WEIRD-ING: a workshop for tricksters, seekers,  healers, articulators, visionaries, performers, dancers, artists, activists, and weirdos led by Hana van der Kolk

Provoking and embracing weirdness is sometimes understood to be indulgent, immature, not useful, an inconvenience to others, and/or a privilege. in this workshop however, I propose a practice of weird-ing as a way to uncover portals of possibility and creative resistance and restoration beyond neuro-typicality, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and a privileging of rationality. The etymology of “weird” is from the Old English wyrd, “having the power to control fate” or “that which comes.” It also has origins in the Germanic root wer, “to turn, to bend.” And indeed, I find that weird-ing in/as/through collaborative, embodied, absurd, and sacred streams to be a potent practice of harnessing powers for otherwise, for change. So, that’s what we’ll explore in this workshop mostly through experiential, body-based approaches, but also through discussion and a little (embodied) reading together. We will incorporate objects and textiles into our work together. Bring some natural and/or constructed items if they ask to be brought along.

Sliding scale $60-200 and no one turned away (visit https://www.hanavanderkolk.com/current, scroll down for more on my sliding scale, and be in touch if you need a scholarship).

Limited to 15 participants.

Email hjvanderkolk (at) gmail (dot) com with questions and to register

Hana van der Kolk

is a queer dancer, artist, educator, writer, Internal Family Systems guide, sex and gender expansion worker, and facilitator of events and spaces based on unceded Mohican, Mohawk, and Haudenosaunee lands in the Hudson Valley, New York. Hana is made by these lands and by the lands of Massachusetts, Vermont, Southern California, and the Netherlands, where their parents and grandparents are from. Hana’s work is collaborative, body-centered, and emerges from curiosity about care, contradiction, multiplicity, reckoning and reparations, eros, form, the sacred, sound, and attention to humans’ porous and weblike natures. This work straddles art and performance, socio-political inquiry, pedagogy, celebration, and personal and collective restoration and transformation, and manifests as performances, workshops, one-on-one counseling, sex and gender expansion work, events/curation, writing, videos, and gifts, sites, and costumes. Hana sees creative, body-based work/play in these many forms as conduits for knowing/unknowing what is here and now, for re-membering intimacy at many proximities.

Hana has worked internationally as a teacher and facilitator, performer, and artist since 2001, and currently collaborates/has collaborated with Erica Dawn Lyle, Tomislav Feller, Lea Keiffer, Eli Nixon, Adam Tinkle, Erin Sickler, Angela Beallor, Elizabeth Press, Senem Pirler, Lailye Weidman, taisha paggett, Sean Desiree, Jason Martin, Asher Woodworth, Ellen Foster, and many others. They hold an MFA in Dance from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures and a PhD from the Art Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, are a longtime student of Buddhist philosophy and practice, and are trained in the Internal Family Systems and Urban Tantra. More at www.hanavanderkolk.com.