ARTICULATE OPEN CLASSROOMS
Artist-researchers at the Conservatoire as well as external researchers present their research to students by elaborating on the scope of their project, introducing their methods, research processes, or (preliminary) conclusions, performing an artistic result or by supervising a workshop.
OPEN CLASSROOMS - DANCE
Exercises in Freelancing
WORKSHOP / language: English
by DAN MUSSETT
Room 435, Conservatoire
How do you relate to working as a dancer? When does dance feel like work? How do pleasure and pain intersect with dance? What do you need to survive as a freelancer in the arts: dedication, passion, a basic income, a supportive community, a good therapist?
In this workshop, we’ll explore these questions together—ones that shape our daily work but rarely get direct attention. We’ll each write one-sentence answers and then create mini-manifestos from the group’s responses—somewhere between activism, self-reflection, venting, community building, and poetry. An invitation to write personally and speak collectively.
Moving as more than one
WORKSHOP / language: English
by LIBBY WARD
Room 436, Conservatoire
Libby Ward’s research explores the idea of moving as more than one, where familiar understandings of embodiment are disrupted, dissolving the borders of the self.
In this workshop, we will embrace the transformational potential of a liminal space, where hidden yet multi-layered complexities are brought to the fore. Introducing cross-disciplinary tools, participants will specifically be invited to experiment with performative writing from within their embodied practice. Blurring language with choreographic movement, we will research new possibilities in articulating and enacting ideas and experience.
On Flexibility
WORKSHOP-LECTURE / language: English
by ANNE-LISE BREVERS
Room 437, Conservatoire
This workshop starts with a flash-lecture on the history and meanings of flexibility in dance, from technique training to contemporary practice, online and offline. Flexibility signals virtuosity, openness, and fluidity, but also vulnerability and excess. Drawing on feminist perspectives, we explore it beyond strength versus weakness: as a survival strategy in uncertain times, and as a space for nuance and ambiguity, where the “monstrous” body unsettles ideals of beauty, harmony, and control. Participants will engage with these ideas through discussion and reflective exercises.
The Flemish Wave Revisited
WORKSHOP/MOVEMENT RESEARCH / language: English
by ZOE DEMOUSTIER
Studio L, Conservatoire
How can a movement phrase be recreated from the same task given to dancers forty years ago? How did audiences respond then, and can those reactions today shape new interpretations? What does it mean to write down movement and read it again?
This masterclass explores these questions and more, offering tools to engage with the heritage of the so-called ‘Flemish Wave’ through dialogue between a new generation of dancers and contemporary perspectives. Participants will create, share, and archive new choreographic material.
The masterclass is part of ‘The Flemish Wave Revisited’, a two-year research project by choreographer and dancer ZOE DEMOUSTIER within CORPoREAL, culminating in a new creation in 2026.
Image: (c) Lore Stessel