Penelope Morout, founder of CROSS IMPACT Company, is an interdisciplinary dance artist, who is intrigued by creating hybrid works through the fusion of movement, performance, visual arts, and spatial design. She graduated from the National School of Dance and the School of Architecture -National Technical University of Athens and holds a Master’s degree in Theatre Practices from ArtEZ University of the Arts (NL).
Penelope works professionally in Greece and internationally as a performer, choreographer, scenographer, and theatre maker. Her cross-disciplinary background shapes her artistic language; she approaches choreography through a cinematographic gaze, placing performers and scenography in constant dialogue (THE BOX: That Dead Space Between Us, EMOTIONAL DOGS, COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, WHERE THE WATER HOLES ARE). As a filmmaker, she has participated in video dance festivals worldwide.
As an educator, she shares her movement practice, Sculpting Body-Images, internationally (Kalakeli Movement Arts India, PERA GAU School of Performing Arts, REVES Festival Costa Rica, Kinissis Dance Festival Chile, Unplugged Dance Lefkada, MUDA Dance Center Ghent, and Dialog Lab Hamburg). Her pedagogical approach brings together physical research (task-based body–voice improvisation, pattern recognition and transformation, curiosity and play) and physical training, working with contact, coordination, rhythm, stamina, and motor skills to build an agile and resilient body. It is informed by 16 years of training in Fighting Monkey, founded by Linda Kapetanea and Jozef Frucek.
SCULPTING BODY-IMAGES
Sculpting Body-Images is an intensely physical movement workshop that cultivates awareness of the body as a medium for poetic expression and dance as an intelligent practice. Participants observe and perceive the moving body through playful sculptures: while the skin may define a temporary limit of form, approaching the body as a dynamic instrument in transformation reveals new possibilities.
How can we sculpt form and probe its limits to develop versatility and adaptability?
Drawing inspiration from architectural composition and cinematographic tools, the workshop works through task-based body and voice improvisation. This mapping process explores movement situations such as transforming habitual patterns and turning simple tasks into expressive choices. These situations, defined as playful sculptures, are entered and exited individually, in pairs, or in groups, stimulating the nervous system, building stamina, and enhancing motor skills.
While borrowing terms from cinema (dolly shot, zoom in/out, framing) and architecture (physical, perceptual, directional, and interwoven space), we work with complex rhythms, coordination, and elastic footwork. Continuity is central: energy flows through the body’s capacity to compartmentalise, allowing sustained movement without tension.
Sculpting Body-Images is ultimately a storytelling practice, where tasks stimulate ideas for character-building, express narratives, and shape personal methodologies.
Aims & Objectives / Sculpting Body-Images by Penelope Morout
- Refining and articulating practice through tasked-based physical improvisation (body & voice)
- Recognizing personal movement patterns, in order to consciously deconstruct and reconstruct them, when applicable.
- Embracing the child within and allowing a creative, playful, curious, creative approach to physical exploration.
- Engaging in constant movement and testing our bodily structure, in order to find ways of generating energy throughout the entire duration of the class, without actual pause.
- Stimulating the nervous system, increasing stamina and developing motor skills that improve agility through coordination, rhythm and elastic footwork skills.
- Critically developing dramaturgical and compositional modes of working
- Reflecting on the relationship between what is presented and how it is presented.
- Supporting, inspiring and motivating each other within a safe learning space
- Building upon the idea of a caring, judgment-free community, where all members are encouraged to express and embrace their individuality as a valuable asset to the learning process and the individual and collective development.
