Welcome to the second instance of this new choreograph.net

I hope you enjoy our new articles this month. Leading is a piece by W. Gordon Lawrence relating his understanding of the creative process to his considerable experience of working with dreams. Gordon ‘discovered’ Social Dreaming in the 1980s, and has been exploring this region ever since. Having taken part in a number of ‘matrixes’ myself, I can vouch for the power and pleasure of this experience, which, like many processes of nature, is simple and complex in the best senses of the words.

To deepen your understanding of this subject, I have sourced some further reading which I hope will give a concise but accurate overview of the subject. I believe the social dreaming matrix constitutes one of the outstanding social choreographies of the 20th Century, in two senses:

Inside the room, a unique matrix arrangement of participants is designed to foster truly creative thinking and collective field awareness, while discouraging typical group dynamics such as projection and transference. This is an activity of great value to artists and performers, as a kind of creative warm-up and tuning in. See Gordon’s article on the Social Dreaming Phenomenon and Stephen Fitzpatrick’s on Theatre of Dreams.
But as a social practice, social dreaming promises to enable in a most gentle way a kind of transformation of the social imagination, and facilitate a kind of ‘deeper knowing’ that can only enhance our efforts to deepen our senses of ecology and community in the new century. See Maltz and Walker’s piece on Dream Intelligence.

As always, I invite your comments on our articles by writing to editor at choreograph dot net.

I would also like to draw your attention to our new set of images this instance, from Daghdha Dance Company’s 2006 production Choreography for Blackboards, inspired in part by experiences in social dreaming. Credit is due also for the last set of images to workers at the Garvey Centre for People with Special Needs, Limerick, who created these drawings during a very special dreaming drawing and poetry exchange some years ago. I hope in the near future to be able to archive these sets of images as slideshows. Please bear with me while I learn how to make this internet work.

Jeffrey Gormly
editor at choreograph dot net