By Lilith Drinker
My right arm grabs an imaginary hat from my neighbour on the right, while in the fingers of my left hand, the person to my left has just placed an imaginary juicy apple. I take a bite while throwing the hat to my left and kicking an imaginary ball that has just been tossed to me. It’s day one of the Insaka Moves workshop with Mbene Mwambene. The days are full of dance, from improvisation to Lindy Hop; acting exercises; and chat. „This is also insaka,“ Mbene says whenever we sit together during our breaks, sharing our experiences of punctuality in Germany and family dinners in Spain.
I learn a lot over these twodays—not only from Mbene himself but also, thanks to his facilitation, from all the participants. “Please continue the sentence in your own words: If I were a virus…” We dance around, enjoying the vibes of the music before it stops. Mbene asks a question, and we jot down our thoughts. It is magical how, by the end, all these snippets form a kind of poetry, coming alive when we sit in a circle and enact a spontaneous mini-performance which could be described as a spoken-word format accompanied by music.
It is already Sunday, and we are about to finish the workshop. Reflecting on the past two days, I gather in my mind what I will take and transfer to my own artistic practice. Definitely the moment when we were contact improvising with a partner, one of us with closed eyes. Also the dance we choreographed together: three movements from each of us inspired by what we did during the previous week. We brought these movements together into a choreography that would have been worth sharing with an audience—and which certainly brought a smile to everyone’s face.
Mbene describes insaka as a place where everybody meets: a coming-together, an exchanging and sharing of each other’s energy. This is certainly something he manages to create in the otherwise rather dry and boring Audimax. After two days, I feel as if I’ve known the other participants for years. We’ve danced together, improvised in various languages, and juggled imaginary items without letting any of them drop. It is a little sad to depart the magical world Mbene has led us into. But the memories remain, so I can take a small piece of that magic with me.