TEACHING, WORKSHOPS, GROUPS & LECTURES:

Money raised is used to support the ongoing projects emerging from The EBB Project. Scroll down to read about the new Performance Group project and go to Current News to read more about Neri's activities.

TEACHING AND WORKSHOPS

Barbara Neri will be teaching Performance summer 2008. Some words about THE ART OF PERFORMANCE from instructor Barbara Neri:

Many people ask: What is performance art? People from all disciplines and walks of lives are constantly reinventing performance art. Often this is someone with a story to tell or something they feel is a matter of life and death to express. Performance is a form that acknowledges that artists usually have more than one discipline they can engage with and allows them to expand, grow and express more. Dancers may want to incorporate text, props and other media into their work. Or visual artists feel a need to leave the still and silent object, canvas or drawing pad and go live in the gallery, hence the term Live Art. Their work becomes performative when it uses time-based mediums such as video and sound or evokes the absence/presence of the body and or engages the viewer somehow in the process. Poets want to read or perform their writing and or work in what is called Spoken Word. All these are examples of Performance Art but it is a story without an end. As such it is an exciting form: you get to re-invent and incorporate it. It is your piece of clay to mold. In Performance Art the idea creates the form. Go to Previous Work to see a video excerpt from "Infinite Field."

Barbara Neri's summer 2008 workshops, classes & groups:

PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP: Performance is people making original Live Art. The dynamic elements of performance are learned and experimented with during this workshop that incorporates all levels of experience. Students dress in comfortable clothing and class begins with a simple warm-up. Students will be moving and using the body expressively. Multidisciplinary exercises and experiments with the object/prop, word/sound, clothing/costume, writing/reading and gesture/movement ensue. Designed to immerse you in the creative process. Students work both together and individually and learn from each other. Intensions are explored and feedback given. Summer 2008 opportunities are listed below. Click here to download a PDF flyer.

COMING:
"WALKING BETWEEN WORLDS: THE INTER-MULTI-DISCIPLINARY PROCESS OF EXPLORING IDEAS."
What is approached and explored in this class is the fluidity of the creative mind to explore an idea (not necessarily ones own) from different perspectives and processes (the visual image and object and the written and spoken word) and respond from those perspectives: visually, verbally and performatively. Creativity knows no bounds and students of this class will be challenged to spill their creative drive out of its container and create a more expansive pool of thought. A project or concept of grand intentions will be conceived and begin to be developed.

PAST TEACHING EXPERIENCE AND CURRENT DIRECTION/PHILOSOPHY

Barbara Neri brings a lifetime of experience as an artist to her classroom. See her Biography to learn more about this. Ms. Neri's teaching experience began when she was a young dancer assiting her teacher in children's ballet classes and rehearsals and continued when she demonstrated for her teachers in Chicago. Neri's public school teaching career began in 1971 when she redesigned and taught the visual art curriculum for New Prairie High School upon graduation cum laude from Herron Art School and Butler University with a BS in Art Education. Her teaching was interrupted by a return to Graduate School in 1977 where she pursued and refined her life long study of Dance earning an MFA in Dance in 1980 from the University of Michigan. While at the UM, Ms. Neri taught non- major dance classes and was a recipient of Rackham Graduate School Fellowships and School of Music Grants and was a CEW Scholar (Center for the Education of Women).

Upon Graduation Ms. Neri was hired by the Saginaw Public Schools to develop and institute a dance and performance program for a gifted and talented magnet program for exceptional junior High and High School students (1981 - 1982). Ms. Neri was also hired by Saginaw Valley State University to reestablish the on campus Dance program teaching Modern Dance, Creative Dance & Composition to non-dancers & beginning/intermediate level dance students (1981 - 1985). Simultaneously, Neri created Khoros a Contemporary ensemble of dancers and artists. She artistic directed the company, taught company classes & maintained the group, offered classes to the local community and created and taught workshops (1982 - 1987). She developed "Dances from the Middle of Nowhere," a series of workshops for & about the creative process for High School through college level students. When Ms. Neri moved her studio to Ann Arbor, Mi., she continued in the same manner offering classes to the local community as well as teaching and maintaining her own company of dancers from 1990 through 1993.

Moving her studio to her home in 1993 allowed Neri more freedom to develop and incorporate her multidisciplinary skills: the collaborative process she engaged in as an artistic director and choreographer, her visual art work, her study of voice, theater and performance as well as the 'live art" direction her own work began to take as early as 1986. These classes have been offered privately in workshop form. "Acting up, Drawing it down & Writing out loud" was taught as a 5-hour workshop while Neri performed and lectured at Eastern Michigan University in October 2003. Ms. Neri has also taught classes for the Michigan Thespian Festival 2004 through 2007.

Neri's Scholarly work, research and writing process emerged from her practice as an artist and it has now become part of her mission to present writing and research as part of a creative process. Research is presented to students as an exciting and creative process that opens doors creating new ideas and directions: The dancer embodies the history of dance, a poem embodied reveals more meaning than a poem read. Neri sees a need, in particular, to awaken the oneirocritical mind of the creative student (dancers, visual artists, performers & writers) to engage critically with their material and see the creativity they possess as a valuable asset for them and their culture.

LECTURES

Barbara Neri & The EBB Project are now listed in the Michigan Humanities 2006 - 2009 Touring Guide. Go to the Michigan Humanities Site to learn about available grants to assist nonprofit groups and schools in hosting a Lecture by Barbara Neri.

For instance, a lecture about EBB's Garments is a tapestry of information beginning with photographs & images of EBB and interweaving the process of researching and recreating what EBB wore with the particular moment in EBB's life, the political situation surrounding her and the poetry she was writing when the photograph was taken. Or a lecture may begin with a particular work of Visual Art that emerged from The EBB Project, its synergy with EBB's poetry and the ensuing research.

The EBB Project itself is also a vantage point from which Neri address the post-modern world. Ms. Neri's research has led her to read what EBB read. This is revealed by EBB in her letters and has taken Neri from EBB's favorite French literature to Homer and Plato. But in that Neri is a postmodern artist, her own reading has also taken her forward to such seminal thinkers as Derrida, Kristeva and Irigaray. In response, Ms. Neri has prepared a new performative lecture called: "Death, Shoe Shopping and the Gift of Love: A response to reading Derrida's The Gift of Death, EBB's Sonnets from the Portuguese while shoe shopping in New York City."

The following is a selected list of what has been done in the past. It is not complete or conclusive and interested presenters are encouraged to contact us with the particular area/perspective of the project you are interested in or with information about your occasion so that we might make suggestions for you.

"The EBB Project: The Critical Nature of Creativity." (60 minutes)
Presented for the Eastern Michigan University Art Department, Halle Library Auditorium, October 16, 2003.

"Unveiling EBB" (A 60-minute lecture surrounding the installation of The EBB Project and regarding the research that has emerged from the project.)
Presented at the Ann Arbor District Library, Sunday November 17, 2002.

"Creating Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Image: What she wore and what it means." (90 minutes)
Presented before a Joint Meeting of the Boston Browning Society & the Costume Society of America, April 18, 1999 at Prescott House, Beacon Hill, Boston MA. Also presented in Dr. Mairie Rennie's Victorian Poetry Class, October 30, 1997 at the Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, Waco, TX.

Contact us for fee structure and further information.

See Biography, and the Neri Record PDF at Previous Work for more details. Please contact us for further information, workshop & residency costs and fees.

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