The Biting School

### Context Profile for The Biting School

1. **Organization Mission & Cause:**
   - **Mission:** The Biting School is dedicated to creating and promoting interdisciplinary performance art that engages with social justice themes, particularly focusing on immigration, cultural adaptation, and community building. They aim to foster artistic exchange and collaboration among diverse communities.
   - **Cause:** The organization emphasizes the importance of devised theatre as a means of exploring and addressing contemporary social issues, particularly through the lens of marginalized voices.

2. **Type of Activities:**
   - **Events:** The Biting School hosts community conversations, workshops, and performances that involve collaboration with various artists and community members. For example, their recent event featured a week-long research and creation process culminating in a community conversation.
   - **Fundraising Campaigns:** They engage in fundraising through events and community engagement initiatives, supported by local government and arts organizations.
   - **Community Programs:** The organization focuses on educational outreach, including workshops and performances in non-traditional spaces, such as prisons, to promote social justice through the arts.

3. **Tone of Voice:**
   - The tone of the website and communications is **friendly, inclusive, and professional**, with an emphasis on community engagement and artistic collaboration. The language is approachable yet informative, aiming to inspire participation and connection among diverse audiences.

4. **Emoji Usage:**
   - The organization uses emojis sparingly but effectively in their communications, such as 📅 (calendar) for event dates, 🕔 (clock) for time, and 📍 (location pin) for venue details. This usage adds a casual and engaging touch to their announcements, making them more relatable.

5. **Key Facts:**
   - **Founding Info:** The Biting School was co-founded in 2013 by Aryo Khakpour and Arash Khakpour, along with other collaborators.
   - **Scale:** The organization has conducted multiple events and campaigns, with at least six forms and five email campaigns noted.
   - **Impact Metrics:** While specific metrics are not detailed on the website, their focus on community engagement and social justice suggests a commitment to measurable impact in the communities they serve.
   - **Volunteer Info:** Information on volunteer opportunities is not explicitly mentioned, but the collaborative nature of their work implies potential for community involvement.

6. **Writing Guidelines:**
   - **Style:** Use a conversational yet professional tone that encourages community involvement. Avoid overly technical language; instead, focus on storytelling and personal connection.
   - **Structure:** Keep communications clear and concise, using bullet points for important details (e.g., event information). 
   - **Engagement:** Incorporate questions or calls to action to invite participation and feedback from the audience.
   - **Visual Elements:** Use emojis judiciously to enhance engagement but maintain a balance to ensure professionalism.

### Summary
The Biting School is an innovative nonprofit focused on interdisciplinary performance art that addresses social justice issues. Their activities include community events and collaborations that foster artistic exchange. The organization communicates in a friendly and professional tone, utilizing emojis to enhance engagement. Future content should reflect their mission of inclusivity and community involvement, maintaining clarity and a conversational style.

Sliding Scale $380

Sliding Scale $420

Sliding Scale $460

Sliding Scale $500

Hi <span contenteditable="false" data-custom-variable="{{firstname}}" fr-original-class="fr-deletable styled-tag-chip" fr-original-style="" style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 255); border: 1px solid rgb(191, 191, 255); border-radius: 4px; color: rgb(42, 42, 196); padding: 1px 8px; font-size: 11px; display: inline-block; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: anywhere; user-select: none; box-sizing: inherit;">First name, Thank you for registering for our event and supporting our cause. Your registration greatly helps our mission. 🚀 If you would like to contribute further, contact us to become a volunteer, or talk to your friends about our cause! Arash Khakpourthebitingschool@gmail.com

Oracular Bodies: Channelling Movement and Energy A three-day Mystery School master workshop with Meg StuartPresented by The Biting School in partnership with EDAM In this immersive workshop, you are invited to step into the liminal space where the body is an oracle, and movement a conduit for unseen forces. Drawing from somatic practices, improvisation, energy work, and divinatory traditions, Oracular Bodies explores how we can receive, interpret, and embody transpersonal messages beyond language. Through guided improvisations, trance states, and collective lucid dreaming, participants will playfully engage with movement as divination-channelling impulses from within and with each other. We will experiment with energetic transmissions, vocal resonance, and spontaneous composition, using the body as a site of revelation. This workshop is for dancers and performers with a minimum of 4 years of professional experience who are interested in merging movement with intuition, ritual, and altered states of presence. Please come with a willingness to listen, move with and surrender to the unknown. The workshop will be accompanied by Doug Weiss and Alex Mah.  Schedule:  Tuesday, August 12, 2025: 9:30 am - 4:30 pmWednesday, August 13, 2025: 10 am - 4:30 pmThursday, August 14, 2025: 10 am to 5 pm Participants must be able to attend all three sessions.  All sales are final, and we are unable to offer refunds.  What to wear:<ul><li>Comfortable clothes that you can move and slide in (we recommend long sleeves and full-length pants, as they are helpful for sliding on the floor)</li><li>Wear minimal jewellery</li><li>Bring knee pads (optional/personal preference). EDAM sells knee pads ($35). Email info@edamdance.org if you'd like to purchase a pair. </li><li>EDAM is a scent-reduced space. Please help us keep the studio odour-free. </li></ul> MEG STUART is a choreographer, director and dancer who lives and works in Berlin and Brussels. With her company, Damaged Goods, founded in 1994, she has created over thirty productions, ranging from solos and duets to large-scale choreographies, video works, site-specific creations and improvisation projects. Recent creations include steal you for a moment (2024) and GLITCH WITCH (2024). Stuart’s work moves freely between the genres of dance, theater and visual arts, driven by an ongoing dialogue with artists from different disciplines. Through fictions and shifting narrative layers, she explores dance as a source of healing and a way to transform the social fabric. Improvisation is an important part of Stuart’s practice, as a strategy to move from physical and emotional states or the memory of them.  She passes down her knowledge through regular workshops and master classes in- andoutside of the studio. In 2025, with the support of Forum Dança, she organises the first edition of the ‘Mystery School’, an unconventional and experimental studies programme for performing artists. Meg Stuart received several awards in recognition of her oeuvre, among which the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Biennale di Venezia in 2018 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023.<a href="http://www.damagedgoods.be" target="_blank"> www.damagedgoods.be</a> DOUG WEISS: I was born in Chicago and raised musically in New York City. Over a 30 year career, I have followed the belief that musical virtuosity is about playing what the music needs. From my root teachers Al Foster, Eddie Henderson, George Coleman, Lee Konitz, Clifford Jordan, Lew Tabakin, Joe Williams, Norman Simmons, and Harold Mabern, I have soaked in the lessons of how to speak the language. I bring myself with open ears and heart, and my experiences with those masters, to the table when I play. Following in the footsteps of my mentors Rufus Reid and Todd Coolman I became an active educator and advocate, teaching workshops around the world. I am currently teaching in Maastricht at the Conservatory of Music. I was Professor at SUNY Purchase College, and The New School University, and guest Professor of Kontrabaß at the Jazz Institut Berlin. ALEX MAH is an interdisciplinary artist, composer-musician, and performer in dance. He lives and practices on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His electroacoustic music investigates time and timbre and his written music explores embodied concepts such as chance, choice, and relationality in performance. He has performed in Canada, the U.S., and Germany and holds a BFA from SFU (Canada) and an MRes from <a href="https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Bath Spa University</a> (U.K.) under <a href="http://www.james-saunders.com/" target="_blank">James Saunders</a>. THE BITING SCHOOL is an interdisciplinary company based on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations. Since 2013, we have created 18 pieces (theatre, dance, site-specific performances, interactive media, art films, video art, installation). We create boundary-pushing art through experimental performance-making techniques. We use art to work toward decolonization and address social issues in relation to race, class and gender. We stress the compassionate urgency to learn from our histories while remaining receptive to our present. We are interested in the local and the foreign. We create works that are ethically engaging, physically demanding, theatrically bold, and unexpectedly humorous. These ongoing examinations allow us to understand our personal and collective identities and desires; thereby making art that reflects our diasporic ways of being and encourages critical conversations. <a href="https://www.bitingschool.com/" target="_blank">https://www.bitingschool.com/</a>

The Biting School

Meg Stuart Master Workshop

303 E 8th Ave

Sliding Scale $380

$380

Sliding Scale $420

$420

Sliding Scale $460

$460

Sliding Scale $500

$500

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