S1 Ep15 Dance Workshop (Habits)

In this episode, we turn our attention to habits and their complex role in dancing and choreography. Drawing on Jonathan Burrows’ questions “Are you doing what you want to do, or are you following your habits?” and “What if following your habits is the right thing to do?”, the session approaches habits not as something to simply overcome, but as embodied knowledge formed through repetition, practice, and skill.

The episode begins by unpacking what habits are: repeated actions that have become unconscious, allowing movement to happen without constant decision-making. Habits make dancing possible, yet they are also often what dancers attempt to disrupt in order to find new ways of moving. Rather than treating habits as a problem, this workshop holds them in a more neutral space, asking what they give us, what they limit, and whether it is ever truly possible to move outside them.

A guided improvisation follows, led continuously through voice and music. You are invited to move, sit, lie down, or walk, wherever you are, while listening to a series of spoken prompts inspired by Deborah Hay–like questioning. The guidance encourages you to notice initiation, effort, attention, stillness, ease, difficulty, and choice, and to explore what happens when habits are neither corrected nor avoided, but observed as information. The voice acts as a score, gently disrupting habitual decision-making and shifting focus away from self-judgement or performance.

After this shared improvisation, you are invited to explore the opposite approach: deliberately following your habits. In this short solo investigation, the task is to dance only what feels habitual and familiar, and to notice whether creativity, difference, or accident still appear. This raises questions about repetition, awareness, and whether habits can ever be fully known or isolated.

The episode closes with a reflective assignment focused on practice and repetition. You are invited to journal, map, or schedule your dancing habits, noticing how practices form over time and how they choreograph the body. This reflection can be observational or intentional, structured or loose, offering a way to consider how habits shape both daily life and long-term dancing practices.

This session sits between acceptance and resistance, asking not how to escape habits, but how to dance with them.

Music mason by mobygratis

Dance workshop
Explore, imagine, move.

A companion series to PETER, dance with. These short audio workshops invite you to explore dance through imagination, movement, and curiosity. A space to rethink what dance can be, anywhere, for anyone.

To listen to the workshops: https://stillpeter.com/peter-audio-dance-workshop/

Music leaning by mobygratis

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