This workshop posits improvisation as a subtle art of moving through constraint and freedom, responding to the needs and potential of the moment. In drawing, scores and protocols adapted from the fields of dance and movement awareness propel inquiry along the following lines: What might the initiation of improvisation entail? In what sequences and across what thresholds can we engage internal and external impulses? How do we transition from one kind of improvisational exploration to the next, phase shifting and elaborating an accessible path or field for participants? How might we curate improvisational experience, and how does improvisation jive with other modes of independent and group learning?

Helen and Chris are founding members of the collective ARE, exploring the aesthetics of embodied experience in museums, universities and non-traditional organizations. Chris is Visiting Assistant Professor in Art Education at the University of North Texas, researching the underlying forms of education–sitting in a chair, for example, or refusing to sit still. Helen is a Visiting Lecturer at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she teaches in Studio Foundation, Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) and Art Education, and runs the Storefront for Somatic Practice in Cambridge, MA.