July 20-26, 2025
“Speed has become the morality of our time.”
– Shogo Ohta (1939-2007)
What happens when we slow down deeply and look again at the delicious nature of our moment-to-moment interaction with self, with other, with motion and object, memory, imagination? What do we understand about the relationship between time and judgment, how we judge the value of, well… anything? How might slowing down invite us into deep reflection and fresh awareness of our actions and point us toward new clarity and unhurried resonance? Come to the Slow Tempo Workshop at Bearnstow to find out!
Slow Tempo is an approach to physical performance that incorporates a slow movement practice with an improvisational sensibility. Taught by choreographer Peter Kyle, the Slow Tempo workshop combines the physical training method of Japanese theater director Shogo Ohta (1939-2007) and contemporary dance techniques with the goal of inviting individuals into an exploration of the essential fact and spontaneity of “being here.”



Slow Tempo has broad application in all of the performing and creative arts, and provides opportunity for learning valuable life skills through contemplative practice. This work helps individuals develop:
- Improved concentration
- Sensitivity to the totality of thought and motion
- Greater efficiency in use of the body
- Refined skills in composition and silent narrative
Daily sessions begin with a thorough full-body warm-up, instruction in Slow Tempo technique, and structured improvisations allowing for free exploration of moving in extreme slowness where Ohta believed “we find fresh expression to defamiliarize our daily experience—to look again.” Most days are structured to include two three-four hour long work sessions (morning and afternoon) with a midday break. Throughout the workshop, participants develop their own slow tempo compositions to be performed on the final full day of the week. On Saturday morning our wrap-up typically follows breakfast and precedes departures.
While demanding of the body-mind in ways that develop sustained concentration, the slow tempo work is ideal for anyone interested in movement, performance, physical presence, composition and theatrical narrative, regardless of age, experience or ability.
Contact peter.kyle@trincoll.edu for more information.




Peter Kyle is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, filmmaker, and Artistic Director of Peter Kyle Dance, based in Hartford, Connecticut, where he is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Theater and Dance at Trinity College. Early in his career, he toured the world with Nikolais and Murray Louis Dance and has also performed in the companies of Molissa Fenley, Mark Morris, Erick Hawkins, Gina Gibney, Laura Glenn and the theater company P3/east. Having shown his own work on three continents, he has received numerous grants and awards, including from American Music Center, US Embassies in China and Ukraine, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, the Fulbright Specialist Program, the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, and the Movement Research Global Practice Sharing program. He regularly works internationally, most recently in Lithuania. He served as Associate Director of Bearnstow between 2017-2020 and eagerly looks forward to returning for the 11th Slow Tempo workshop there.