskra will present together the outcome of their research in Skopje which has been enabled by the residency supported by Movement Research’s Global Practice Sharing [GPS] program, the International Interdisciplinary Artist Consortium, SCS-JADRO and Young Open Theatre Festival – MOT Festival in Skopje.

After the performance/presentation there will be a talk with the audience where topics concerning interdisciplinary approaches stemming from the body as a medium for interactive exchange will be addressed.