Contact us
Andy Paget &
Eeva-Maria Mutka
tel: 01559 384 948
Workshops, Courses & Events
2009Body, Movement, Environment
“Penpynfarch is set up to develop a deeper understanding and care for the living body, alongside care for the
rhythms and needs of land . Set at the head of a steeply wooded valley, at the end of a road, it’s a unique place
to learn and work together, a place where a passionate care for the ecology of our lives infuses everything
that happens.” - Miranda Tufnell
Feb 27th - March 1st 2009 LAND WORK WEEKEND
For Full Details of Land Work (pdf)
March 27th - 29th 2009 Moving and Learning Resources -
An Introduction to somatics in early years development,
with Kerstin Wellhöfer and Maggie Fearn
Based on the teachings of Body & Earth and Integrative Bodywork using the principles of Body-Mind Centering®
We will immerse ourselves in nature and studio practice, exploring somatic approaches which are useful in supporting and understanding the process of embodied development. We will gain insight into our own movement stories, and this will help us understand empathically how children orientate in their environment and how this influences their development.
Click here for Full poster / Adobe Acrobat version
Price: £200 - Including full vegetarian board and accommodation in the farmhouse, Friday - Sunday.
£120 Non-residential with lunches. £164 Working Scholarship.
Kerstin Wellhöfer offers a private client practice, and teaches as, a
registered Somatic Movement Educator and Holistic Bodywork Practitioner.
Continuing study in the application of the principles of Body-Mind
Centering®, Authentic Movement, Dance, Visual Arts, Meditation, Embodied
Anatomy, Yoga and Tai Chi inform her work and research. She has ongoing
artistic collaborations with dancers, visual artist and performers
throughout Europe, and has been consulted by numerous agencies in the use of
Somatic Movement Practices for Arts and Health projects. She is a faculty
member of the Institute for Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy UK.
Maggie Fearn is a specialist facilitator of environmental arts, play and
creative movement. Innovative and experienced in combining stories with
visual arts & play projects, and a Forest School Leader since 2001, She is
currently engaged in an MA in Developmental and Therapeutic Play at Swansea
University. She is deeply committed to a child centred and inclusive ethos.
POSTPONED TILL Aug 24th - 28th 2009 BEING IN TIME - Movement Retreat with Miranda Tufnell
We are as bees / And our body is a honeycomb / We make the body /
Cell by cell / We make it RUMI
This retreat will explore the ways we experience and inhabit time and our changing sense of rhythm and of pace, of ‘being in time’. The valley road ends at Penpynfarch and offers is an opportunity to slow down, loosen the gravity pull of our familiar lives and take time to widen the field of our attention.
Time for the grass to grow
time to fall asleep
time to open the door
time for a cup of tea
We will explore the rhythm and movements of our embryological forming, of breath, of fluid, heart and bone. In listening in to the movements of the body’s silent voice we wake up into the richness of our connection to what is around us - to the textures, qualities of land, of light and dark, to weather and seasons,
We will spend time working both inside and out, exploring through our senses - through touch, scent, movement, and sound ‘ falling through to the skin and into the world ‘ Neruda
MOVING WRITING MAKING
Price: £375 Independent - Including full vegetarian board and accommodation in the farmhouse.
£500 Funded. £300 Working Scholarship.
8 places.
Miranda Tufnell is a dance maker, body therapist, teacher and writer. After a degree in English she trained as a dancer at the London School of Contemporary Dance and in New York. Miranda has been performing in galleries and theatres since 1976, often making site-specific events and collaborating with visual artists. She has been teaching movement in colleges and independently for over 30 years and is also qualified as an Alexander teacher and Craniosacral therapist (Karuna Institute). Miranda worked for 14 years part time within the NHS meeting a wide range of muscular-skeletal problems. From that she developed arts and health projects for people living with chronic health conditions. She has co-authored 2 books with Chris Crickmay Body Space Image and A Widening Field: Journies in Body and Imagination. Miranda is currently visiting professor of Dance at Coventry University. She has two sons.
Miranda Tufnell
May 7th - 10th 2009 Body Weather Laboratory Workshop with Oguri
Body Weather Laboratory (BWL) is a research forum open to anyone interested in investigating expression through the body within different environments.
A demanding attitude toward a thorough reexamination of the body and movement is a main theme in all the aspects of the training. Originally founded in 1978 by Min Tanaka in Japan, BWL workshops currently exist throughout the world, expanding and reinterpreting the format for exploration.
The workshop consists of three-parts:
1. Rigorous mind/body, muscle/bone training; rhythmical and dynamic.
2. A series of specific stretching and relaxation exercises concerned with breathing and alignment. The work is done in couples, exchanging passive and active roles.
3. Explorations designed to sharpen focus and develop the scope of expression through the body. The work encompasses sensitivity training and discovery of movement from images.
Price: £320 Independent - Including full vegetarian board and accommodation, £370 Funded, £270 Working Scholarship.
In collaboration with Butoh UK. TO RESERVE A PLACE please contact, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie
Oguri, a native of Japan, studied radical visual arts with Genpei Akasegawa, which led to his career as a dancer. He studied with Tatsumi Hijikata, the creator of Butoh dance. He joined famed dancer Min Tanaka's company, Mai-Juku, in 1985.
For five years Oguri lived, worked, and helped establish Tanaka's farm outside of Tokyo.
A resident of Southern California since 1990, he conducts Body Weather Laboratory with Roxanne Steinberg, a forum for investigating the body and dance (founded by Min Tanaka in Japan, 1978). He has taught and performed worldwide. He is an artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice, California. Oguri has received support from the California Arts Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department,
The Durfee Foundation, The Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Arts Partners Program, and The Getty Center.
Oguri received the Irvine Fellowship in Dance for the research and development of
Height of Sky, a site-specific dance project that took place in the deserts of Joshua Tree. It was an investigation of the relationship between dancer and environment, and explored the development of his identity as a Japanese dancer in America. The documentary directed by Morleigh Steinberg documentary Height of Sky about his desert project currently screens on the Sundance channel.
Through the Dance: Creation to Performance grant from The James Irvine Foundation and administered by Dance/USA Oguri’s William Faulkner Project Caddy! Caddy! Caddy! was developed and performed at Electric Lodge in 2006 and at REDCAT 2007. He collaborated with Dawn Saito and Myra Melford on Knock on the Sky, a work based on Kobo Abe’s Woman in the Dunes. It was performed at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Flynn Theater in Burlington Vermont. He continues to develop and tour improvisation work with Adam Rudolph called Wildflowers.
Oguri - Body Weather Laboratory
May 22nd - 24th 2009 LAND WORK WEEKEND
For Full Details Of Land Work (pdf)
May 28th - 31st 2009 Improvisation Workshop with Andrew Morrish and Kirstie Simson
Kirstie Simson and Andrew Morrish have enjoyed the great pleasure of working together over the past five years. They are both dedicated teachers of Improvisation as a performance practice. They return to teach together at Penpynfarch for the second time, to share their depth of knowledge of the art form with students who are interested in working with movement and text based improvisations.
At the end of the workshop they will perform for the students.
Kirstie’s classes in dance-improvisation, draw from her knowledge of contact improvisation, dance techniques, aikido, meditation and her extensive experience of improvisation in performance. The focus will be on exploring uninhibitedly the huge potential of the body’s response to the primal urge to move, inspired by deep energies released through human interraction, physical challenge and through the excitement of discovering new territory, new sensations and a daring to go beyond inherent ideas of limitation. The classes will be built on very simple physical principles allowing students to explore their experience of moving and to understand their own bodies more profoundly, which is often experienced as joyful and liberating. Kirstie will be focusing on various aspects and techniques for freeing up the body - allowing it to move with greater ease and grace. She has spent many years researching ways of moving which generate full and fearless dancing, and she enjoys the challenges of intense physicality. Kirstie will be sharing her discoveries with students. The classes offer students a way to extend and deepen their experience of moving through simple scored improvisations.
Breathing, Being in the same space.
Breathing Imagining Presence.
Breathing Feeling Presence.
Breathing Silence as Sound.
Breathing Sound as Silence.
Breathing Movement as Stillness.
Breathing Stillness as Movement.
Andrew uses a skills approach to solo improvisation. He uses a process of developing the skills of generating and shaping content whilst working between vocal ands physical modes. His work is further fuelled by the spirit of communication and shared pleasure.
Participants will be encouraged to become their own editor in performance, by developing skills of shifting their point of attention, developing texture and maintaining clarity. It is suitable for people interested in deepening their understanding of themselves as a performer and finding resources that will enrich their improvisational performing. Participants should come expecting to enjoy themselves.
Price: £330 Independent - Including full vegetarian board and accommodation in the farmhouse. £380 Funded. £280 Working Scholarship.
Kirstie Simson has been a continuous explosion in the contemporary dance scene, bringing audiences into contact with the vitality of pure creation in moment after moment of virtuoso improvisation. Called "a force of nature" by the New York Times, she is an award-winning dancer and teacher who has "immeasurably enriched and expanded the boundaries of New Dance" according to Time Out Magazine, London. Simson’s eternal subject is freedom, as she dares to go beyond the boundaries of form and structure to create movement out of the rhythm of life itself.
Andrew Morrish began improvising with Al Wunder's "Theatre of the Ordinary" in Melbourne in I982. In 1987 he formed "Trotman and Morrish" with Peter Trotman, another founding member of "Theatre of the Ordinary". They performed their unique improvisational duets extensively in Australia and the US until 1999, when Andrew moved to Sydney and began to develop his solo performing. Since 2000 he has performed, collaborated and taught extensively in Australia, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K.
June 12th - 14th 2009 Body and Earth Introduction with Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose
Body is Earth: our bones, breath and blood are the minerals, air, and water inside us- not separate but same.
Andrea and Caryn consider experiential anatomy a resource for clarifying perception and deepening creative investigation. Evolutionary movement and outdoor excursions remind us of our inherent connection to the natural world. Authentic movement invites listening to the intelligence and mystery of the body. The combination stirs the senses and nourishes possibilities for creative forming, individually and in community.
This retreat is suitable for artists, dancers, movers, makers, and creative thinkers in any field.
Price: Including full vegetarian board and accommodation and lifts to/from Pencader, £295 Independent, £350 Funded, £250 Working Scholarship. Camping £265 with full board, Non-residential with lunches £225.
This six-day residential training offers resources for clarifying personal movement and for teaching body and earth principles to others. During our daily practice, we focus on three layers of the work: 1. Underlying patterns, through experiential anatomy, evolutionary movement, and treks on the land. 2. Perception, through investigation of the organ and neuro-endocrine systems in relationship to place—the food, fields, forests, water, and community of Pen Pynfarch. 3. Creative forming, through movement and writing. Throughout, we attend to the nature and culture of southwest Wales, including a day-long session at the ocean, morning contemplative practice, and delicious meals featuring local organic food.
Price: Including full vegetarian board and accommodation, lifts to/from Pencader and a mini-bus trip to Marloes Sands, Pembrokeshire. £620 Independent, £750 Funded, £500 Working Scholarship. Camping £545, Non-residential with lunches £485.
Andrea Olsen is Professor of Dance and the Kathleen and William F. Truscott ’83 Professor in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, in Middlebury, Vermont. She’s the author of Body and Earth, An Experiential Guide, (UPNE 2002) and Bodystories, A Guide to Experiential Anatomy (Station Hill 1991) in collaboration with Caryn McHose. She performs and teaches internationally and is on the faculty of the teacher-training program for Yoga Center Amherst in Massachusetts. Andrea is working on her third book, The Place of Dance, and has recently traveled in South Korea, Bali, and New Zealand exploring themes for this work.
Caryn McHose has taught creative movement for over 35 years. She is co-author, with Kevin Frank, of the book, How Life Moves, Explorations in Meaning and Body Awareness, (North Atlantic Press 2006) and developed the experiential anatomy course at Middlebury College which became the basis for the book, Bodystories: A Guide to Experiential Anatomy. Caryn co-founded the RK training program in perceptual skills for somatic practitioners and uses biodynamic cranial and Somatic Experiencing approaches in her private practice. She and Kevin co-founded Resources in Movement, a center for movement inquiry in New Hampshire, USA, which offers residential retreats and workshops. Resources In Movement
Deep Listening For Global Climate Change (jpg)
July 3rd - 5th 2009 Upright and Down to Earth - Sensory Awareness: An Embodied Response to Stressful Times, with Stefan Laeng-Gilliatt
How can we be content in a world that does not run according to our plans? How do we live our lives in the midst uncertainty? Through the practice of Sensory Awareness we learn to fully connect with reality as it is, an ever-changing stream of experience, uncontrollable and awesome. Grounded in the moment, we engage with reality rather than fighting it. When we act from a place of interest rather than ambition, we may discover that true happiness arises from engaging with the world that is, rather than from a world we expect.
Sensory Awareness is a process of inquiry through simple explorations of everyday movements, playful experiments with gravity, quiet presence and lively interactions with life. It is an invitation to question our beliefs by experiencing the world with open senses. We receive the strength to fully engage with reality by reconnecting with the earth and her primary offerings: gravity, ground and air. The constant tug of gravity is earth's invitation to engage with her, to be strong, to find orientation; the ground is the support from which we rise, its firm presence gives our moves traction; the air fuels life, its free flow through us is a condition for skillful action.
Camping £230.
July 6th-8th 2009 3 Day Research Period for invited practitioners with Stefan Laeng-Gilliatt
Thanks to its uniquely openended way of exploring the human condition, Sensory Awareness has served as a foundation for practitioners of many modalities in the fields of somatics and psycho therapy, such as Esalen Massage and Gestalt Therapy. Sensory Awareness is not treatment but a pathway to experiencing. As such it builds the ground for working with people from a place of connection rather than technique.
Mindfulness In Motion
Sensory Awareness Foundation
Autumn Half Term Weekend, Oct 23rd - 25th 2009 SONS 6 with Simon Whitehead
Three day residential workshop for boys aged 6-12 with a parent, led by movement artist Simon Whitehead. There will be explorations in movement, walks (day and night), drawing, map making, foraging and making. This time we will be joined by wildlife educationalist and artist Ben Stammers for a day to guide us on a fox walk, to discover the traces, smells and possibly a local Earth of the fox, and to make clay foxes from the clay in the river.
The workshop will culminate in an evening fire, with performances and food.
Accomodation will be in the farmhouse and caravan.
For 6 pairs of son and parent.
Movement artist Simon Whitehead works from his base in rural West Wales. He has developed a body of work from walking practices; his work is place sensitive and often involves a process of ritual reconstruction through dance, live performance, sound and sensory media. Over the last 5 years he has collaborated closely on many of these works with Melbourne based sound artist Barnaby Oliver, Simon's work continues to the collaborative process, working with other artists, the public and animals. Since 1994 he has developed LOCATOR, an ongoing series of residential workshops and events for artists and movers, exploring the sensitive relationship between body and environment through movement, transient community and ecological practice. In 2006 Simon published walking to work, a book anthology of images, writings, drawing and sound detailing his recent work.
He is a father and a craniosacral therapist.
More on Simon's work:
www.untitledstates.com
Ointment Collective
The pricing structure for our courses is as follows:
Independent price: Paid for by an individual.
Funded price: This rate applies to places which are paid for by an institution, company, employer or funding body.
Working Scholarship: A reduced rate in return for some hours of work before, after and during the workshop. Limited to one place per workshop and offered on a discretionary basis. This place is for someone who would not otherwise be able to attend the workshop because of their financial circumstances.
2009
Other Workshops
1 Feb, 3 May, 2 Aug, 1 Nov 2009 Wise women Wild women MYSTERY workshops with Jules Heavens
– 4 one day workshops over the coming year drawing on the energies of the Celtic fire festival days
We gather as women to explore sacred tools, maps, symbols and our creative feminine fire. Working indoors and on the land we will open to our creative spirit and soul together, to discover the magic that our circle creates. The morning of each day will be focused on the individual journey facilitated by Jules, while following lunch we will move into peer developed co-creativity, finishing in a sacred ritual to honour each woman and the circle. Can be taken as a series or individually. More details on application.
Cost donation of £15-30 per workshop.
To book please contact Jules Heavens
“Pen Pynfarch is a tender place to immerse oneself in the forest and farm land of Wales. This fecundity nourishes the senses and helps bring alive a naturally resonant community. It is a place quiet enough for creativity to flourish and in which the movements within the body find reflection in the natural world.”
- Caryn McHose, Resources In Movement, New Hampshire, US
"Penpynfarch is one of those rare places where improvisors working intensively can delve deeper into their personal journeys and public faces. The work in this safest of environments has ,over the past years been as deep and rich as the landscape that surrounds us. We have danced, laughed, cried, eaten (very well) played sumo on the beach and shouted at the sky
- Adam Benjamin