Senses-Based Learning

23 September, 2020

Led by:

• Suze Milius – play director.
• Maribel Ortega – professional coach, mentor, keynote speaker and confidence ambassador; culture, leadership, body language, and psychology, emotional and cultural intelligence.

Part of Marres’ Workshops ‘Training the Senses’. https://marres.org/en/program/training-the-senses-en/

Explore our codes of physical behavior: how near can we come to another body? Where are we allowed to touch? And how do we read the body language of others?

In March 2020, social distancing rudely and unannounced entered our ‘new normal’ and radically changed our way of interacting with each other. But in fact, this concept has been part of our codes of physical behavior for a long time. In this session you will explore what those codes entail and what they do: how near can we come to another body? Where are we allowed to touch? And how do we read the body language of others? We’ll investigate the changing manners in our society with director Suze Milius, coach and mentor Maribel Ortega and a performer.

extracurricular course

general audience

workshop

Start:

The participants were asked to face Maribel and do some exercise to wake up the body. This included walking around the room with hands raised up, sitting down in a closed, crouched position, sitting up straight backed, etc. People were asked to reflect on what these poses would make them feel about a person if they saw them doing it outside of the training.

Training:

• People stand in pairs, facing each other and are asked to maintain eye contact for a few minutes. Afterwards, they must lift their hands, palms facing each other, and almost touch, without breaking eye contact.
• Participants sit down at the tables in pairs, facing each other. A paper is provided for one of the two and instruction is given to draw the other person’s face, without looking at the paper, but only looking at the person in front of you. The participant can’t pick up the pen from the paper. They are instructed to zoom in into one feature of this other person’s face and try to draw that.
• The first exercise of looking at each other is repeated, but this time everyone’s wearing facemasks.
• Half of the room is instructed to put the facemasks over their eyes. The other half is instructed to walk around the room, chose a person, stand behind them and almost touch them with both hands. The ones wearing facemasks are told to raise their hand if they feel like there’s someone behind them. Afterwards the roles are reversed.

• Verbal instructions