Thorny Air: Movement Studies in Times of Resistance
A 6 week workshop:
Thorny Air: Movement Studies in Times of Resistance is a six-week, practice-based workshop that investigates movement as a site of relational, material, and temporal inquiry under conditions of political and affective pressures. Working through relational scores, material transpositions, sound-based practices, and extended durations, participants engage movement as a mode of attention, endurance, and resistance. The series emphasizes repetition, return, waiting, and accumulation as choreographic strategies for navigating proximity, separation, and shared time, creating space to examine how bodies hold, transmit, and transform affect in moments of instability. Across the six weeks, the workshop functions as a sustained laboratory for exploring movement as an embodied practice of relation, care, and persistence within a charged and uncertain present.
Each session will have provided research materials to be discussed at the beginning of each session and of which will be the core behind our practices.
Every other Monday 6pm - 9pm
March 9 - May 18, 2026
$100 for 6 weeks / or $20 per workshop
PWYC / NOTAFLOF
time + space
953 Chung King Rd
Los Angeles, CS 90012
Week 1 — Relational Scores: Obsession and Proximity
March 9, 2026
Working in pairs and small groups, participants explore relational movement scores that emphasize approach and withdrawal, touch and suspension, attachment and release. Repetition and obsession are treated as methods of care and devotion, allowing relational dynamics to thicken and transform over time. This session investigates how desire and attachment are shaped through insistence, proximity, and shared durations.
Readings for this session:
Obsession Clarice Lispector (1941)
A History of Dancing Keith Hennessy
Watch: Looking For Langston (1989) Sir Isaac Julien
Week 2 — Relational Scores: Return / Apart–Together
March 23, 2026
This session extends the relational scores introduced in Week 1 through repeated cycles of coming together and moving apart. Participants work with simple, repeatable movement tasks that involve separating, re-entering proximity, and re-finding shared rhythm or contact over extended durations. Emphasis is placed on return as a choreographic action—how bodies remember pathways, gestures, and relational orientations after distance or interruption. Through sustained practice, participants explore how affect shifts when relation is repeatedly broken and re-formed, attending to hesitation, anticipation, refusal, and care. The session works with minimal instruction and extended time, allowing patterns of attachment, insistence, and withdrawal to emerge through embodied repetition rather than guidance or explanation.
Week 3 — Material Transpositions
April 6, 2026
This session explores how materials can function as collaborators, archives, and transmitters of bodily and prophetic information. Participants are asked to bring in an object, material, or an imagined material state to investigate how touch, resistance, fragility, temperature, and transformation generate choreographic possibilities. Practices focus on receiving information from materials – allowing gestures, rhythms, and pathways to emerge through methods of contact, care, and translation.
Week 4 — Afterimage + Sonic Phantoms
April 20, 2026
This practice explores movement generated through vibration, friction, and resonance rather than speech. Participants work with subtle sound, touch-based amplification, or imagined vibrations to investigate how bodies and spaces transmit affect without language. Listening becomes tactile, architectural, and relational—locating communication in pressure, rhythm, interference, and echo. Attention is given to how traces of movement and sound linger as afterimages in the body and space.
Week 5 — Durational Pathways
May 4, 2026
This session centers extended duration as a primary choreographic material. Participants engage long-form movement scores that emphasize slowness, repetition, and sustained pathways through space. Practices of waiting, fatigue, and return create conditions for altered perception and heightened relational awareness. Rather than seeking resolution, participants explore how movement accumulates meaning through endured practice and prolonged attention.
Week 6 — Accumulation and Shared Closing
May 18, 2026
The final session functions as a closing practice that gathers and reactivates the processes developed across the workshop. Participants engage extended scores that allow relational, material, sonic, and durational elements to reappear in transformed or condensed forms. Emphasis is placed on accumulation rather than completion, and on witnessing rather than performance. The session includes time for shared reflection, grounding, and collective presence, honoring residue, fatigue, and continuation as integral to the work.
KNOW BEFORE YOU GO:
PLEASE READ BEFORE COMING
TIME: To set a ritual container for our work together, it is imperative that we begin the journey together. The door will be locked at 6:10pm. Please arrive on time to settle in, use the restroom and stretch. It is very difficult to enter the work after we have begun our process together, so please do not be late.
CLOTHING & SHOES: Please wear comfortable clothing you can move in. Temperature in the studio can be unpredictable, you may want to bring layers.
PLEASE BRING: Some classes may require outside materials to be brought in - you will be informed the week before if this is the case.
UPON ARRIVAL: When you arrive, you will (1) find me and say hello and (2) stow personal items, including turning any cell phones off. Please (3) use the restroom if needed. (4) Find a space in the room that calls to you to lay down and stretch until we begin.
OTHER THINGS TO KNOW:
silence - Once you enter the space, I ask that there be minimal talking until the practice begins. There will be time to share together and one-on-one at the end.
touch - Class will involve touch-based exercises with others and materials.
taking care - This is a physical and affectively charged movement- based workshop suitable for all levels. I ask that you offer your best self and push yourself to encounter your own limits, while also taking care of your physical and emotional needs. Please listen to your body and heart and respond to it with compassion, modifying your activity as needed. Stillness is ALWAYS an option.
day-of -Try to hydrate and eat a light meal. Do not come on a full stomach.
Please Note: Thorny Air is a pre-paid limited registration with a firmer structure around participation. Registration will be capped and close 24hours before each workshop, with entry reserved for those who have confirmed they have read the prep materials. This is to make sure the work stays as intentional, safe, sustainable, and meaningful as it can be for everyone.
Thank you for stepping into this work with me. I’m looking forward to sharing this experience together.
Please write to me with any questions or concerns.
yours always,
logan
now in collaboration with