Emotions ran high as these concerns were shared in various ways throughout the teachers’ meeting. One of the most memorable formats for sharing this was the 5x10 structure. In this structure, ten individuals sign up to talk for 5 minutes each; the group listens to the one who speaks around matters he/she wishes to share with the community. There is no dialogue response. We did three rounds of this at our teachers’ meeting, with ten people talking in each round about political issues that connected to our personal daily lives and how they affected our work with CI (and also how CI influences our daily life), which stirred up a lot of emotions.

These events and conversations led to the formation of a new festival facilitation group called ‘Political Ecologies in CI’. The aim of this group was to hold spaces within the festival for continued dialogues on current issues and their resonance within CI practice. These included: the ‘Political Ecologies in CI discussion table’ at mealtimes, a series of curated touch + talk performances, a moving discussion facilitated during a lab slot, and a questionnaire which all participants were invited to complete by reflecting on how they feel their CI practice impacts their interactions in non-dance-specific political or social situations. Responses were collected and posted daily on the bulletin board.

This theme was continued in other ways, through, for example, at least one of the two featured talks of the festival. Writer Christian Felber was invited to speak in a lab slot, on ‘What the world economy can learn from contact improvisation’, part of an interest in verbalizing the intentions of CI practice, in hopes these can inform other social or economic processes. In what has come to be known as Freiburg’s ‘history talk’, Sara Shelton Mann spoke about the development of CI principles within her lifetime and work as a director in choreography; the impact of her meeting with practitioners/artists in West Coast and the development of her personal approach to CI through energy work.

Festival intensives were led by Sara Shelton Mann, Scott Wells, Adrian Russi, Christina Klissouni and Shahar Dor, who was accompanied by his assistant and son of nine years, Inbar. A series of classes were taught by three sets of team-teachers, Anya Cloud with Karen Schaffman, Katja Mustonen with Monika Gallardo, and Richard & Malaika Sarco-Thomas. Further classes were offered by David Lim, Matan Levkowich, Stéphanie Auberville, Robin Berkelmans, Ulli Wittemann, Sabine Sonnenschein, Stuart Phillips and Eryn Rosenthal. Two researchers at the festival presented their work and sourced new material. Researching dancers’ experiences of dancing, Manuel Krumrain invited dancers to tell him a story of a ‘remarkable dance’ they have experienced. He recorded these audio narratives as part of a project to create an audio CD of CI stories. Visual artist Sasha Bion’s project on ‘changing’ bodies, filmed snippets of (carefully framed) moments of changing from the dressing rooms of the festival. Installed in a hallway was an exhibit of Manuel’s previous work; a screen suspended above a crash mat played a film made from footage taken from two go pro cameras mounted on CI dancers’ heads, with the camera pointing backward to capture the facial expressions of each dancer in the duet. Two frames of footage taken throughout the dance played side by side, accompanied by sounds from the duet. Spontaneous live performances peppered the week, supported by the SPT (Spontaneous Performance Team) including a momentous, ritualistic and operatic instruction on how to wash dishes, and Mary Pearson’s soulful singing announcements. Jams were mostly silent and unaccompanied by music.

The performance night this year was assembled through the efforts of a ‘secret, flying curator’, an anonymous individual who lurked in the shadows of jams, seeking dancers to snatch and put on show. Former teacher Antje Schur was revealed in her role when the performance evening began and hosted a ‘Lucky Dip’ score, pulling from a hat the length of a performance, the number of performers, and the names of the dancers.