Choreographing Bodies: A Workshop on Experiencing Art

Inspired by performance and choreography exercises, this workshop challenges you to experience the act of viewing and making art in relation to space and the body. Led by performer Petra Serhal, this participatory workshop takes you on a sensorial journey through selected artworks of the Sursock Museum’s permanent collection.

Using many physical and perception exercises drawn from theatre and performance, Serhal will work with you to create a simple choreography through the Museum, asking you to use all your senses to encounter the artworks. The series of sensory exercises draw on various subjects, including words and storytelling, identity and imagination, representation and presentation, materiality, and sonic experience. Get ready to use your body, words, and skills in each collection display in order to produce your own work of art.

Selected artworks from the Sursock Museum's permanent collection include works by Etel Adnan, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Hussein Madi, and Khalil Zgaib.

Participants should wear comfortable clothes that are practical for movement and that they don’t mind getting messy.

Registered participants will receive a list of a few items to bring with them for the workshop.

Petra Serhal is a performance maker and actress. She graduated from the Theatre Department in the Lebanese University's Institute of Fine Arts with a Diploma Higher Studies in Acting (2005). She received an M.A. in Body in Performance (2015) from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, UK. She regularly collaborates with multidisciplinary artists and filmmakers. Performances include The Mourned (2011), No Blood Included (2016), and Project Martyr (work in progress). In 2010, she began collaborating with the Dictaphone Group, a research and performance collective that creates live performances based on research on space. Her collaborations with the Dictaphone Group include This Sea is Mine (2012), The Bus Cemetery (2012), and Nothing to Declare (2013).