Performance Lab

Performance Lab is a series of events in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. It is facilitated by Clara J:son Borg and amy pickles, and supported by funding from Gemeente Rotterdam.

We are grateful to a number of hosts in the city including WORM Rotterdam, Dokhuis & WET Film, who gave their spaces for workshops. Between September to December 2019, and May to June 2024, five invited artists shared aspects of their performance practice in educational workshops.

This website presents debris from past workshops, as records of the events and as tools we hope an extended audience can use. It is a site comprised of reflections, advice and techniques for working with people, working with your body and your voice.

Click on the names of each artist and you will be taken to an account from them, a workshop participant and amy and Clara as facilitators.

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Sketches and directions from Mavi Veloso




Create a group performance study:

General intention, bring performative practices as well as voice exercises to build a performative ambience together.
Blind folded participants to challenge perception, try in the dark, use microphones, catwalk, body display, manipulate voice exercises... etc
The group will create a performance act to explore and expand senses and sights, close eyes create a move, a march, an attack.

- collective warm up and stretch and massage, in circle hold hands, arms, use balance and the other's body
- move in space choosing a secret partner to be in relation with
- move in space choosing two secret partners and be in the middle of them without letting them know
- queimada, exercise where we run and throw and object in the other (this is practice taught as a game for kids, i find it cruel, mean, it's a strange reflection on limits and ethics)
- exercise voice, in circle make a ping pong of sound, make a sound and throw to someone who will receive , copy the sound a create another to throw someone else.
- in semi circle a maestro point the person in random order who will give a word and together the group tries to make phrases
- exercise of unison, in couples one person speaks , the other tries to talk at same time
- tableau vivant
- copiar o futuro
- make up therapy
- collective massage
- bateção de salto, beat heels catwalk



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Separate Bodies One Dance, by Marloes de Vries




In one exercise all our separate bodies made one dance flow, our movement is mimicked in this gif.

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Clara J:son Borg and amy pickles talk about Mavi's workshop