The following is an abstraction of conversations between three bodies: Georgia Petrali, Marika Rizzi, and Laura Hicks about this year’s festival.

G: “Souls, people… Friends and strangers… A whole neighbourhood, a handful of needs, emotions... Voices, joys and sorrows… Everything is changing yet my gaze remains fixed, unwavering.” —“Wrinkles and Dreams” Fysalida Dance © 2008 I am thinking of this text, as I step into the festival…

L: I am seeing and tasting. Honing and cultivating. Learning to own my own voice, moment of inspiration, knowledge, and history. I am reaching out and expanding from centre—putting all my limbs out…

M: I am playing with densities. Spaces are being occupied quickly in a short lapse of time, and I am interested in keeping a physical and visual relationship to the empty spaces that remain available. There is a huge amount of information here.

L: Spaces opening and closing becomes a part of the dance. Shapes and energies unfold within me, responding to changing densities.

G: Opening my senses and perceptions to the potential of time and space and my connection to fellow humans and nature, in the magic of living (or as a Greek, shall I say “of surviving”?) in the here and now, in the absolute void!

M: Keeping contact with my interior and the notion of a space inside me as I move toward the other to allow a response... The information I get while dancing in a room with 300 people is a unique situation and changes how I perceive the body moving.

L: I find myself inspired by the energy of the whole room and from the unexpected desire to perform. Feeling lost and watched at the same time makes me move differently.

M: I am becoming interested in questioning the imagination in relation to perception and sensations. Words are missing to define them.

L: This space allows me the opportunity to crawl on the floor next to someone I don’t know, and I am moved by the simplicity of this communication.

G: How can you not feel blessed when all of a sudden in this crazy world of life and death, of act and reaction, of care and ignorance, you are found with beautiful fellow humans who share their soul and body through movement in an unknown shared trip together?

M: For a few years now I have felt the need of proposing the practice to a different public. The values inherent to CI are huge. The transformative process into which it has brought me has been a serious invitation to consider sharing it, particularly with young people. Messages like collaboration, responsibility, trust, equality, giving support to someone, no competition, listen and follow, develop intuition…can be very constructive for young people today.

G: “My freedom ends where your freedom begins, your freedom begins where my freedom ends.” This Greek phrase follows me while experiencing the pulse of the festival. Oh, this idea of freedom and respect is organically happening and floating in the air! And how beautiful and honest it would be for societies to be inspired by such moral material and ways of thinking. This is where I try to stand and be as an artist, and as an individual.

L: Nita Little is speaking in Freiburg about how the changing nature of CI allows us to be active researchers. How the act of asking questions and noticing what’s there is political. How this art of inquiry can be seen as a kind of silent revolution. How the more we change our brains (through practicing CI), the more revolutionary we become!

G: Coming from the south of Europe and the isolated island of Crete, this is a very significant exchange of the “CI world” that resonates in my system and my artistic input! I shall keep on all these endless potential voyages and unknown destinies via kinesis within time and space well captured in my heart!

M: Ultimately, this festival gathering 300 people together, dancing and exchanging on the practice, is an astonishing way of collectively questioning the potential of CI. This year the political matter was particularly present, reflecting on our epoque and the contradictions it carries.

Georgia Petrali (GR) is an activist, performer, and choreographer; the artistic director of Fysalida Dance; and the founder of the Contact Improvisation Crete Festival.

Marika Rizzi (FR) is a freelance performer, teacher, researcher, and Shiatsu practitioner based in Paris. She is eternally questioning movement in different fields and with different publics.

Laura Hicks(CAN) is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher from Toronto, currently in graduate studies at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.