This class was held at the Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm in September 2014. The label of the class on the scedule is improvisation. The students are in the age of 14-15 years old. I´ve had them for two weeks when I had this class. I wanted to get to know them more and also create a space where they could get the chance to know more about each other, and to be in the studio space in a different way.

The students were asked to paint their bodies on a paper, a full scale map using pencils and coulors. The map was later used as a starting point to go into a physical improvisation. The class was an attempt to map the experienced body. To investigate the mixture of facts, feelings and images about the body. The task was formulated in a way that the student was sure that this was not about beeing "right", in the sence of placing the organs on the "right" place or painting the skeleton in a "right" way.  The guideline was the subjective sensation. The students are in the age 14-15 years old and study at a ballet school where the idea of the body as a tool often are presented. I wanted to work with a method were we could ask questions about the body-mind connection. Where in the body am I? How does my way of thinking of the body effect my moving? Which ideas are ruling my perception about my body? How does my imaginary body look like? How does things I think I know about the body effect my sensation of the body?       

Further down you can see some of the maps the students made this particular day in September.

I found that this set up worked well for this group. They started to explore the body in, for them, new ways and many of the students made remarks about new experiences about the body.

Extra materials :) 

With this proposal I also wanted to question "the facts of the body" in a very light and humble way. I´m thinking a little bit like this: The history of the body is a male history. If we take a look at the history of anatomy it´s clear that the cultural ideas has been part of the facts that we belived to be objetive truths. It´s interesting to concider what cultural ideas the anatomical maps of today contains. As a dance teacher, if you want to order a skeleton, the female skeleton is more expensive than the male skeleton. The male skeleton is the norm. Wherever you look you´ll see the male anatomy presented, in books, at the gym, at the physiotherapist. As an anecdote, I went to the womens doctor last week and in the waiting room they had a model of a body. A male body.

In October I will try this class with professionals in Frankfurt as part of my MA education at DOCH, Stockholm. Below you can read the class description I wrote for that occation. 

Mapping imaginary body

    The idea is to investigate our ideas about the body through visualisation of the experienced body. You will be asked to paint how you experience your body on a paper. A full-scale map. Using pencils. The sensation of the body will be your guideline. The imagined facts, the experienced functions, the sensational ideas or none of the above. The idea is to use the map as a starting point for going into a physical exploration of the body and the body-mind connection. It´s not about being creative. It´s not about making it right. If we see the body as a social construction the mapping can be seen as a way to question the facts of the body.