introduction
My name is pavleheidler. I go by pavle or pav. My pronouns are they/them. I identify as trans non-binary and/or neuroqueer; I am autistic with ADHD.
I like to say that I was born in a country that doesn’t exist, both because that’s literally true and because I like the way it sounds. The year I was born, 1989, saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the laying of the groundwork for what was to become the world wide web.
My resume is available here.
on dancing and educating
I’ve been dancing since I was six years old. I’ve danced for television, on film, on stage, in run-down office spaces and on abandoned factory floors, in mines, in museums, and in countless dance studios. I’ve danced for choreographers, researchers, fashion designers, visual artists, writers, and film-makers.
My experience taught me that dancing isn't determined by the shapes a body makes. Dancing, for me, is an observational procedure; a thinking, and feeling, and sensing, and doing. It is an experimental practice, developed relationally, through trial and error. And, most importantly, a way to communicate non-verbally.
I started teaching when I was 17. At the time, there was no tertiary dance education in Croatia. All of us who left Zagreb to study abroad taught workshops to local artists during school breaks. It was a way for us to give back to all those who supported us on our way. Very quickly teaching became an integral part of my practice. There’s nothing like sharing your experience with others to help you make sense of yourself.
An educator and activist, Jane Elliott was the person who informed me—via youtube—that the verb to educate comes from the Latin root educere meaning to lead out. “An educator,” Elliott concludes, “is one who is engaged in the act of leading people out of ignorance.” I am drawn to Elliott’s associating educating with leading (local, action) and leadership (global, profession). Thinking about what it would take to lead anyone out of ignorance reminds me of what trail leaders do for amateur hikers, or of what skippers do for amateur sailors. (Amateur comes from Latin for the lover of.)
what you can find here
On this page I’ve collected descriptions of workshops and classes (new and existing) that satisfy my sense of purpose.
Before going through the material, I’ll ask you to keep in mind that none of these proposals were developed independently from either:
- the context they were made for, or
- from observations I’ve made relative to some trend or other I’ve observed in the world.
I like to know what the people I’m working with are dealing with; what kinds of challenges they are facing, what kind of goals they might be trying to reach. I like to make material that will serve the community I work with. The work I share is not meant to be easy, tried-and-true, or self-serving. It requires dedication, critical observation, and risk-taking. That being said, in my experience, the work I share has proven to be useful, inspiring, and empowering.
to book
email: pavleheidler@icloud.com
new proposals
sensing, for dancers
What is the use of anatomical knowledge for dancers? What difference can knowing we’re experiencing seeing with our brain and not our eyes make? Or that sensing isn’t something we do, but something that happens spontaneously—whether we like it or not?
This workshop revolves around the question of use. The question of use is meant to narrow down our field of vision such that neither somatics nor dancing can escape critical reflection. The way I understand it, it is when we assume either somatics or dancing to be useful – or not useful – “just because” that we start running into trouble. So how do we stop assuming value and begin developing new approaches to practicing somatics as dancers or dancing as somatic practitioners?
The content of this workshop is developed in-real-time, relative to the observations, questions, and concerns reported by the participants. Real-life scenarios will be examined, to ensure the question of use isn’t theoretical but applicable. An example of a question could be,
- how does knowing the difference between sensing sound and interpreting sound aka hearing inform my sense of timing? if i need to really hear something, because hearing cues an action, how do i make sure that i understand how long it will take me to really hear it? and not perform hearing it?;
- if I need to be able to sense my fluids on stage, under pressure, while also negotiating inter-personal relations, power-dynamics, and aesthetic requirements, what do I need to do to remain calm enough and sensitive enough to be able to literally sense my fluids?
- additionally, i may need to be able to perform “sensing fluid”, maybe to buy myself time? maybe because the conditions are not perfect… how can i learn the difference between literally sensing and performing sensing? what is the use of knowing this difference?
- what happens if i do not like the way a choreographer introduces somatics into the workspace, what happens if i do not feel safe? how can i protect myself? how can i start a dialogue with the person who makes me feel unsafe?
This workshop is meant to clarify, for dancers, why sensing takes time and what kind of time it takes. It is meant to clarify why sensing can be exposing, and explain why one would want to know how to protect themselves from unwanted exposure–not by hiding, but developing capacities to organise themselves better, and create a safe working environment where risks can be taken intentionally, informedly, and safely.
composition as perception
What if we’d think composition as perception—as a way to perceive the world—instead of treating it as a tool with which to reach a predetermined goal?
The idea to think composition as perception came to me while I was listening to Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust, talk about imagination as “a form of perception”. Imagination, according to Pullman, is a way to perceive things that “you can't necessarily weigh, measure or analyse chemically, but which are there nonetheless, such as love, fear, hope.” (1)
Thinking about composition as perception in this way suggests to me a critical shift from how composition is commonly thought about in dance. Namely, the shift from thinking composition as a thing of the future (something to anticipate) to thinking it as a thing of the present, or the thing of the past (something to sense, something to observe, something to reflect on, something to talk about). What would happen if we’d change the time in which composition exists? What if we’d steal it from the hard grip of the future and offer it to the tender and sensitive palm of the present-past?
The two questions central to this proposal are:
- how do you steal composition from the future and introduce it to the past?; and
- how would composition as a thing of the present-past, as an observational methodology, and a perception, serve you in your dancing or, indeed, dance-making?
This proposal emerges in the context of my current study, which concerns itself with the way we make dances. My question is, how do the methods commonly used in dance frame or restrict—in the positive and the negative sense of the word—the way we can perceive dance? And—as a result of how we can perceive it—what we can imagine dance to be? What motivates me to ask this question is my conviction that dance isn't, in fact, determined by the shapes a body makes.
Dance, in my experience, is an observational procedure. It's a thinking, and a feeling, and a sensing, and a doing. Dancing is an experimental practice, developed relationally, through trial and error. It makes it possible for us to materialise, at the scale of a human body, something of what would otherwise remain immaterial and so invisible. In that way, dancing is invaluable.
To organise the week, I will be drawing from my extensive experience with studying dancing and working as a dancer professionally over the last thirty years. The main modalities we will be working with are: the circle, embodied anatomy (rooted in my practice of Body-Mind Centering®), danced experiments, and self-reflection or self-study. In each class, we will probably work through all four modalities. Our daily procedure will be determined in-real-time, to address the needs and interests of those present. This work is emergent and relational.
keywords: #improvisation #dancescience #artisticreserach #emergence #methodology #history #sensesandperception #bodymindcentering
existing proposals
I. AM. AN. ARTIST., an embodied approach to studying abstracts
past:
July 29 - August 2, 2024 at the ImPulsTanz Dance Festival
In this week-long workshop, each day of the week is devoted to embodied study of a word / concept. I: Monday. AM: Tuesday. AN: Wednesday. ARTIST: Thursday. Friday is reserved for reflection, and integration. This work is as much about exploring one’s embodied experience contained by said words as it is about asking, What does it take to develop an embodied practice, when the focal point of the practice is an abstract (e.g., a concept, an idea, a socio-political standard).
In developing this workshop, I am relying heavily on my experience of studying and practicing BMC®. I am looking at what happens when I turn or apply those BMC® principles that were developed for the purpose of studying one’s experience of one’s anatomy to studying one’s experience of structures that are embodied, but not strictly anatomical? If I can study my experience of “liver” because I know it’s there—I can name it, I can see its image online or in a book, I can read and read about it—can I not study apply that same principle to studying my experience of other phenomena I can name, see an image of, or read about? Such are contained by the words “I”, or “ARTIST”, for example?
No previous experience with BMC® or other somatic standards is required to attend this workshop.
This workshop could be interesting to those who have a desire to explore (somatically) the depth and the wealth of their experience framed by the words I, am, an, and artist. This workshop could also be interesting to those who are looking for examples of intersectional, experimental work that draw its methodologies from multiple fields, e.g., the fields of somatics, pedagogy, and dance- and art-making. In either case, one should know that this is a dance workshop. Dancing will be the modus operandi, the primary mode of communication, and the main orientation device. Dancing here names an experience-based non-verbal form of communication, one that is critically aware of the context within which it is practiced. Namely, the context of the Western professional theatre-based dance and choreography.
book a workshop
to book a workshop, please write to pavleheidler@pavleheidler.com
The Process of Materialisation of Fiction
past:
As a stand-alone workshop, The Process of Materialisation of Fiction has been presented at the ImPulsTanz Dance Festival (Vienna, AT), at AGORA (Berlin, Germany), Earthdance (Plainfield, MA, USA), the Dovercourt House LOVEIN (Toronto, ON, CA), and Footnote (Wellington, NZ).
The Process of Materialisation of Fiction is: a developing answer to a continual questioning – and is: a self-reflective dance practice. This practice suggests a way in which to study the ability of the individual’s nervous system to translate information (back and forth) between the “felt,” “sensed,” “imagined,” “immaterial” and the “materialised,” “physicalised,” “moved,” “spoken,” “performed.”
In as much as the “felt” and “sensed” etc. is “inwardly oriented,” and so functioning in the realm of the invisible: the “intimate” or the realm of “internal dialogue;” so is the “materialised” and “physicalised” “outwardly oriented” i.e. “performed,” visible to the scrutinising gaze of the public eye. How these two worlds relate to one another is, in my experience, not always given.
This practice is developing to look at the specific relationships formed between internal motivators and equivalent performatives in an attempt to understand the relation between: the intimate and the public; or between: the intended and the communicated – always within a specific context. Given consent, studied will be examples drawn from individual participant’s personal experiences.
The aim of this workshop is to tackle the following questions:
- How does one affirm their internal monologue as real, as sane, and argue it as work within the context of object- and objectivity, prescribed-value-oriented western culture of contemporary and experimental dancing, choreography, and art?
- How does one begin to articulate strategies for guiding attention and creating the circumstances within which to manage a precise exchange of meaning, successfully; especially when working with abstract or otherwise non-obvious mediums [such is dancing]?
This work is intended for those who have to work quickly, and transition frequently between aesthetic environments and organisational power structures. This work is intended to be rewarding for queers looking to articulate strategies that are to help maintain spaces of heightened or specific attention for as long as necessary; folk working to hold spaces of fluid but persistent non-violent resistance. It is also intended for those who love a good challenge or are interested in nuanced articulation and precise execution of movement, sound, dance, and word.
Some of the topics that will be encountered during the work week are: gender theory and theory of performativity / language, communication and the production of meaning / systems of valorisation (oppression + order/chaos) / relationality (history-present, reality-fiction) / the notion of scale, in psycho-somatic and socio-political terms / the importance of thinking contextually / psychology of responsibility and consequence / redefining the workings and the purpose of the inner judge / and reconstructing the mind-body split into a functioning body-mind; a thinking, feeling, and sensing organism capable of elemental transformation.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Between 2014 and 2020, I taught regularly at the BA in Dance Performance at the Stockholm University of the Arts. At first, my class was labeled under improvisation. A couple of years into the experience, I asked Kristine Slettevold—then course leader of the BA programme—to adjust the placement/classification of the class. I decided that “improvisation” didn’t quite address the extent of the work that was emerging under the circumstances. We eventually settled on MAKING CONNECTIONS. This seemed to be the most direct and the most congruent place holder, name, or introduction to the work.
MAKING CONNECTIONS stands for a collection of protocols that enable the emergence of an embodied and critical approach to (practice of) knowledge-making through art-making. These protocols are meant to create the conditions necessary for students to ask;
- What do I do with the knowledge-experience I’ve been offered by a certain educator?; #agency #power
- How do I learn to analyse it in order to understand where it’s coming from, why it was created in the first place, how its value changed over the years; #situatedknowledge
- why it ought to speak to me, why it ought to be valuable for me, should it be valuable for me?; #agency #personaldevelopment
- How do I account for bias, be it institutional or personal, and use my understanding to specify my approach to whatever experience’s on offer? #criticalthinking
Body-Mind Centering®
In the way I understand and practice it, Body-Mind Centering® defines an experimental principle-based approach to studying anatomy, where anatomy describes the fundamental condition for the emergence of movement, experience, and consciousness. This is evolutionary anatomy; anatomy as has been felt, anatomy as has been sensed, and anatomy as has been known to each one of us in as much as we’ve already embodied something of our experience of having and being a body. This anatomy, of course, is not the only anatomy. There is also the learned anatomy. This is the anatomy of sciences, the anatomy of measurements, and the anatomy of competing values.
Assuming that we’ve been embodying our experience of having and being a body successfully—we are alive, after all—the question emerges: how have we done that? What have we done to embody our experience of having and being a body? How much of that have we done consciously, how much of that have we done intentionally? And how much of any of that brought us any pleasure? Furthermore, what have we learned about evolutionary and learned anatomies in the process? Have we learned where they differ from one another, and where they are similar, compatible even? Have we learned to relate to either in a way that specifically and critically co-responds to its conditions, and its limits? And transforms its resource from pure potential into the experience of actual, affective support?
BMC® and Body-Mind Centering® are registered service marks of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, used with permission.
individual sessions
The goal of the session is to support you, via the study of BMC® and its principles, in developing your inquiry in an embodied sense.
You may have a question that you don't know how to answer, or a feeling you don't know how to process, or stiffness or pain that you don't know how to soften, move with, or survive; you could have come to a realisation that you don't know how to integrate or have grief that you don't know how to sit with.
Alternatively, you may (simply) want to know more about how your body works, where your liver lives, or what the difference is between thinking, feeling, and sensing.
Generally speaking, as a result of this work you may develop the capacity to distinguish between sensations, thoughts, emotions with more precision, become able to orient yourself better in relation to your experience of the world, and find it easier to organise yourself, within and without: emotionally, intellectually, spiritually; psycho-physically.
In the context of an individual session, you benefit from receiving undivided attention, and having your questions addressed in specific instead of generalised ways (as is often the case in a workshop or a class setting). Most significantly, in the context of an individual session, you are in charge of the time, the pace, the tone, and the atmosphere.
“You don’t have to be alone.” — Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
This session does not have a predetermined form. It is developed in dialogue. Apart from dialogue, this session may include guided meditation, movement exploration, and/or hands-on (touch-based) assisted exploration. The methods will be chosen in response to your desires, needs, and/or wants.
You may want to book a session with your partner, or a loved one.
Payment via Swish or bank transfer. Receipts available.
Please dress comfortably.
If questions remain, please send me an email.
This session is educational, not therapeutic in character.
book an individual session
pricing:
- 60 minutes > 700 sek
- 60 minutes > 300 sek (student, unemployed)
- 45 minutes > 250 sek (1st session, orientation)
- if you’re interested in receiving an individual session, but are unsure of the content or else cannot afford the rates above, please write to pavleheidler@pavleheidler.com
general reflections
circle
I tend to start my classes with or in a circle. I find a circle in most cases to be the best way to situate the room. I usually open the circle with a brief introduction and a question formulated along the lines of a how are you?, and what are you currently working on?. I tend to come up with the day’s protocol after the responses to my question(s) have been shared and the circle has been closed.
dialogue
I like to organise my classes in dialogue with the participant. This is both to ensure that the participants get the satisfaction of having their specific interests addressed, and to create an opportunity for bonding. Additionally, it’s a way for me to learn about the context that I find myself in and the people that I’m relating to. Plus, it’s a fun challenge for someone like me who is both neurodivergent and a skilled improviser.
language
I like speculating, fabulating, philosophising, and above all, writing. In class, for example, I do a lot by way of storytelling. Storytelling is how I manage atmosphere, it is also how I navigate group dynamics through embodied dives. My relationship to and fascination with language and languaging is an integral aspect of my practice… but it is also evidence of my neurodivergence. I like to be conscious of that.
Although conducted largely through storytelling, my classes are meant to be deeply embodied. I take care to communicate that in class.
situatedness
There are several reasons why I choose to work like this. The most important has to do with situatedness. Working as a freelance pedagogue, my time is often extremely limited. I’ve learned over the years that I can get the most out of the time I’m given when I situate my work within the context of the participant’s immediate experience (need, curiosity, or desire). When addressing the participant’s immediate experience, I’ve observed that participants tend to respond positively (A) because they feel seen and (B) because they’re offered access to skills that they recognise as immediately and specifically useful. As a result, the participants tend to feel encouraged and empowered and appreciated, which i care about very much.
regarding situatedness
I situate my practice within the expanding fields of dance and choreography, where dance and choreography are understood to be critical practices; critical as in critical for the development of the general field of body-based knowledge, and critical as in analytical and self-reflective. The expanding fields of dance and choreography I situate within the western tradition of staged dance and choreography, the development of which stems from the court of Louis XIV and thrives in the present moment there where the artistic and academic modalities are encouraged to intersect.
One of my main areas of research concerns the notion of Cartesian dualism, i.e., the mind-body split. Within my practice, I am observing some of the ways in which the application of Cartesian dualism in the West complicates the study of dancing, e.g., by forcing us to associate our thinking with a single part of our anatomy, thereby restricting our relationship to thinking itself with linear, language-based standards. Most dancers have, of course, experienced thinking beyond the linear, and beyond the language-based. My question is, what happens when we consider all those non-linear and non-lingual experiences as cognitive experiences? How does our practice change when it becomes knowledgeable even when its, e.g., intuitive? I often identify my aim within this area of research with the term embodiment; I intend the term embodiment to represent the effort opposite to that of a split, i.e., the effort to integrate that which we traditionally associate with “the mind” with what which we traditionally associate with “the body” into a dynamic operative unit.
Within the context of my research, experience comes first. this means that, by the time I come to reading, I am reading to help me understand how to relate to my experiences. most frequently, i find reason to read fantasy and sci-fi, black and diversity study, and memoirs written by queer folk. Here is a short list of books I am very fond of and refer to frequently.
- Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde
- The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten
- Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz
- Neuroqueer by Nick Walker
- Sick Woman Theory by Johanna Hedva >>> article
- all about love: New Visions by bell hooks
- The Feminist Killjoy Handbook by Sara Ahmed
- Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed
- Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway
- Sensing Feeling by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
- The Gentrification of The Mind by Sarah Schulman
- Artist at Work: Proximity of Art and Capitalism by Bojana Kunst
- Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing >>> VIDEO
- Meeting the Universe Halfway by Karen Barad
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimerrer
- emergent strategy by adrienne maree brown
- The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
- Everybody by Olivia Laing
- The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
- The Parable of the Sower & The Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. le Guin
- Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson
- This Life by Martin Hägglund
- Modern Nature by Derek Jarman
- The Motion of Light in Water by Samuel R. Delany
- Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
- Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
- How to Do Things with Words by J. L. Austin
body-mind centering® in the context of a dance class
when asked to feature BMC® in the context of a dance class, and when meeting a new group of participants i need to determine who of the participants has what level of experience with BMC® (or another somatic technique) before suggesting engagement in any specific activity. depending on the level of experience and the kind of experience participants may have, i will consider reflecting on the following topics:
- somatics in a dance class, a brief history of somatics and a note on ethics (what to pay attention when teaching and being taught somatics in the context of a dance class) + performativity (how do we “read” bodies when working with somatics in a dance class, procedures); (what is orientation?)
- basic structure of the nervous system: peripheral, central, and local, somatic and autonomic, sympathetic and parasympathetic + proprioception, interoception, and vestibular; sensory input and motor response; lower and higher cognitive processes, what is a reflex and how to recognise it; the macro and micro sensing apparatuses; (what is sensing?)
- what is cellular consciousness, how does the concept of cellular consciousness challenge our understanding of cognitive hierarchies and the way we think of “self”, maybe even “personhood”, brief history of the mind-body split + the potential of this inquiry to inform our understanding and practice of democracy. (what is thinking?)
the question of ethics + performativity, how do we read bodies would potentially require some examination of:
- performativity in gender and queer theory, a brief introduction to the work of j.l. austin and judith butler;
- application of performativity to dancing and choreography, an introduction to reading dance history from the perspective of performativity studies;
- differentiation between dancing and choreography relative to the concept of embodiment and expression, a brief introduction to the treatment of expression in BMC® + affect theory;
- examination of choreography relative to writing and the concept of principle-based performative-practice.
please note, all these points refer to actions that can be performed as movement-based experiments in the context of a studio practice. experiment is the primary method i will be referring to in the studio. “experiment” will be defined in real time relative to all or any of the points above (how do you conduct an experiment when you’re both the observer and the observed?).