Teachers biographies and class descriptions of the contactfestival 2023!
LEVELS:
The classes are not divided into levels. In case the teacher found it necessary to ask for certain abilities you will find it inside their class description.
Please read the descriptions and respect your own limits.
In the registration process you will choose your intensive. Just make your decision depending on the themes of the intensives. The classes you can choose spontaneously at the Festival.
On the first day the focus will be on Contact Improvisation principles.
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last update 18th of June 23 |
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| INTENSIVES |
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| Matan Levkovich |
IL/AT |
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is the founder of the Movement Lab - a vehicle for movement education and choreographic work. His practice is influenced by his rich background in contemporary dance, martial arts, contact improvisation, somatic practises, applied anatomy and more. In the last decade, he devoted himself to educate people from all over the globe about better movement and to reflect upon urgent social phenomena through the medium of performance art. His passion for research and discovery drives him daily to expand his understanding and to further develop himself as a human being.
https://movementlab.eu/, https://matanlevkowich.com |
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MOVEMENT INTELLIGENCE
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| INTEGRATION - AWARENESS - PLAYFULNESS |
Movement Intelligence weaves together physical exploration and discourse, in a search for a greater understanding of the human experience. The practice challenges stylistic and traditional notions of ‘technique’ and lingers on the tension between universal motor principles and individual embodiment of skills. MI examines the relationship between first-person experience of motion and its empirical manifestation while tracing the cultural norms that govern our understanding of the body-mind and its potential.
The MI apparatus offers applicable information from various movement disciplines and cultivates a tolerant space to examine ideas both physically and cognitively. Offering linear and nonlinear learning experiences, the practice gravitates towards integration as a quality of being. Using communication and adaptation as meta-practices, the practice proposes a path to merge imagination and reality, intuition and analysis, the individual and the collective. |
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| Konstantinos Gerardos |
GR |
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started dancing at the National School of Dance in Athens when he was 11 years old. He continued his studies at the Morianova Professional Dance School and graduated from the Professional Dance School of Stavroupoli. From 1989-2004 he danced for the Thessaloniki Dance Theatre. His career as a dancer has continued until today. In 2001, he founded his own company, ‘VIS MOTRIX DANCE COMPANY’ based at the Vis Motrix Performance Studio in Thessaloniki and has been creating and directing its performances in Greece and abroad (Great Britain, Germany, Spain). He has also worked as an actor for the ‘Nees Morfes’ Theatre Company and as a choreographer for theatre and opera. During his work as a dancer and choreographer for the past 30 years, Konstantinos Gerardos has also developed a great teaching experience in Classical and Contemporary Dance, Improvisation, CI, Partnering, Ensemble Improvisation, Composition, Choreography and Performance in professional dance schools and acting schools. He has taught Improvisation and Choreography at the Dance and Performance course at the University of Lincoln in England and workshops in contemporary dance and CI in Spain, Germany and Canada. He has collaborated with Chris Aiken, Angie Houser Kirstie Simpson, Nita Little, Ray Chung, Eckhard Müller, Gregor Weber, Thomas Mettler, Yaniv Mintzer. |
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| LEANING TO THE UNKNOWN |
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| CI - SKILLS - IMPROVISATION |
There are many reasons to improvise: warming up, creating specific movement for choreography, bonding groups of people together, exploring new movement qualities, achieving a particular somatic state, creating a performance. In this intensive, we will attend to the use of improvisation as material to enrich our CI skills and improve the quality of touch and movement in contact with another dancer. We will zoom into the tangible body and its physiology, skin, soft tissue, muscles and bones to inspire our dance. Working solo and in contact we will clarify their role in our personal way of moving and in CI. Isometric positions will clarify the use of our muscles and playing with the soft tissue of our bodies solo and in contact, they will enrich the sensitivity of our perception through the skin. We will study the architecture, function and movement qualities of specific body parts like the spine, the hip joints, the torso, the pelvis or the extremities to improve our skills when we are in contact with our partner. Exploring different ways of rolling, sliding, on or off the floor and using the floor as well as a partner to support our travelling through space will bring lightness and clarify our relationship with space, time and gravity. Starting from the known we will find the tracks to the unknown, starting from the familiar and the reliable we will travel to the unanticipated and the unpredictable. Starting from our own bodies (solo) we will investigate the elements of improvisation that will help us to improve our improvisational awareness, the ability of listening, not only to our own body but also to our partner's body, and to experience a dance that is born from our mutual surrendering to each other using improvisation as a tool.
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| Susanne Martin |
DE |
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I am an improvisation-based choreographer, performer, teacher, and researcher. I present my work internationally in solo performances, collaborative stage works, lecture performances, and workshops. In my teaching I focus on what I call sense-ability, response-ability, and play. In my performance practice I focus on the exciting tensions between improvisation, meaning making, total involvement, and ironic distancing. In my research I focus on artistic research methods, critical narrations of the aging body (see book “Dancing Age(ing)”), and improvisation as pathway for learning and the producing knowledge. Festivals that presented my performances include: International Dance and Theatre Festival (Gothenburg), Aerowaves (London), Nottdance (Nottingham), Opera Estate Veneto (Bassano del Grappa), Tanec Praha (Prague). In my current postdoctoral research project at EPFL, Switzerland I examine dance improvisation in its potential to rethink and advance processes of learning and researching in a Technical University. My practice of and love for contact improvisation informs all these doings.
www.susannemartin.de |
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| JAM SWEET/SOUR |
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| CI - FUNDAMENTALS - STRATEGIES |
How to make CI jamming an interesting, enjoyable practice? This question is especially relevant for people who are new to this form, but it also comes up for long-term CI dancers. I jam regularly for more than 20 years by now. I still enjoy it and I still learn from it. In this intensive I want to share some strategies and tools around how to enter a jam, how to feel involved, find a focus, and shift focus during jamming. We’ll address and explore issues around dancing, watching, resting, studying, choice making, caring, fear, self-protection, finding and dropping energy, connection, and artistic pleasure while jamming. We will spend time not only on jam pleasure strategies and jam survival strategies but also on some basic technical issues like rolling, centre-to-centre work, gradually giving weight to a partner and (importantly) taking weight off again. Overall, we will use the class to support each other in expanding our repertoires as jammers and CI dancers. PS: This intensive emanates from the single class ‘Jam Sweet/Sour’ at Freiburg Festival 2017. I thank all participants from 2017 for their curious and joyous experimentations, which inspired me to dig even deeper into jam questions this year.
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| Simonetta Alessandri |
IT/UK
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Simonetta is an Italian dance artist and a somatic educator based in London. She applies the Feldenkrais Method in dance and movement training and in performance making. She teaches at Trinity Laban, Goldsmiths University and London Contemporary Dance School. Her work is informed by more than 30 years of dancing, teaching and choreographing. Her choreography has been for dance companies, student pieces, large scale opera, improvised performance, site specific and movement direction for theatre. She taught for more than 20 years in Italy and kept Contact Improvisation alive in Roma for 10 years with her classes and jams. She was one of the few dance practitioner in Italy who began working with CI in the 90’s. She has been a guest teacher in Germany, Colombia, UK, Norway, Israel, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Taiwan. She obtained the Post Graduated Diploma at London Contemporary Dance School, she is a qualified teacher of the Feldenkrais Method and she holds the Teacher Certificate of the Royal Academy of Dance. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is one of the founders of CI@Goldsmiths, newly established association of dance artists dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of Contact Improvisation in London and UK. |
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| SENSING NEW PATHWAYS INTO REINVIGORATED DANCING |
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| FELDENKRAIS - IMPROVISATION - CONTACT |
With the Feldenkrais Method we direct our attention to internal sensations, without judgment. Acknowledging the intelligence of the body, but curious about new possibilities, we identify habits and clarify choices to promote efficiency, freedom and a sense of ease that involve our whole selves. We will work with fundament patterns that are at the base of any human function such as turning, bending, closing, opening, extending, reaching while exploring new and unfamiliar pathways hidden inside. This specific way of cultivating awareness through movement will magnify our senses, affecting the quality of our presence and alertness, nourishing the journey from inside-out while engaging in self-discovery and authenticity. We will find a felt sense of self that aims to relate to the others and to the environment, to be experienced and reinforced. The group’s shared somatic process will create trust and will support experimentation and imagination while working with larger and more complex movement in solo, duet, trios and group. When we engage with touch and weight we find more sophistication in sensing, reading, and communicating during the physical conversation. The possibility emerges to refresh our CI vocabulary and to explore it in more depth, by experimenting with hidden and unfamiliar pathways, or looking at the more familiar CI vocabulary from another perspective in order to enjoy authentic, unpredictable and reinvigorated dancing.
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| CLASSES |
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| FRIDAY |
Kim-Jomi Fischer
Marta Alstadseter |
NL
NO/NL |
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Kim and Marta met in 2015. Their different backgrounds in contemporary dance and circus sparked a blooming collaboration. During the last years they have been creating their own movement vocabulary, diving into the possibilities and qualities they find within this symbiosis, exploring their identity across languages. This has naturally lead them into creating work together, creating a space where they can go beyond the frames of their disciplines and dive into the physical communication in between them. They are making work in Norway and the Netherlands. Besides performing, they also teach and share their work through several forms of workshops and movement labs. |
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| Accessing Structures |
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| Our work is characterized by combining techniques of partnering acrobatics and dance, often using principles of CI as a connective tissue. We aim to 'decompose the trick' and treat every part of the movement as equally important. Our workshop will start with simple themes and keep building on them to bring the body in a sensitive and listening state. Then we are ready to carry each other in a more efficient and lighter way, through our bone structures. We will focus on transporting weight through our centre and making ourselves available for being partnered. We will also deal with differences in body and mass, offer some tools from basic partnering acrobatics and build human structures. |
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| Sarah Konner |
US |
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Sarah is a dance artist, improviser and Somatic Movement Educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Sarah teaches through Movement Research, Gibney Dance, and Smith College; co-organizes CI Ground Research since 2012; and leads a yearly all-women's CI Lab weekend. Sarah's performance work has been presented at museums, theaters, and colleges throughout the US. Recent collaborators include Chavasse Dance & Performance, Beth Graczyk, Anneke Hansen, Shura Baryshnikov, setGo Performance, and Austin Selden. Sarah holds a BFA in Dance and a BS in Environmental Science, is a current MFA candidate at Smith College, and is certified in Yoga, Pilates, and Body-Mind Centering. www.SarahandAustinDance.com |
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| Deciding While Falling |
Principles |
| We build listening skills within the dance by feeling the pull of gravity, the weight of our bodies in movement, and how our weight creates momentum. In this place of deep listening to what is happening moment to moment, we also have a solo of choice-making to play with and craft time. As do our partners. In this class we will build deep listening to shared weight, momentum, and flow, and then find individual agency within the duet to join, direct, and redirect waves of momentum. We will use these tools and others to practice changing the time of flow in order to create cadence and poetry within our solo and gift surprise to ourselves and each other. |
| Avital Bar Zuri |
IL |
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Avital Bar Zuri is a mom, an artist, dance and somatic movement therapist and a body worker. She is a CMA (certified movement analyst) who implements the system of Laban in her work. Avital met CI awhile back and fell in-love. Ever since, she graduated a three years’ program of CI, performance and BF in Jerusalem, studied with various teachers around the worls and taught long weekend workshops and weekly classes. Taught in festivals both in Israel and the US.
“I believe that working with the body enables deep life changes. Movement is constant change and our body is the container where it reveals. For me the joy is to work with people to understand their patterns and re-pattern them.” |
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| “The 7 dead inches” – |
Principles |
Bartenieff relates to our pelvis as the 7 dead in’. For reasons such as our lifestyle (sitting more than the past) and cultural restrictions, the pelvis becomes less mobile. As a result, sequencing of movement throughout our body can get lost. In CI, sequencing movement through our pelvis is crucial, learning how to navigate the pelvis in space, directing it and learn how to follow it in order to connect to our partner are all basic actions but still not so simple to fulfill.
In this class, we will explore, both anatomically and experientially, the ways in which we can move our pelvis. We will invite mobility, share weight and direct it when we dance with another partner. |
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| Sergio Palomares |
E |
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Acrobat, performer, teacher and dancer of CI. Background in martial arts, circus acrobatics and contemporary dance. Since 2016 he has been traveling doing performances, teaching and training CI, which leads him to visit and live in different countries in Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America with the purpose of knowing how CI is lived and experienced in different communities, regions and cultures. Since 2019 he is professor in the Degree ok Contemporary Circus at ELCIRCA in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he investigates the possible unions between the most acrobatic movements in a state of improvisation as well as the use of CI as a performative tool. Now he is interested in the most physical and dynamic part of the CI, looking for maximum smoothness in the extreme movements. |
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| Fall After Einstein |
Principles |
| “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mystery. It is the fundamental emotion that perches on the cradle of truth and true science ”Albert Einstein. This class is an invitation to explore and feel gravity as the sensation of a constant fall that guides our improvisation. Experience the spiral fall, in solo and in the meeting with the other, as a pattern with which nature is built and the direction of gravity act. The space "falls" continuously in a spiral, in dance the bodies fall up and down, the proposal will be to find the maximum possible efficiency and to orient into the space from the weight and the sensation of gravity. Returning to the question of Steve Paxton "what does the apple feel falling from the tree?", we would ask "why does space-time tend the apple to fall from the tree?" |
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| Rosalind Holgate Smith |
UK |
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Rosalind is a Dance Artist and Somatic Movement Practitioner. She has an MA in Dance Creative Practice, a BA in Fine Art & Choreography and currently Lectures in Dance at Lincoln University. She has been practicing CI for over 10 years since encountering it as a student at Dartington. She has applied CI in teaching diverse groups ages & abilities. Further inspired by Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement and Experiential Anatomy she also creates performances and installations and has developed a vocabulary for moving outdoors. Rosalind is also a Yoga Instructor and following her love of water teaches the Shaw Method for swimming, integrating the Alexander technique. |
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| Where is the weight? |
Principles |
| In this class we will explore how to safely place our weight. We will begin mapping some boney landmarks of the pelvis to locate our centre of gravity and establish a sense of rootedness. From here we will play; shifting and placing our weight up, down and in relationship. We will also investigate gradually deposing weight onto more static structures, touching through different layers of tissue, leaning into and looking through the skin to read the support of our architecture. Working slowly will provide a framework to examine our boundaries, how much do we want to give? Slowness will further establish a foundation for turning up the speed and releasing into more dynamic dancing. |
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| Christopher Chu |
TW |
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Born in Hong Kong, Christopher received his BS in Civil Engineering from the National Taiwan University where he started dancing and has never stopped. Chu is the founding member and current Executive Director of Ku & Dancers, and a member of the Performing Arts Alliance, Taiwan. In 2017, he received his MFA degree from Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) Dance School, of which he is a current PhD student. Chu started CI in 1992 when it was first introduced into Taiwan by Ming-shen Ku. He has been teaching CI for more than twenty years, mainly in Taiwan but also in Canberra, Hong Kong, Beijing and Nanjing. He is now active as a freelance dancer, choreographer and dance teacher. |
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| Thinking in Movement |
Principles |
| Focusing on basic principles of CI in a phenomenological approach, this class will start with simple standing and walking. Establishing the awareness of body in movement through different perceptions, mainly on the sensation of touch, we explore our being in the world and finally to include others. The touch becomes a major link. The interaction gradually established will be a process of listening and suggestion, thus developing into a non-corrective, pleasurable and empathic improvisation dialogue. It consolidates the ideas of Sheets-Johnstone’s primacy in movement and Merleau-Ponty’s primacy in perception, and enriched with the eastern philosophy of Lao-tzu. |
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| SATURDAY |
Kim-Jomi Fischer
Marta Alstadseter |
NL
NO/NL |
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Kim and Marta met in 2015. Their different backgrounds in contemporary dance and circus sparked a blooming collaboration. During the last years they have been creating their own movement vocabulary, diving into the possibilities and qualities they find within this symbiosis, exploring their identity across languages. This has naturally lead them into creating work together, creating a space where they can go beyond the frames of their disciplines and dive into the physical communication in between them. They are making work in Norway and the Netherlands. Besides performing, they also teach and share their work through several forms of workshops and movement labs. |
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| Accessing Structures |
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| Our work is characterized by combining techniques of partnering acrobatics and dance, often using principles of CI as a connective tissue. We aim to 'decompose the trick' and treat every part of the movement as equally important. Our workshop will start with simple themes and keep building on them to bring the body in a sensitive and listening state. Then we are ready to carry each other in a more efficient and lighter way, through our bone structures. We will focus on transporting weight through our centre and making ourselves available for being partnered. We will also deal with differences in body and mass, offer some tools from basic partnering acrobatics and build human structures. |
| Barbara Berti |
IT/DE |
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Born and raised in Bologna, Italy, Barbara Berti bases herself in Berlin. She works on her choreographic projects and collaborates with dance and theatre artists in performance artwork through Western Europe: Isabelle Schad, Tino Seghal, Judith Seng, Gabi Schilling, and Bauhaus Dessau. She rooted her career in graphic design, physical theatre, dance, and meditation; continued studying different techniques in contemporary dance, contact improvisation, meditation, somatic works, and body-mind centering approaches. In her choreographic works, she is interested in issues of kinesthetic empathy and the embodied transmission of physical experience in the interaction with the audience. She is leading two contact improvisation weekly jams in berlin and a regular class of CI. |
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| THE TACTILE ATTENTION |
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| In the class we will investigate: - How do we use our gaze and eyes in contact improvisation and dance? - How does it affect our distribution of weight during lifting and falling? - How does it affect our physicality and attention in the partner, towards decision making and space? I work with some materials, coming from the method which I develop as research and choreographic language. This method guide throughout different states of mind and open the awareness between the inner, outer and middle space, and questioning their communication and borders. The aim of the workshop is focused on one element of the method: the eyes, as instruments of investigation and transformation. |
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| Anir Leben |
DE |
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is a dancer and musician, teaching and hosting classes and events that inspire presence and aliveness in the individual as well as in the group body. She graduated in Dance, Improvisation and Performance at TIP, bewegungsart Freiburg 2013 and guest-studied Rhythmik (music and dance) at the UDK Berlin. For the past 9 years, she’s been teaching internationally and creating events in and out of Berlin. In 2016 she founded the ScoreJAM, a JAM & LAB format aiming to contribute to raising the CI practice quality in Berlin. Recently she also founded the Conscious Dance format "AbunDance" that is inspired by the works of Gabrielle Roth's 5-Rhythms. Anir encourages curiosity, self-responsibility and the investigative approach of each individual. www.anirleben.com |
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| Change & Response-Ability |
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| I'm curious about how practicing different tastes of Changes with our CI bodies can inspire our responses to range into more possibilities out of which we can choose the wisest and most fun one. The current situation of our planet and its changing climate touches many of us deeply and often we are startled and respond unwisely out of our survival fear patterns. In this class I'll be proposing several exercises and Improvisation Scores that inspire sensing and playing with Change in different ways and explore questions like: Where in my body can I sense change? What speed and color do the switches come with and what are my typical responses? How can I expand my range of answering to those alterations? Be ready for oscillating between moments of sensing in stillness, weird exercises, wildly improvising with scores and verbal exchange. |
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| Ayelet Yekutiel |
IL |
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Ayelet is a certified ‘Axis Syllabus’ teacher, and ‘Somatic Movement Educator’ of ‘Body Mind Centering®’. Graduate of ‘SEAD’- Major in Dance (AT) and ‘Kelim’ Choreography Studies (IL). Worked as a creative dancer for companies and creators such as: Kolben Dance Company, Dafi Altabeb, Daphna Horenczyk (IL), ‘The Symptoms’ Theatre and Dance Company (HU), Lina Hoehne (DE) Michael Schmid, Benjamin Vandewalle (BE), Sara Shelton Mann (US) and more. She is a founding member of ‘Augustine Collective’ and an independent teacher and choreographer, performing and sharing her work internationally in contemporary dance, CI and movement research contexts. |
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| Inner Ear Treasures |
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| An exploration of the magical inner ear, where both tone and tonus, sound and equilibrium, and orientation in space - are sensed. Diving into a dynamic architecture that includes the fluid-vibrating shell shaped cochlea, the vestibule with its gravity indicating crystals, and a labyrinth of semicircular canals- corresponding to the three planes of motion. We will engage in hands on, listening, somatization, sound, movement and CI. Using tools and principals from BMC® and Axis Syllabus, we will explore sensation and perception in our three-dimensional dancing bodies within the matrix of space-time continuum. |
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| Hugh Stanier |
UK/DE |
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is a Contemporary Dance Artist specializing in Contact Improvisation. He has over 15 years of teaching & performance experience. He has taught intensives internationally at the Goa CI Festival, Goa Dance residency, Berlin CI Festival, Portugal CI Gathering, & Thailand CI conference as well as organizing his own workshops and retreats in the UK, Portugal, Germany, Israel and India. Presently, what interests Hugh most about teaching and facilitating movement is how to create and hold spaces for other people to find a deeper connection to themselves through open curiosity & playful exploration. |
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| Together-ing |
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| CI is a group practice. A continually evolving and changing space held by the attention of the movers present. In this workshop we will focus on how we sculpt space as a group, open our collective perception and look at how we move as a whole. How we frame dances by watching, giving space, feeling when to move, and when to be still. We will work with structures and scores to frame improvisation, and specific techniques for working in trios and larger groups. We focus on cultivating a deeper awareness of listening, breathing, giving, receiving, and timing as a group. |
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| MONDAY |
| Jess Curtis |
US/DE |
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Jess Curtis is an award-winning choreographer, director and performer committed to making performances informed by experimentation, innovation and social relevance. Based in Berlin and San Francisco since 2000, he and his trans-continental performance company, Jess Curtis/Gravity have premiered 13 full-length productions and numerous shorter works with co-producers in the U.S. and Europe, performing in over 70 cities in 15 countries. Curtis is active as a writer, advocate and community organizer in the fields of contemporary dance and performance, and teaches accessible Dance, Contact Improvisation and Interdisciplinary Performance workshops throughout the US and Europe. www.jesscurtisgravity.org |
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| Sensing, Dancing and Performing |
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| How do our senses inform, support, interrupt and enable the (inter) actions we call dancing and performing? In this workshop we will work from the most basic building blocks of experience, unpacking sensation, perception, impulse, emotion, attention, reflex, and reaction. We will ask “Is freedom the state of having choices, or a state beyond choosing?” We will look at both possibilities, smash them together to see what kind of messy realities we can construct for ourselves. We will work in the sweaty modes of physical performance where weight, breath, momentum, desire and adrenalin intervene in conceptual structures to create pleasure, satisfaction and a rich range of performing experience. |
| Jadi Carboni |
IT/A |
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Jadi is a Teacher, Choreographer, Dancer, body-worker, outrider of different performing arts, and healing practices. In 2001 after winning a scholarship at the Biennale of Venice, she moved to Germany to deepen her CI and BMC studies with Stephanie Maher and Ka Rustler. She regularly visited Contact dance Festival and CI classes in Germany, Italy, Greece, UK, and Poland, where she follows Kirstie Simson, Ray Chung, Nita Little, and Joerg Hassmann. She trained martial arts (Qi Gong, Aikido), overtone singing, and several bodywork techniques, as Sound therapy, Reiki, and Zen Therapy. In 2004, she began to share her CI practice initiating her first Lab at SNDO, to continue in 2006 with her first CI course for Body Surf Scotland. From 2010-2016, back in Berlin, she thought CI for the professional Dance Program at “Etage”. |
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| The Permeable Touch |
Somatics into CI |
| My interest focus on the qualities that each specific touch carries within. We explore different intensities "in–tensions”, and muscle tonus, to approach the act of yielding, sharing center, counterbalance. We observe, sense, and embody our perceptions to transform it into motion and dive in our contact dances with freedom and confidence. The class begins with a bodywork, which includes awareness exercises, to connect with the space and the inner sense of the body. With different partners, we investigate textures and qualities in the body, to identify their specific tactile and kinesthetic potential. Then space opens for longer improvisation sessions to deepen into the practice. The class ends with a grounding touch practice, a technique I developed to ground the body and to integrate the new experiences. |
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| TUESDAY |
| Gabriele Reuter |
DE |
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Gabriele is a choreographer, dancer and urbanist based in Berlin. At the heart of her artistic practice and teaching is an ongoing interest in improvisation in performance. In this context she has collaborated and performed with many artists in the field and initiated a range of performance events. Since 2009 she performs with the London-based improvisation collective “Neat Timothy”, co-creating performance evenings with Rick Nodine, Seke Chimutengwende, Jane Leaney and Bryony Perkins. She has also collaborated extensively with Susanne Martin. Gabriele taught CI, Contemporary Dance, Composition in dance institutions and Universities internationally since 2003. Gabriele co-lead the workshop program of Tanzfabrik Berlin between 2009-18. www.gabrielereuter.de |
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| Group Genius |
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| For the duration of this class we are a temporary collective of both performers and audience. We spend our time creating instant compositions, feeding from the intelligence of many bodies. Non-stop listening, noticing and responding. Non-stop resonance and spontaneous decision making. Both when we are performing and when we are watching. Sensing when to stay out and when to come in. Agreeing on rules of play, only to test their limits. Engaging and disengaging from the group. Cultivating our awareness of the shifting landscape of the space around us, when in and out of contact. Improvising groups have their own intelligence: a transformative super-power, allowing us to step into the unknown at any moment, to trust and co create with whoever is around us. |
| Tamara Ashley |
UK |
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I am a dancer, performance artist, yoga and somatic practitioner, teacher and researcher interested in exploring the moving body-mind for the development of creativity, freedom, self-expression and healing. I have practiced the form of CI since 1996, and have integrated this with studies in yoga, developmental movement and energy healing. Teachers who have influenced me include Nancy Stark Smith, KJ Holmes, Nina Martin, Andrew Harwood, Katy Dymoke and Janis Claxton. I recently co-facilitated the UK Contact Improvisation Teacher’s Exchange, and ECITE in the UK in 2020. I am a senior lecturer in dance at the University of Bedfordshire. |
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| Environments of Energy/Touch |
Somatics into CI |
| In this workshop, we will explore energetic and tactile layers of practice that can construct a rich and enlivened dancing environment in CI. We will start by exploring the internal physical layers of sensation in the bones, the connective tissues, and the fluids. We will then extend the exploration to the inner and outer layers of skin investigating how we meet the world and one another. Moving beyond the physical layer, we will also explore how to access and work with the energetic layer through our dancing together and in solo. The workshop will offer a series of experiences and tools that help deepen the navigation of inner and outer environments through touch and energetic work. |
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| MUSICIANS |
| CHRISTOPHER A. WILLIAMS |
A |
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Christopher A. Williams (1981, San Diego) makes and researches (mostly) experimental music. He leads the project *(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics* at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. As a composer and contrabassist, Williams' work runs the gamut from chamber music, improvisation, and radio art to collaborations with dancers, sound artists, and visual artists. His artistic research takes the forms of both conventional academic publications and practice-based multimedia projects. He has played and worked with a variety of dancers, improvising and otherwise, for about 15 years. Regular partners have included Jadi Carboni and Martin Sonderkamp. In larger jams he enjoys exploring different scales of presence and interaction, sometimes moving, sometimes sounding, sometimes just hanging out. Yes you are welcome to touch him and the bass (politely).
christopherisnow.com
improv-ethics.net tactilepaths.net |
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| MIRIAM SCHMITT |
CH |
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As a passionate musician and dancer Miriam lives the interconnection of both art forms. She has played for many Jams and Festivals as Soloist and in different formations. She teaches “Music and Movement” at the University of Arts Zürich ZHdK and holds diverse Band projects always connected to free movement, community dance and improvisation. She accompanies dance performances and movement theater and conducts choirs and singing circles. Besides Contact Improvisation she researches as a musician in the Field of Ecstatic Dance and Butoh with interest in the transformative power of trance states through rhythms and sounds. While playing music for movement spaces she falls into states of non-doing, letting her sounds join the dance floor in a subtle and silent way.
telegram: https://t.me/TanzeZuLivemusik |
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