One potential participant wrote seeking guidance:

I hope be able to participate in Performatica this spring, so I am sending you a proposal. Look it over and if you have any suggestions let me know. I am open to modifying it in any way.

Description
Co-lead a collaborative lab session on movement improvisation. Co-leaders may come from dance, music, theater, and art. Ideally there will be three co-leaders for this lab. In this lab I will address two practical questions, 1) what methods are most effective in generating improvisation for the solo performer, and 2) what methods work best for an ensemble.

Objective
The objective of this lab is to define practical methods for entering into a process that utilizes improvisation as a basic tool for generating and organizing movement. Possible approaches I will use include methods articulated by Daniel Nagrin in “Choreography and the Specific Image” and Mary Overlies “Six Viewpoints.” To evaluate the work I will ask participants to provide the co-leaders with ongoing feedback throughout the sessions.

Possible Schedule
Monday & Tuesday / Co-leader #1 leads lab
Wednesday & Thursday / Co-leader #2 leads lab
Friday & Saturday / Co-leader #3 leads lab
Sunday /Showing of work

Addendum
I have one underlying question, assuming we use music, live or recorded, in our improvisation work.
What is the interplay between dancing to the rhythm of music and dancing to our own internal rhythm?

Response from Performática Team:

We think the question of improvisation is a good one, what we are not sure about is who are the co-leaders, have you contemplated who these people would be? Have you made any attempt to communicate with them so that they are on board with you? We are not entirely sure that it is within the frame of the event for us to identify those leaders. On the other hand, it brings up some interesting questions regarding how the lab structure works within the administrative frame of Performatica. And one of the things it brings up is at what level we here make these pairings happen or if we just select proposals and then the group itself, when we meet, identifies their roles within it. So we are appreciative of the challenge your work brings up at the moment.

As to the specific content of your text:

Could it be simplified linguistically to be a theme regarding music and improvised dance, and the issues that arise within it? Or do you feel deeply committed to the parameters which you are laying out, and want to engage in something that is rigorously reflective of that architecture? Does it need to occupy that much time or could it be a one two or three session kind of thing? How flexible are the parameters in terms of timing. (This matters because we have to imagine trying to negotiate a variety of proposals and a limited amount of time, people and space to play with.)

It seems there may be a sort of ambiguity between the notion of a workshop process and a lab process. There are several aspects that seem to be at play and we would like to encourage each other to get more into the question with a more invitational and perhaps, open-ended methodology. We see the lab as defining itself more as the point of departure for a question and when methodology gets too defined I think we start to bleed into workshop territory, wherein there is the danger of altering the inquisitive nature of the lab into something more defined, guided, or delivered. It may be impossible for us to avoid that kind of reality but in our utopian soul, we want to beleive we can articulate the difference.

More specifically...What does it mean to say, "the parameters are perhaps a little too defined, maybe"? By bringing in Viewpoints work and Daniel Nagrin's book, you are already mentioning a shared or hopefully shared theoretical launching pad. Perhaps stating more directly that you would like to bring these ideas and principles from these authors but are also curious about encouraging the question of what others might bring to the table, and from there developing a reading list or resource base regarding the larger question...and that folks would be encouraged to bring their own inspirations and resources and that part of the lab could be the development of a curriculum, or something else, or who knows what – embracing collaborative nature and pointing towards something which doesn't have a terribly, from the outset, defined fin. We don't think the idea, as originally proposed is too rigidly defined as is, but it could use more clarity (and possibly spaciousness) around the politics of leadership, collaboration, the question which drives it, and imaginitive ways in which a research team could come together to investigate its principles.

And of course maybe we are shaping it too much with this feedback, and you should just ignore us and define it another way – but these are some opinions and hopefully they help in some way. Thank you for your interest in participating.

Additional commentaries

A laboratory is a space where a bunch of people with similar interests (or not) get together and work on something in a collaborative way. The huge question at this point in the process is how these groups of people get together. How do people making proposals know about other participant's interests, etc.? Probably, we can not know this until we have all the proposals submitted. The challenge, then, in making a proposal, is expressing one's interest, giving ideas on how one – as a participant – could collaborate with others. It's more like setting up a grid flexible enough to allow others to work within it, while being firm and specific enough that something can happen.

In short, in a laboratory you enter and you don't know what's going to happen although you have a certain hints that lead you through a path of surprise, encounter and knowledge.

Shared curiosity.