Venue: Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki

Teaching period: Week 22, Monday - Friday 10-17, TeaK, room 702, 100% percent attendance required

Teacher(s): Satu Palokangas

ECTS: 2

Number of available place for Norteas students: 2

Level: MA

Application deadline: 16.3.2020

How to apply: Send a motivation letter before 16.3.2020 to planning officer Jyri Äärilä: jyri.aarila@uniarts.fi

Course description:

Ecosomatics broadens the concept of somatics from a practice involving your own body towards a communal and social practice. In addition to physical exercises, ecosomatics brings together improvisation, ecology and system-theoretical thinking. It emphasises how corporeal awareness is formed in relation to the environment, nature, place and rhythms. Through ecosomatics we ask what it is to live in this body in this time. How are our bodies and minds affected by the ecological catastrophe happening around us? As in the case of somatic methods, the aim of ecosomatic practice is to offer alternatives to impractical methods of perception and action.

This course reviews e.g. evolutionary and embryological development, observation and perception, biophilic awareness, and the polyrhythmic relationship between the body and nature. We investigate how ecosomatic understanding upholds our other somatic work and how we can introduce ecosomatic practices into our everyday lives. Teaching takes place through movement-based lectures, contact work, anatomical study, improvisation practices and discussions. Some of the course work takes places outdoors.