A movement-based workshop led by emilyn claid, queer performance artist in her 8th decade.
What do we need to let go of to enliven our practices, to dissolve static postures and crumble notions of normativity? How can we use uncertainty as a life force?
With somatic movement practice as a safe ground, this workshop considers how letting go - physical, metaphorical and psychological - informs living, being and relating, undoing Western obsessions with supremacy and individuality. We will work relationally, with the environment and with each other, accepting messiness and failure as necessary for creative adventure.
The workshop is open to dancers, performers, live artists, choreographers, art makers, and people who like to explore movement and improvisation.
Content Notes: The workshop will include working with gravity and ground and might involve touch. Each participant is invited to participate in a way they feel comfortable and will not be asked to do anything they do not want to do.
Please wear clothes that are suitable for moving freely
About emilyn claid
emilyn claid’s career stretches back to the 1960s when she was a ballet dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and the 1970s when she was co-founder of experimental collective X6 Dance Space in London, a pioneering organisation for New Dance. In the 1980s she was artistic director of Extemporary Dance Theatre and in the 1990s choreographed for companies such as Phoenix and CandoCo. Working as an independent dance artist emilyn made and performed a series of iconic solo works as a lesbian-queer artist. emilyn is also an emeritus professor and a Gestalt psychotherapist and has recently published FALLING Through Dance and Life, (Bloomsbury 2021), a book that re- thinks Western culture’s physical, metaphorical, and psychological relationship to gravity. Working between live art and dance theatre, emilyn has recently toured a solo show UNTITLED (2022-24) and choreographed The Trembling Forest (2025). https://emilynclaid.com/
This workshop is on the occasion of Dyke Just Do It, performed by Sweatmother & emilyn claid at SWG3 on 5 June at 6pm . Part of Glasgow International 2026
Image: emilyn claid, by Fenia Kotsopolou