Lauren Simpson | Horseplay
Horseplay is a monthly movement workshop for artists. I offer a series of exercises, warm ups, tasks, games, and compositional scores to cultivate a sense of presence in the body, group awareness, and play.
The goal of horseplay is to embody our individual creative practices within community. The participants are visual artists, musicians, therapists, dancers, teachers, gardeners, organizers. No prior movement training is required.
Horseplay resists commodification of our bodies and the productization of our efforts. We prioritize process, sensation, and experience.
Horseplay is fooling around. Horseplay workshop is organized fooling around. We are serious about practicing but not always serious within the practice.
Each session explores a different theme, but follows the same format:
Name introductions.
Tune in to the self, tune into the space, tune into the group.
Explore the theme based on various exercises.
Apply the theme to a composition.
Writing reflection.
Close.
While I am the lead organizer and facilitator, Horseplay themes and exercises exploring often come from the participants. With each session, Horseplay is gradually becoming a co-created practice.
The following is documentation and my notes from the first eight sessions of Horseplay in 2023.
Images by Ben Semisch.
Horseplay is partially supported by a grant from Nebraska Arts Council and Bancroft Street Market, Omaha, Nebraska.
March 2023
Bancroft Street Market, Omaha
Walk Sit Stand
We explore three human actions, transitioning between them, the energetic, narrative and physical qualities of each.
…find a place in the room to stand facing any direction stand with eyes closed feel the feet on the ground let the floor hold you up notice your breath allow the inhales to be longer and the exhales to be longer notice the micro movements in your feet and imagine all 26 bones of each foot shifting and balancing to keep you upright steve paxton called this the “small dance,” the subtle act of the smallest falls and catches happening at all times in your minds eye scan from the top of the head down the face and the neck down the shoulders upper arms and elbows down the forearms into the hands and the fingertips back up to the chest down the spine and ribcage down the…
April 2023
Bancroft Street Market, Omaha
Proxemics
We explore the physical, social and psychological distance between people in space.
…spread out in the space and secretly choose two other people notice the distance between you and them now everyone start moving and do your best to maintain the same distance between the same two people at all times what are you tracking is it impossible when does it break down what does it feel like in the body to track two people at once how does your body organize as you respond in the moment to the others….
May 2023
Bancroft Street Market, Omaha
Fall/Catch
We explore the physics of walking as a series of falls and catches. We are playing with the chaos of the fall and the organization of the catch.
…find a partner and press your shoulders together while walking your feet away from them while you are in this state of fall you are simultaneously in a state of catch by your partner you have a shared center of gravity try not to cheat and hold yourself up but allow the pressure and push of your feet into the ground to be a structure from which your partner can rely on and you can rely on your partner you can begin to walk slowly and move this new creature around the room can you roll to your backs and maintain a mutual sense of fall and catch…
June 2023
Elmwood Park, Sounding Stones, Omaha
Partnering with Landscape
New stimuli will inform our practice- wind, streetsounds, birds, uneven surfaces, passersby, trees, sculptures, benches, grass. How do we partner with these elements? How do we ignore them?
…we will build a changing composition on the sculpture we will move in and around the sculpture until we find a place to fit nuzzle lay collapse grip or rest onto the stone once everyone has come to stillness someone will say shift and we leave that place walk climb crawl around until we find a new place of stillness and when the group has found stillness someone will call shift and we find another we will be in two groups to observe and witness the changing composition…
July 2023
Bancroft Street Market, Omaha
Contact Improvisation
With a focus on partnering, weight sharing, and sustaining connection with yourself and others, we will explore the foundations of the movement form, contact improvisation. In all its changes and evolution over 50+ years, some core values and priorities remain embedded in the form: process over product, exploration over presentation, sensation over visualization. I am drawn to CI because it de-centers productization, performability, and commodification of the self/body.
…rolling point of contact… roll the contact point… find a point… roll the point… follow the point…quicken the roll… slow the roll… be specific as you contact your partner… be general as you contact your partner…roll the point… how has this form changed over the years? what are the form’s aspirations?…
August 2023
Bancroft Street Market, Omaha
Deep Listening
Taking cues from Pauline Oliveros’ work, we will have an extended warm up to tune into our bodies as one large listening organ. Through touch and partnering exercises we will practice a movement based version of deep listening.
…she suggested we practice having ears on the soles of our feet as we follow our partner… with our hands on their backs we will similarly think about having ears on the palms of our hands what does careful listening through our hands feel like what is your response time through the skin versus through the visual field….
September 2023
Bancroft Street Market, Omaha
Make rules break rules
We will build ensemble awareness and group mind through various composition and improvisation games like object chess and move on a bench.
…thank you for taking the time to reflect in your notebooks what were some of your takeaways from today’s exercises I thought about the value of constraints in creative play and the creative opportunities available to me when I had guardrails I thought about the job of artists to be the creation and shaping of rules and eventually their breaking and reshaping…
Lauren Simpson is an Omaha-based choreographer and educator. She created Moving Truck, a mobile and socially-distanced show performed on front lawns at residences throughout Omaha in 2020. Recent projects include Smithereens, a site specific performance in Joslyn Art Museum with music by Omaha musician Miwi LaLupa, Celestial Real Estate, a collaborative performance at Generator Space gallery featuring local artists Nick Miller (painter), Celeste Butler (textile designer), and Dereck Higgins (musician), and Self-Leveling a performance at ODC Theater San Francisco in collaboration with dancer Galen Rogers and visual artist Emma Strebel. Collaboration across disciplines is at the heart of her art making.