'The Tango of Creativity' in Assisi

A weekend for lovers of colour, light and space who love equally sharing and friendship

'That title: The Tango of Creativity  is rather brilliant in my humble estimation.

It is as if the creator and the created, dance and prance with each other'

                                                                                            Jack Fulton

Quite a lovely way of putting it I thought, because I struggle sometimes to give voice to what we are about.
Last week I had a message from a friend in Jamaica telling me I must watch a series 'Big Painting' on BBC TV. I didn't pick up the word 'competition' in the title, which is not unusual as I suffer from selective dyslexia. And I really thought it was about painting BIG, the sort of thing we run workshops on sometimes. Very therapeutic.
Well as I live in Italy, it meant I had to sign and pay for a service which I'd recently withdrawn from because it was, well, so English. You know what I mean. I watched the first ten minutes and switched off. It was terrible. It was like one of those ghastly Chef knock out programs and...oh, I just can't go on. Just so bad in every way. Enough to say it is the very opposite of everything I believe in about art and creativity.
Having got that off my chest, I will now write about the 'Tango of Creativity'

The title came about from last summer's retreat at the Casa Faustina in Assisi. On the second evening, after a wondrous Italian meal (with organic wine) cooked by Chef Sara, one of the group, Mauro Magrini, put on some rhythmic Tango music.We were in the studio, the sun was setting and although fading, the light was warm and streaming through the large windows. Mauro then began to teach us all the basic steps of Tango and suddenly there we all were dancing Tango, can you believe. And from then on, it was how we finished our days and it became an intrinsic part of our creativity. I think the perfect alignment of heart and mind.

 Fact is, in some magical way, the poetry, the painting and the Tango fused into one.


 
  the whispering pines of Casa Faustina

It was then that we decided to name our future workshops 'The Tango of Creativity'.

And you'll see the new website up very soon.

This year we are including photography to the mix. This has come about after the very successful Venice workshop last month.

Let me explain that too. Everybody brought their laptops and by using Dropbox, we were able to share our images immediately back at base. It was a sharing experience where we all learned one from each; and in no way was it competitive; this btw is common to all our workshops, where each person is considered to uniquely creative and their creations equally valid.

So, what else happens at these workshops?

A typical day would be

After breakfast we gather around the pool and prepare for the day ahead with a Tai Chi or Chi Kung session and various other mind and body exercises.

Then we get to work.

We experiment with paint, words, and photographic images

We share

We fall flat

We dip into the pool

We stand back

We dump it all and go for a swim 

Then we return and try to make sense of what we are doing

Then we have a delicious vegetarian lunch on the restaurant terrace after which we siesta for an hour.

Ditto the afternoon but work wise something is beginning to emerge.

And so on, day by day with trips to Assisi thrown in

So you can gather that we start off not having a clue about what we are doing but being absorbed in it nonetheless

We are sharing, mixing, messing, at a fantastic pace, what I call creating beyond ourselves.

No judgement, no criticism, only amazement at what is emerging.

Along with lots of fun and laughter

All at the beautiful Casa Faustina.

For further details about our next retreat in May 11 to 15, 2017, go to www.starstone.org.

Alternatively contact us directly:

Michael Eldridge: email: Michael@starstone.org  tel/whatsapp +39 3283535358 (Italy)

Or Michelle Rummey: email: Mixxpix@gmail.com  
tel/whatsapp +44 7801 758771 (UK)

p.s. There is a discount offer until 20th March