Class with Lin Snelling

Rewriting Distance is an interdisciplinary, improvised performance practice developed by Canadian choreographer Lin Snelling and Belgian dance dramaturg Guy Cools. It explores ‘story telling’ through dance and movement, spoken word and writing. The participants (which can come from different disciplines) are invited to ask their own questions inside the Rewriting Distance form.
We have discovered, and keep discovering, that Rewriting Distance allows for questions, problems, solutions and re-invention as it asks participants to move, speak and write collectively to further the telling of the physical/verbal/sung and written stories at hand. The original form has three roles. A performer, a witness seated in a chair, and an audience seated behind the witness chair. The practice begins as the performer in an open space with a table and paper for drawing/writing/sculpture-making begins to dance, speak or write. The witness can join the performer at any point they choose, and the performer can leave the space at any point they choose. The audience moves into the witness chair when it is unoccupied, and the event unravels in this manner; as each participant moves through the various roles of performer, witness and audience. The table with paper and pen creates an island inside the open space where people are free to write/draw/read/sculpt.
We will practice dancing as it opens up into other fields and experiment with emergent forms as they arrive.
Lin Snelling is a dancer whose artistic practice brings the qualities of improvisation into dance, theatre, writing, visual art and somatic practice. She toured the world with Carbone 14 and worked with many improvisation ensembles. She teaches dance, experiential anatomy and composition at the University of Alberta where she is also Coordinator of the MFA in Theatre Practice. She recently performed with visual artist Shelagh Keeley at the Power Plant in Toronto and also in Tasmania at MONA ( Museum of New and Old Art) as a guest artist with musician/composers Michael Reinhart and Colin Offord. She danced in The Joshua Tree as part of the BWDC Summer Season that toured to Bengaluru, India. In 2019 she received a McCalla Professorship for a new collective creation, A Sounding Line. Her recent dance collaborations include Far Away and Personal, a dance film with musician/composer Michael Reinhart and ENTRANCES with writer David Gagnon Walker and multimedia designer Tori Morrison from Strange Victory Performance. Rewriting Distance, her on-going research collaboration with Belgian dance dramaturg Guy Cools has been performed in 7 countries and 14 different cities www.rewritingdistance.com She has collaborated with Edmonton dance artists Gerry Morita, Amber Borotsik, Kate Stashko and Brian Webb and Montreal dance artist Thea Patterson.