Swan Skin by Lene Vollhardt

Swan skin by Lene Vollhardt

A workshop in flesh, harness and slow attention

Swans are not graceful. They are territorial, prehistoric, and profoundly strange. Creatures that move between worlds, neither fully air nor water, their surfaces concealing enormous muscular force.

This workshop takes the swan not as a symbol of beauty but as a figure of erotic intelligence: the body that knows through texture, pressure, weight, and proximity.

Drawing on Butoh-inspired practice, guided somatic meditation, and the formal language of kink as a technology of attention, Swan Skins invites participants into a shared field of slow, curious movement.

We will work with breath, image, and touch-threshold – the edge where contact becomes information, where restraint opens rather than closes.

Participants are encouraged to bring any harness they own - equestrian, bondage, bespoke or improvised. Attachable latex straps and carabiners will be provided, and the concrete architecture of the space is treated not as a limitation but as a collaborator: weight-bearing, cool, indifferent - a surface that holds.

The workshop moves through three phases:

Invocation – a guided meditation into the swan as more-than-human ally. We attune to its logic: the slow neck, the hidden webbing, the capacity to carry enormous weight just below the surface.

Swarming – Butoh-inspired image-led movement exploring what it means to move with rather than toward. How do swans greet, support, stretch one another? As bevvy or as individual, we work in constellations and proximity, noticing how attention changes when another body enters your field. There will be some guided movements, group formations, as well as freedom to explore movement.

Harness and Hold – participants who wish to integrate their harnesses into movement are invited to do so. We explore how worn structure - strap, buckle, latex - transforms proprioception, posture, and the politics of the body. What changes when something holds you? What becomes possible? We will explore ways of connecting strappings between participants, attaching them to one another’s harnesses as part of a guided, consensual practice.

The session is rooted in consent, curiosity, and mutual support. It sits at the intersection of somatic practice, kink epistemology, and collective imagination, asking what forms of intelligence live in the body when we slow down enough to listen.

No pressure to perform. Process, imagination, and care at the centre.

What to Bring

• Participants are invited to bring their own harnesses or body bracelets, belts.
• Clothes you feel comfortable to move in
• Custom riveted latex strappings will be provided by the facilitator.

This workshop is open to people of all genders and backgrounds. We maintain a zero-tolerance policy toward xenophobia, homophobia, ableism, or any form of discrimination. The venue is fully accessible and includes an accessible bathroom, cloakroom, and changing room. There is a sober bar.

The venue is located in Dalston. The exact address will be shared with participants one day before the event. It’s a beautiful space and we’re sure you’ll love it.

Duration: 3 hours

Bio

Lene Vollhardt  is a performance artist and dancer working at the edge of choreography, ritual score, and speculative law. With a background in moving image and training in contemporary dance and Butoh, they craft solo and collaborative performances on ecstatic states, porous bodies, and strange intimacies with non-human assemblages. Lamentation, spiritual technologies, and speculative mythologies appear as choreographic tools, tracing the flickering boundary between enlightenment and breakdown. Lene also co-directs The Sphere, an art-led experiment in collective futurity and new infrastructures for live art.

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