Ensemble Thinking ™ Improv Workshops in Oslo

with Karen Høybakk Mikalsen and Meagan O’Shea

Every second Tuesday from 10.02-21.04.2026 

18:00 – 20:00h

Studio: PRAXIS Oslo 

Cost: 1750 NOK for all 6 classes

Early Bird price: 1500 NOK pay by 20.01.2026

300 NOK for drop-ins

Join Karen Høybakk Mikalsen and Meagan O’Shea for an Ensemble Thinking (ET) Improv workshop series. 

Over 6 workshops, we’ll introduce the essential principles of ET, practice together, build skills and develop the  ‘ensemble’, Then we’ll play - creating conditions for the as yet unimaginable to emerge - making dances together in real time.

Ensemble Thinking is a unifying system of ideas and scores that are a series of instructions for making dance, and for social organizing. Improv games train attentive listening, embodied presence, compositional choices, and interaction in a group. We work on developing solo signatures and breaking habits, and we seek coherence; giving and taking space, initiating ideas and surrendering, creating chaos and order. ET is a collaborative practice that sharpens our ability to discover, initiate, and support collective actions toward a performance - a common whole. Simply put, this is a group improv practice where everyone is a soloist contributing to what the work needs and how it engages an audience.

Karen and Meagan have been in each other's artistic sphere and part of the international Ensemble Thinking community for more than 15 years. Now in the same city, they are forming a creative catalyst for Ensemble Thinking improv practice in Oslo. 

We invite dancers and physical performers with some improv experience to join.

Every second Tuesday from February 10th to April 21st, 2026

(weeks 7, 9 , 11, 13 1,5 17)

from 18:00-20:00

at PRAXIS Oslo (Hausmania, Vestre Elvebakke 10)

Early bird price 1500 NOK, by January 20, 2026

Regular price 1750 NOK

If price is a barrier, there are some sliding scale spots possible

Drop-ins 300 NOK

Please register by sending an email to info@livingmovement.no

More information available at www.standupdance.com/blog

Or www.livingmovement.no

Photo: Tristán Pérez-Martín

BIOS for Karen and Meagan

Karen Høybakk Mikalsen

Karen Høybakk Mikalsen is an Oslo-based dance artist, choreographer, teacher and project developer educated in Stockholm, Salzburg and New York. Throughout the last 20 years she has been deeply invested in ensemble work/Ensemble Thinking (ET), collective processes, performance practice and signature research and she has created numerous of outdoors/site specific/flock work, collaborative art projects and in later years community projects on loneliness/togetherness with immigrants. She is a Lower Left member since 2019 and a Certifying teacher of ET nationally and internationally.

Meagan O’Shea

Working across forms and borders, queer, dance+ artist, Meagan O’Shea (she|they) activates people individually and collectively. Devising “Off the wall, impossible to categorize, fun” (Montreal Gazette) performances, Meagan examines ideas from unexpected angles, treating process like a science experiment, she uses body and interaction with the audience as test site, jumping between forms as she seeks to unite disparate ideas. Meagan works with ensemble improv, refining a process through teaching in professional training programs internationally and the ongoing dance like no one is watching – ensemble improv performance that animates / disrupts public space. Meagan is part of the first Ensemble Thinking™ Certification teaching cohort.

“O’Shea is loved for her ‘dance like no one is watching’ street dance project” 

TO Live with Culture