Already as a title, “A Surprised Body” defines for me a metaphorical space.
The image of a body in a state of constant alert, able to surprise itself and to escape from habits and any other kind of routine.
A body more focused on reacting than on acting, on removing, rather than doing.
The goal is to let the movement to cross freely through the body, with isolation in the limbs and organic innovation.

The teaching project “A Surprised Body” started in the 2005, in Norway, and continued with workshops in 42 countries: Italy, Switzerland, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Albania, Republic of San Marino, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, UK, Holland, Austria, Finland, India, Belgium, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Spain, France, Germany, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Palestine, Lebanon, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda and Belarus.

The physical training aims at awakening our awareness and sensitivity and at creating occasions for discoveries.
The class concentrates on centering and gravity. Activating the center, as engine of the movement, we will aim in letting the movement to cross freely, throughout the body, with isolation in the limbs. Harmonizing the movement with our breathing, we will release contractions in the joints, allowing the sense of the gravity to be a constant part of our awareness. Through exercises and games, we focus on attention and reaction.

The workshop, after a first part dedicated to ground the principals of the work, articulates through a series of investigations on the movement and structured improvisations, intended as a conceptual, but also physical and mental, challenge.
Movement materials are transformed and de-structured in several ways. For example, a movement phrase can be treated as a spoken phrase, where the movements can be isolated as “words” and used to compose new phrases. The random in the phrase is done by improvisations or composition, trying to use even small parts of movements of the original phrase as “syllables” to build new movements.

Scavetta has been giving classes and workshops, amount others, at: IMPULSTANZ/Wien, P.A.R.T.S./Performing Arts Research Training Studios/Brussels, Henny Jurriëns Foundation, Amsterdam, MTD/Amsterdam, SEAD/Salzburg Experimental Dance Academy, Tanzquartier/Vienna, Greenwich Dance/London and for many dance/theatre festivals and companies around the world.