Layers of Intimacy research, workshops and teaching
Layers of Intimacy is a research on composition and improvisation in intimate encounters. It’s a choreographic approach to understand and create qualities of togetherness.
How and why do we make our choices in sex? How do we move from one phase to the next? What intelligences and skills are important in that intimate process, and how do we train them?
If we look at sex as a social, usually improvised, highly nuanced bodily performance, this everyday practice moves close to other sensual, aesthetically complex and pleasurable performances. It can be analyzed, learned, differentiated by the same means. In Layers of Intimacy, we work as a group in the studio with the improvisation method PTC by Dr. Alan Bern, which makes the knowledge fund of compositional theory from music and dance accessible for improvisation. It is a clearly structured and socially aware approach. The goal is to create an empowering methodological work (an improvisational method) that is sensitive to power and gender dynamics and differentiates intimacy in its physical practice.
Layers of Intimacy thinks composition and sex together.
In our artistic research, we transfer, test, and create training formats that focus on specific compositional elements and dimensions of intimate interactions (e.g., named in random order: Active/passive, rhythm, space, tempo, qualities of touch, narrative, motivic development, impulse work, calibration, objectification & objects, solo/duo/trio... and many more). In this way we differentiate piece by piece the building blocks that make up interesting, spontaneous, socially appropriate, pleasurable and original sex, drawing on the rich fund of composition, improvisation and cognition research. The research is extended by a series of interviews with experts from dance, bodywork, porn and sex-positive activism on relevant compositional elements and dimensions, as well as a lecture series, the NEW SALON at IKSK (Institute for Body Research and Sexual Culture).
Layers of Intimacy is about taking seriously the social and compositional knowledge of our bodies also in sex, and to differentiate the production of intimacy – makeíng it visible as a skill set. The research aims to further our understanding of different qualities of "togetherness" in sex, together with the specific synchronization processes in movement and social action that contribute to them. The project extends the knowledge of the somatics and of performance to the intense and intimate field of sexual practice, contributing to structured, dance-informed, power-critical, and socially empowering educational work.
This work is relevant for everyday life as well as for the rehearsal space, which can often be physically and emotionally very close, in order to deal sensitively and appropriately with each other and to be able to grasp, co-create and discuss intimate dynamics.
The research has been supported by several artistic research funds of various lengths. In 2023, we received the Flausen+ Residency at Sensemble Theater Augsburg, researching fulltime in a team of six people for a month. You can read some of our insights in our research logbooks here!
I give workshops based on Layers of Intimacy at Xplore Festival, Summer Evolution, Schwule Museum Berlin in cooperation with The Village, Tantra Sud-Oeust, Slow Sex Love Life and other more.
Photos © THISISMYWORK.ONLINE
Funded amongst others by Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien in the program NEUSTART KULTUR — Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN/ tanz:digital/ DIS-TANZ-START — des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, Flausen+ and Fonds Darstellende Künste rechercheförderung
