Studio Lotusroot invites you to join us in rounding off the year, with an evening of stillness and respite. Amidst the current season of grief and injustice, it is evermore urgent to pay attention to the subsurface: to listen to feelings of somatic disturbance and disembodiment. The Studio extends space for us to come together through spoken word, vocal activation and an immersive guided movement session to collectively tend to deeper seated, inarticulate stickiness; to echolocate, return to, and reconnect with our body-sponge. Activating the subsurface, what speaks beneath the surface of our skins?
18:00 Doors Open
18:30–19:00: Container mapping + a poetic tapestry with Isabella Yasmin Kajiwara
19:00–19:20: Collective vocal activation with Valeria Radchenko
From 19:20: Immersive guided community session with Chantel Foo (Studio Lotusroot) and Lucinda Chua, with live soundscape on cello.
Though all are welcome, the studio particularly wishes to hold space for those who have used their voices and bodies for action, as well as facilitators of care who have yet to replenish themselves. The evening is a reminder that we cannot pour from an empty cup, and we will be rooting into energies of gentleness, slowness, joy, playfulness, and togetherness. No movement or vocal experience necessary.
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Saturday, 16th December 2023
6-9pm
Chisenhale Dance Space
64-84 Chisenhale Road
London, E3 5QZ
Tickets: £5 (for concessions please DM @studio__lotusroot on IG; no one turned away for lack of funds)
This event is generously supported by Chisenhale Dance Space.
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Please note: Studio Lotusroot is an East-Asian, queer & neurodivergent led space, which centres QTBIPOC, neurodiverse and disabled folx. Please be mindful of the politics of the space you are entering; anyone exhibiting unwelcome behaviour at odds with the values of the Studio and its community, will be asked to leave.
Unfortunately the venue is not accessible-- please contact us to discuss any accommodations needed; we will do our best to facilitate.
About:
Chantel Foo is a Chinese Singaporean artist and performer based in London. Chantel’s practice is anchored in performance, working with movement, writing, Real Game Play and livestreams. Nodes of thought include: slippages, residual presences, selfhood and glitch spaces. They found and run Studio Lotusroot.
Isabella Kajiwara is a Japanese, British, and American writer, community organiser and prison abolitionist, rooted in London but committed to an internationalist praxis. Some of their multifaceted contributions to justice movements include workshop facilitation, storytelling, and supporting people in detention who are oppressed by borders and prisons. With collective care as their guiding principle, they organise with ESEA Sisters, a community of East and Southeast Asian women, trans, non-binary and genderqueer people creating spaces for healing through joy and resistance on local/global, micro/macro scales.
Lucinda Chua is an artist and musician who approaches music making as language. A friend, supporter and collaborator to Studio Lotusroot; they will perform live with cello and electronics, with the intention of holding space within sound for all attendees.
Valeria Radchenko is a multidisciplinary artist, singer-songwriter and music producer. They play with the fusing of genres and mediums, weaving personal narratives with speculative fiction to dream new worlds. Exploring sound as a form of touch, they are particularly interested in the emotional potential of electronic music - how we can work with technology to express what is human.
Studio Lotusroot extends from Chantel’s movement work, with a focus on embodied healing through movement. Studio Lotusroot dreams of a webwork of care, to be a space for embodied encounters and somatic healing through movement, facilitated by Chantel, to foster a commitment of care that tends to our bodies. Studio Lotusroot sees the queer body-sponge as a modality of moving through/with/towards life.