The discarded or removed shoe speaks volumes: A child’s shoe washed up on a shore. A woman’s shoe on a pavement. Unworn shoes still in their box. Shoes with broken heels. Baby shoes. Army boots caked in mud. A pile of shoes. Genocide. Migration…. Worn shoes are archives, objects of memory that once contained feet, traces of a life, a human story. Our work will be to imagine these, empathise, invent. The workshop introduced Anna Furse’s methodology in preparing the individual and group for making performance from zero: work on the body, with space, images, chorus and configurations. Creating performed material from exercises and tasks, individually and collaboratively, edited in a montage dramaturgical approach, students will understand how composition might work. And here, specifically, explore how a small-scale objects can resonate in large-scale space when given specific attention and significance.

OTHER PEOPLE’S SHOES culminated in a public performance at the Teatro Garibaldi, Palermo, Sicily in April 2024.

The project was commissioned and produced by Fondazione MeNO ETS