From: Sophia Michahelles <sophia-AT-superiorconcept.org>
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:17:34 -0500
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: [Puptcrit] Pageant Puppetry workshop in the Italian alps!


Hello Puptcritters,

Especially for those of you on the east coast sick of shoveling  
snow... enrollment for our pageant puppetry workshop and mid-summer  
procession in Italy is now open. I'll be ever so grateful to any of  
you who help spread the word.
Thanks!
Sophia
........................................................................ 
........................................

PAGEANT PUPPETRY WORKSHOP in ITALY

JUNE 18=9627, 2010

Learn to create large-scale puppets and other visual elements for  
site-specific community pageant in collaboration with local residents  
of a remote village in the Italian Alps. Led by processional artists  
Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles (whose puppets lead NYC's renowned  
Annual Halloween Parade), workshop participants create new works each  
year for the event, drawing on the oral histories, agrarian rituals,  
folklore, dance, and ecology of this little-known corner of Occitan  
Italy. After 9 years, the festival and workshop have become an  
eagerly anticipated neo-tradition in the Maira Valley.  For visiting  
participants, the event serves as a community arts laboratory that  
explores techniques for building large-scale puppets and processional  
elements, as well as strategies for developing site-specific events  
in general. For the local villagers, the event has become an  
opportunity to preserve and disseminate fragile narratives and to  
celebrate a regional culture with roots dating back 1000 years.

Beyond the basic workshop in pageant-building, the week includes  
Occitan step-dancing sessions, trips to nearby Medieval churches and  
cheese farms, and other unpredictable wonders. The gourmet meals (3/ 
day) are prepared with local "Slow Food" produce. Families/children  
welcome, no Italian language or puppetry experience required. The  
workshop is conducted in English, and we speak Italian and French as  
well.

Register for the course, see photos from past years, or learn more  
through the Processional Arts Workshop website -AT- http:// 
www.superiorconcept.org/Morinesio

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sophia Michahelles, co-director
Processional Arts Workshop (a.k.a Superior Concept Monsters)
www.processionalart.org


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