Postworkshop | 12.-16. August 08

Biography K.J. Holmes

K.J. Holmes is an independent dance artist based in Brooklyn NY who has been exploring improvisation as process and performance since 1981. She teaches, choreographs and performs at festivals, universities and venues throughout the world, as a soloist and in her collaborations with artists such as Simone Forti, Image Lab (Lisa Nelson, Karen Nelson and Scott Smith) and in the work of Steve Paxton. Her influences include Contact Improvisation, Body-Mind Centering (r), Yoga (certified teacher 2007), Authentic movement, Ideokinesis, Alexander and Feldenkrais techniques, Martial Dance, world vocal studies and contemporary dance and theater. A 1999 graduate of the School for Body-Mind Centering, K.J. is adjunct faculty at New York University Experimental Theater Wing/ongoing teacher Movement Research NYC/has a private practice in Dynamic Alignment and Reintegration/and is currently studying Sanford Meisner acting technique at the William Esper Studio in NYC as well as developing an evening length piece entitled This is where we are (or take arms against a sea of troubles) which looks at where the body and language meet.

"CONTACT IMPROVISATION - Performance as Exposure."

The training of contact improvisation is a physical practice that includes increasing range of motion, awakening awareness and clarifying intention. We learn through kinetic feedback with another as well as through exploring different patterns of movement and how all of our senses lead us into dancing. Preparing to perform requires more than awareness, it asks us to be seen and to see. In this workshop, we will focus on meeting truthfully and directly the unexpected. Contact Improvisation will be our entrance into the physicality of our images and applications of Body Mind Centering (r) will fine tune us to the mechanics of our instruments - our bodies. Weight, mass and breath become movement, become landscape, become story, become question, become idea. We will play with heightening our senses and perceptions, amplifying our awareness to expose more of our interior, making the invisible visible to play with time and space. Witnessing, reading, writing and the voice will be used to further engage and enliven our imaginations and for discovering new challenges and risks. How do we ready ourselves for performing and who is the being in the body?