THE CHOREOGRAPHIC MARATHON is now ongoing for over 2 decades 

deepening expressions across ALL GENRES and ALL FORMS of NEW CREATION in Movement Arts for over 25 years. 

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Take an idea and Run with it … 

 

Question 1:   How long is a marathon?   26.2 miles
Question 2:   How long is the Choreographic Marathon?   26.2 hours +++  and continuing interaction over 4 months
Question 3:   Why?   To learn the Art of the Possible in a shared community pulling each other along not because it’s easy, but because it is hard, going deep inside yourself and drawing on inner creativity and strength that you might have never known even existed.

 

Days of ultra-Intensive Exchange, Development, Mentoring in Movement Arts Creation and Performance for established and emerging movement artists from all forms of dance and movement-based arts.

 

Bring a work or an idea from your genre - material to test, twist, develop, cut, reflect on, refashion, reason, rescue, refine. Work within your own creative process to deepen or stretch boundaries. Exchange in an environment of rigorous professional support. Move how you work forward. Share feedback and take it immediately back into the studio. Break blocks. Build creative stamina. Hit a wall. find the other side. Play with your demons. Wrestle with angels. Work in a way that has refreshed how you’ve created or performed before.

 

Mentors
Lead mentor, Maxine Heppner has been leading creative development platforms for over 40 years in Canada & internationally.  Her creations range from intimate chamber works to inter-medial installations, cross-collaborations and massive ensemble pieces. She has been honoured by the trust of colleagues and many Canadian and international awards and recognitions, since the 1970's. When faculty at Montreal’s Concordia University (1993-2000) she developed the choreographic marathon approach to enable movement artists to create within a continuous flow of idea, execution & reflection leading to a deepening of process & creation.

 

Co-mentors have included, with Maxine, renowned artists Susan Lee, Takako Segawa, Junia Mason, Jessica Runge, , Kate Lynx Alsterlund, Michael Caldwell, Sashar Zarif, Charmaine Headley, Peter Jenkins, Lo Bil, and other Across Oceans associates, who, over years have developed a coherent approach to this work. 

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Each Choreographic Marathon adjusts its approach in response to the work and may add specialists to support particular needs. Attention is given to creators' and performers' development and development of facilitation approaches.

 

Across Genres & Heritages of Movement Arts
The CM digs to the fundamentals of expression-through-movement, responding to diverse movement artists across generations with roots in many dance forms. To date: from 19-87yrs, with roots in Modern, Ballet, Break, Cypher, Afro-Caribbean, South-Asian, Classical-Japanese, Native-Canadian, Middle-Eastern, West, East & South African, LeCoq, Capoeira, Comedia del Arte, Contact, Gay Idiom, Body-Mind Centring, Capoeira-based, Deaf Sonics, Performance Art. Artists work within their own processes and developmental rhythms. Sessions are multilingual. The facilities are accessible. Some programs become international through online interactions.

 

Artists' common links

The desire to clarify and strengthen personal voices in new creations within their dance form, readiness to be challenged by people outside their normal frame of reference, and willingness to put personal artistic principles and ways of working under scrutiny through independent and mentored studio work and intense group feedback and support sessions, to deepen individual understandings and artistry.

 

History
The Choreographic Marathon is an Across Oceans Arts response to movement artists' quest to go beyond personal boundaries to discover deep personal creative resources for their new creations. Training, professional and critical expectations are demanding. Needed are introspection, clarity of intention, a deep understanding of movement itself, stamina and commitment to stick with “it” and an understanding of the public context of one’s work.

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Maxine Heppner developed the Choreographic Marathon approach when teaching choreography at Concordia University (1993-2000) to solve the problem of creative development too often cut short, restricted by the mundane realities of studio times and a sense of working in creative vacuums. The first participating artists (including many current notables!) found that the intense non-stop work-time succeeded in providing an invaluable environment where they had to become absolutely honest about their work, expanding their creative capacities and producing surprising work in a compact amount of time. The CM approach continues to prove itself relevant guiding, cajoling, and supporting artists' personal and aesthetic development, at different stages of their careers.

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