Preworkshop | 26.-31. July 08

Biography Peter Bingham

is a veteran practitioner of Contact and Improvisation in general. In the mid seventies Peter was a member of the performance trio FULCRUM He is the artistic director of EDAM Dance Co. (experimental dance and music) in Vancouver B.C. He has been creating choreographies and improvising performances for thirty years. Notable collaborators in the field of improvisation include Andrew Harwood, Chris Aiken, Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Marc Boivin, Lin Snelling, Ray Chung, Jeff Bliss, Julie Carr, Peter Ryan, Helen Walkley, and Nancy Stark Smith.

"CONTACT IMPROVISATION"

Contact has always been two fold for me. On one hand it is a movement meditation and practice and on the other hand it is the source material I love use for making performance material both Improvised and choreographed. It has nurtured me through the teaching of it and as the clay that I shape into performance. I believe it takes a very high level of practice to use as performance. It can be taught as a technique or simply as a way of communicating with another person. It is a very beautiful discipline and great recreation. As a daily practice for me and my Company Edam Dance I find it very nourishing. I teach ongoing class in my studio five days a week to keep it alive in this old body. I use it for conditioning and for peace of mind.
In this workshop we will work on partnering through the art of mobile support (underdancing). Using timing rather than strength we will examine the value of hands free contact dancing and balance. The classes will focus on listening through the point of contact, learning to receive information through the pressure in the touch and recognizing the force of the weight. There will be a focus on creativity by sensitizing the dancing to subtle signals and responding to subtle manipulation. We will include elements of release work and push patterns as we examine the flow of the body and its’ ability to take us in and out of the floor. We will study the head-tail connection and its relationship to delivering your pelvis into support through space, over and under your partner. We will work on eccentric contraction of the muscles to help soften your strength and strengthen your softness. We will utilize crescents and spirals to facilitate the underdancing, freeing up the body as we are supported by connecting the legs through the pelvis for more integrated balancing on your partner. We will examine bridging the skeleton out of the floor and into your partner taking advantage of these architectures to sequence underneath each other or draw our partners onto support. Keeping the feet moving to counter over stabilizing when taking weight will help us free up the flow of the point of contact.