Warm-up: Online contact improvisation

Jeremiah Day: Warm Up hosted and co-performed by Chicks on Speed’s co-founder Prof. Dr. Alex Murray-Leslie (this world first broadcast warmup choreography doubles simultaneously as the making of a scene for the new music video ‘Deep Dark Oceans’ by Chicks on Speed, supported by NTNU Ocean Week 2023. If we close our eyes and wave our hands about, how do we know where our hands are? This capacity is not there through sight, smell, sound, taste or touch, so how? Because we have a ‘kinesthetic awareness’: a faculty of our nervous system that is interior, from the inside out. The tradition of ‘new dance’ – which lives on now best in Contact Improvisation – built on this sense, letting go of training and virtuosities of traditional dance for another approach. The appeal of this approach was not just poetic, but the promise of a different kind of cultural politics, without dictatorial maestros, but facilitators and sharers who initiate lines of inquiry. In this warm-up we will re-introduce ourselves to our own kinesthetic sense and deepen our conversation with it. We’ll also make a short tour of dance history, from Steve Paxton’s “Small Dance” to Anna Halprin’s deck and Simone Forti’s “Sketches.” Please come wearing clothing appropriate for moving around. Alexandra Murray-Leslie is Professor of Digital Performance at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, NTNU and the co-founder/member of Chicks on Speed (COS). Iconic Art-pop band Chicks on Speed (COS), a collaborative group modeled in many ways on artistic movements for framing diverse practices, interventions and experiments, akin to the Bauhaus, the Situationist International or Fluxus. COS was founded 26 years ago by Alex and Melissa E. Logan as a semi-open collaborative and/or collective banner for work that cross-pollinates performance art, pop music, fashion, video art and design. They propelled themselves into the world of music, as a commercially functioning pop act, with a special mix of irony & electronic beats. The music of Chicks on Speed is performance focused, not surprisingly, they originally formed as a larger performance art collective, during their studies at the Munich Art Akademie. COS are DADA & KLF driven with a music biz edge, utilising parody and fashion, whilst working together with a long list of collaborating artists like Karl Lagerfeld, Jeremy Scott, Douglas Gordon, Julian Assange, Richard Bell, Princess Francesca Hapsburg & ORLAN. For composing their visionary style of music, CoS and Alex have invented bespoke sound sculptures and wearable tech they call 'Objektinstruments' (including the high heeled shoe guitar). The groups collaborative and solo works have been presented internationally across a stunning range of contexts and venues, from major museums, to rock ’n’ roll tours with superstar artists, to global fashion magazines. The group has developed a system of rotating members who co-author, build exhibitions, teach seminars, and learn by doing, through copyleft / open-source. However, it is the intimacy, intensity, and spontaneity of working with practitioners, whether established or just beginning their studies — the co-creation of teaching and learning — that animates and inspires much of their work.