Program
Schedule
3 intensives are offered. Each participant has to chose one of them for the whole week (= 4 morning classes) and express their choice while doing registration.
3 classes are offered for each sessions that announce them. You do not need to register and can chose at the last minute. The detailed planning of classes (who when) will only be announced at the festival itself.
There will also be some "guest teachers" who won't teach but will be there with their experience and curiosity. They will be announced here in a few weeks. If you are a teacher and want to come, please contact us.
Musicians will also be with us and will play a some jams and maybe at some classes : Barnabee TREE, Sébastien COSTE, Julien LABOUCHE. If you are a musician and want to come, please contact us
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | ||
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Morning practices |
Morning practices | Morning practices | Morning practices | Morning practices | Morning practices | ||
| MIAM MIAM 8h30-9h30 | ||||||||
INTENSIVES 10h–12h30 |
INTENSIVES 10h–12h30 |
INTENSIVES 10h–12h30 |
Do what you need |
INTENSIVES 10h–12h30 |
Warm up JAM 10h.. |
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| MIAM MIAM 13h– 14h | ||||||||
CLASS 14h30–17h30 |
CLASS 14h30–17h30 |
Présentation Underscore .. |
CLASS 14h30–17h30 |
Labs / ONE to ONEs (feedback dances et 1001 questions) |
...More JAM ...16h + closing Circle |
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| UNDERSCORE 15h30–18h30 |
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Welcome + Registration |
Do what you need |
Do what you need |
Do what you need |
Apero discussion |
Good Bye! |
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| MIAM MIAM 19h-20h | Bon voyage! |
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Opening Circle |
Warm up JAM |
PERFS 20h30–21h30 |
MUSIC JAM |
JAM |
PERFS 20h30–21h30 |
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Warm up JAM |
OPEN JAM |
JAM |
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Class
Robert ANDERSON UK
Robert Anderson is an independent dance artist based in London. He teaches improvisation and contact improvisation in Higher Education and in a variety of settings in the UK and abroad.
Robert has been passionately involved with contact improvisation since 1996. Influential teachers have included Kirsty Simson, Nancy Stark Smith, Martin Keogh and Ray Chung. Robert has taught at international contact festivals in Germany, Israel, Poland, Russia, Spain and Italy.
He was part of the organising team for CI36 in Pennsylvania (2008) and the European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange in Ormskirk, England (2009).
He performs with Touchdown Dance and improvisation ensemble SoFt.
In teaching dance improvisation Robert seeks to help students find deeper connections through our senses, inviting pleasure, play and poetry for the dancing body.
3 is not a crowd
Class in english
A class for exploring dancing in threes.
How can we use the landscape created by two partners for our improvisation? How can we tune-in to two different energies? What are the possibilities for following the currents of movement and catching the waves? Can we maintain our sense of self/centre/solo within a vortex of movement and a myriad of choices?
We'll use exercises, games and scores to tease open the puzzle. There will be a strong focus on exploration, improvisation and play.
Catherine LESSART CA
CATHERINE LESSARD transmits with passion and coherence the key principles of dance improvisation and contact improvisation, since 2001.
She has studied and performed with dancers of international reputation such as Nancy Stark Smith, Daniel Lepkoff, David Zambrano, Andrew Harwood, Kirstie Simpson and Ray Chung. She also has experience in BMC, Authentic Movement, and butoh, and has professional training in music and communications.
She teaches and performs regularly, in Canada, USA and Europe. Noticed performer in Now (2005), Une peu de vie... (2008), Face-Back-Profile and Histoires Vivantes d'Outremer (2010),
Catherine has also served as president of the Montreal Association for Contact Improvisation from 2007 to 2009.
Her approach of pedagogy combines a sharp artistic vision and a hungry curiosity for sciences.
Rools & Puzzles
Class in french and english
based on Steve Paxton's meticulous and intense work, this class proposes to explore several patterns, and to foresee their possible utilization in situations of contact. From the Starfish to the Endless Screw, including the Mill and the Crescent, they allow us to adjust in details our skeletal parallelism, to open our inner spiral, to soften our floor absorption, and to unify our body structure as a whole.
Such as spirographs and mandalas traced on the ground or into space, these rolls and puzzles are fabulous development tools for physical intelligence.
They bring the body and the brain into stretching their possibilities, by searching adequate physical solutions to limiting conditions and to sometimes quite comical situations.
Joe STOLLER Shiatsu/CI, USA
Joe discovered and became fascinated with Contact Improvisation in 1998.
He has since taught, researched and performed CI in Europe, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Argentina, including a year of work supported by a Watson Fellowship which took him to13 countries around the world to focus on the differences between CI practices in relationship to local cultural contexts.
He has taught in a range of settings including, Universities, Dance festivals, tiny little studios, and a high school.
His dancing and teaching blends with his work as a massage therapist, Shiatsu practitioner and extensive practice of Qigong and somatic education.
He currently lives in Boulder, CO, USA, dancing with the Tumblebones dance collective amongst others.
He believes that Contact Improvisation and its edges offer profound contexts for somatic inquiry, nourishment, and sharing authenticity.
Restorative Contact Improvisation
Class in English
In this class we will practice integrating contact improvisation and bodywork within a context of somatic inquiry.
We will reference the foundations of egalitarianism, mutuality, spontaneity and synergy that have been developed in contact improvisation; we will mix these with the intentions of bodywork to heal, develop human potential and restore balance in our whole systems through touch.
The result will be an improvised practice of mutual-simultaneous-organic-bodywork.
My intention is to inspire curiosity about these aspects of human contact while developing our capacities to have dances that are integrative, move us towards restoring balance in our systems and support our growth.
Emilie BORGO FR
Émilie Borgo is a dancer, choreographer, founder of Passaros Company as well as a Body Mind Centering® practitioner.
She explores the fields of movement, multidisciplinary improvisation and human sciences.
Since 2000, she has been initiating a various range of hybrid experimental and adventurous works and performances, making mysterious links between poetical wonders of life and real.
Being moved: Touching / being touched/ Moving
Class in french + traduction in english
From Body Mind Centering® tools, we will share an adventurous journey with touch, membranes, skin, so that we will dig in the movement with all our senses open...
We will explore how our envelopes define us, protect us and create links.
Delphine GAUD FR
Delphine Gaud is a dancer, choreographer, improviser and a BMC practitioner and teacher. She trained at the national centre of contemporary dance (CNDC) in Angers, and quickly founded her own compagny, La Trisande, who with she created about 10 work pieces. Inner and outer work, improvisation tools, touch are key elements of her physical work.
Lately, she has been working on pieces in which the audience is being questioned on their reception of the piece, and developed more outside work in collaboration with visual artists. This changed her conception of performances and lead her to meet many different approaches and people in theatre, music, visual arts like Jean, Louis Clot, Christophe Gonnet, Gisèle Jacquemet or Bruno Meyssat.
She has also regularly met improvisers and contacters in her work and invited CI teachers to the studio of her company, les Ailes de Bernard in St julien-Molin-Molette.
Her work also led her to meet many different audiences, from a wide range of cultural and social backgrounds. All theses exchanges nurture her artistic and teaching work, in between which she sees no borders nor hierarchy.
Changing states
Class in french + traduction in english
Exploring the pathway betwen two body states, spirit states, two speeds, two partners, two poetic words, etc..
"Having to change" often happens to us within the process of contact improvisation dance. I offer to focus on this particular space and time that is a key point in order to make a clear, well articulated dance that would be then engaging for both our partners and our potential audience
With tools drawing off contemporary dance, improvisation, as weel as the spirit of Body Mind Centering®.
One hour to get in our bodies. Two hours to explore.
Juha VIITAMäKI FI
Juha is a contact dancer since many years from Helsinki, Finland. He is interested in different ways of finding a sense of 'home' in existence, and in finding happiness.
Expanding and Breathing CI
Class in english
I share a structure where people have the opportunity to study slowing down, and how to more deeply connect and expand dancing in-and-out-of-contact.
I am also interested about contracting into gentle holding sometimes, one or both of the dancers at the same time.
Slowing down gives rhythm and breathing to the dance, windows for deepened awareness.
Lindsay SWORSKI USA
Lindsay Sworski brings together her in-depth study of Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, psychotherapy, bodywork, creative process, and spiritual development in her workshops and classes.
She teaches a hybrid blend of these disciplines internationally and is honored to have the chance to invite people to connect deeply with themselves, their bodies, each other, and the present moment.
She danced and studied for many years with the Lower Left Performance Collective, is a Core organizing member of the thriving Boulder Contact Lab, is trained in the Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, and is a member of the Ridhwan School of Inner Work.
She is grateful to the lineage of depth-divers before her who have paved the way for her offerings.
Learn more at www.MovingPresence.com.
Where We Meet :The Revolutionary Practices of Contact Improvisation & Authentic Movement
Class in english
"Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships," said Franklin D. Roosevelt. If his statement was true then it is even more true now.
Using the multifaceted language of Contact Improvisation, along with the ritual of Authentic Movement, we will research the science and healing potential of authentic, and improvisational, human interaction.
Is it possible to stay true to oneself while connecting to others? How does it feel to stay in deep contact with one's internal truth while interacting with the outside world? In the spirit of mindfulness, curiosity, and play, we'll explore Contact Improvisation and Authentic Movement as body-centered movement practices that welcome, and make explicit, our living truth. This awareness improves our dancing, nourishes our depths, and is socially revolutionary. Maybe CI and AM can even save the world!.
Barnaby TREE UK/DE
Barnaby O'Rorke Tree, UK Performer, improvisor, visual artist and teacher. Barnaby is a musican (cello, piano) and singer trained in the physical displines of improvised performance practises, yoga and chi kung.
He started in 88 formal training at Brighton University in Visual and Performance Arts.
Since then he has developed solo and collaborative work in experimental performance and music. He has produced three albums, Ravine('94), Loose('99) and Like nothing ever before(07) and regularly performs solo, improvises and plays for CI.
He has worked with a wide range of improvisors including Lisa Nelson, Keith Hennesey and Frey Faust. Presently living in Berlin.
"Death is 3.5 seconds away" - Breath in movement and voice
Class in english
We´re walking around in fuel. Oxygen is Chi, lifeforce. Life is circulation. The lungs and heart are one organ.
This class offers practical ways to live longer, dance and sing. Excercises and explorations into connecting the air to movement and sounding, into the different forms breath can take, and taking advantage of nature.
Laughing is the triumph of nature.
Katri LUUKKONEN FI
is a dancer and danceteacher from Helsinki, Finland. She graduated from Theatre Academy of Finland 2008 (MA).
She has been teaching at various contact- and dancefestivals all over Europe, Russia, India and Finland. As well as "SkiingOnSkin" the finnish contactfestival, she is also one of the organizers of "GOA-Contact Festival" in India and "InTouch"-festival in Berlin.
Besides contactimprovisation, contemporary dance and theatre, she has been practicing aikido and yoga, OSHO's active meditations and authentic movement.
Center - Following the Honey-Flow
Atelier en anglais + traduction d'appoint
Center is the base of my dance. It is the strong point, where all the movements are related.
When we are connected to our center, we can easily move with different dynamics, roll and slide on the floor organic way.
Mobile center ables us to change levels and fly effortlessly.
All this requires also the other parts and elements of the body to be organized as needed to support the economical movement. Soft alive spine, breathing open joints, released muscles...
Relaxation in movement brings us the ability to react fast in the changing situations and use soft strenght. When we are relaxed, we are able to adapt the tone of our body in each moment – we are able to sense the small, delicate details in weightshift, bodytone and quality of the touch.
Intensives
Alicia GRAYSON USA
Alicia Grayson has been passionately involved with dancing, teaching and performing CI for the past 23 years.
Her long time practices of authentic movement, yoga and meditation are important influences on her dancing and teaching.
She has taught contact improvisation as an adjunct faculty at George Washington University, University of Denver, Naropa University and Shenandoah University.
She teaches CI., yoga and pilates classes in Boulder, CO and regularly travels to Europe and around the US to teach at festivals and workshops.
She is a core member of Tumblebones Contact Improvisation Collective. She continues to delight in exploring and discovering new depths to the form and is particularly interested in the intersection of physics and expression.
Ease and Expression in CI
Intensive in english
It is likely that we all have experienced moments dancing when we feel powerful, free and confident—when we can adeptly navigate whatever is put in front of us with grace and joy. What creates this quality of delight and presence that makes us feel 100% ALIVE?
In this workshop we will focus on 3 components that support dancing that is easeful, expressive, engaging and deeply satisfying.
1) We will explore ways to release tension and relax the body/mind to help create a deeper sense of listening, safety, and contentment while strengthening our ability to let go. Practices will include bodywork, meditation, the small dance and focus on the breath.
2) We will embody the physical principles of CI to create more clarity, efficiency and ease in how our bodies move together in three-dimensional space. Specifically, we will deepen our awareness of subtlety as we explore CI principles such as the point of contact, assessing and modulating tone, organizing our bodies efficiently, giving and receiving weight with ease and moving consistently in an off-balance way.
3) We will grow in fluidity with CI's poetic, imagistic and emotional realms by using imagery, authentic movement and music.
There is no formula to create the magic that is so deeply nourishing in a dance. However, we can hone our physical and mental skills to adeptly navigate any terrain, to relax into the moment and nurture a vast spectrum of states. Then entering in to that sense of extraordinary aliveness becomes more and more possible.
This intensive is for those who have embodied the CI fundamentals including following the point of contact, taking weight with ease, moving upside down and being able to module physical tone in the body in relation to your partner and the demands of the dancing.
Patricia KUYPERSBE
Patricia Kuypers decided to follow the path of dance improvisation after her meeting and collaboration with Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark-Smith in the middle of the 80's and after attaining her Masters degree in psychology at the University where the psychanalyst Jacques Schotte opened her attention to the dimension of contact in psychopathology.
Recognizing the lack of experience in the area of new dance and research in her native Belgium, she founded and developed the resource centre, "Contredanse", which invites artists for teaching and exchanges and is the publisher of the magazine, "Nouvelles de danse" and books on dance research in the field of improvisation, composition, as well as art and science disciplines.
She is involved in personal and collaborative dance projects that she presents all over Europe in theatre, improvised music festivals, alternative spaces and studios.
She also teaches extensively in dance organization, universities and visual art school as La Cambre in Brussels.
Her last artistic works with her partner Franck Beaubois were engaged in interactive systems, using video feedback and delay as sources of dance exploration. Patricia has also a practice in yoga and shiatsu and reserves time for research on dance improvisation and writing on this subject.
The invisible score
Intensive in french and english
My recent research on solo improvisation drove me to give more and more power to what I call « interior techniques ». It means to make obvious some clusters of sensations that we work with to clarify, open and give support to new movements patterns or qualities.
So the dancing improvisation takes roots in very concrete body explorations, with the proposal to access to less known places of the body and a conscious use of it. As tools we will visit different deep body connections, inside the torso including the pelvis, and have the opportunity to experience a bit of what Steve Paxton calls « Material for the Spine ».
We will bring this technical background in our duo dance explorations, adding the focus on perception, touch, and modes of attention to develop ways to let imagination and inventiveness arise in the interactive score of Contact Improvisation.
The listening process with all the senses and a refined kinesthetic clarity will help us to play with a more open range of possibilities when improvising with partners.
Eszter GAL HU
Eszter Gál is a dancer, teacher and choreographer. She graduated at the Hungarian University of Physical Education in Budapest in 1989 as a physical education teacher and a physiotherapist. She studied at EDDC (European Dance Development Center) – Arnhem, The Netherlands for 3 years. During and after her studies she had worked with Yoshiko Chuma (New York), Mark Tompkins (France) and Stephanie Skura (Seattle).
She is a certified Skinner Releasing Teacher (SRT). At present she is a teacher at the Hungarian Dance Academy and the University of Theater and Film in Budapest where she teaches improvisation, movement technique and Contact Improvisation. Since 1993 she has been presenting her choreographies throughout Europe, Russia and in the US as well as performing solo, duet and group improvisations. She was a member of L1 Independent Dancers' Partnership between 2001 and 2007. In 2003 she founded Company ST and started working with Tánceánia (a mixed ability company). She is the founding member of ArtMan Movement Therapy and Art Workshop.
Her first CI teachers were KJ Holmes and Karen Nelson in Arnhem in 1991 and later on such great teachers/thinkers as: Danny Lepkoff, Steve Paxton, Martin Keogh, Jess Curtis, Stephanie Maher, Benno Voorham, Ray Chung amongst many others. Her CI teaching is very much influenced by the research of improvisation and movement studies through releasing and body awareness works. A few names who gave her knowledge, inspiration, understanding and love of movement: Eva Karczag, Jennifer Monson, Julyen Hamilton, Stephanie Skura, Joan Skinner, Benoi Lachambre, Mary O'Donell Fulkerson, Jess Curtis, Stephanie Maher, Nina Martin, Lisa Nelson, Carol Swann and her most closely friend and colleague Peter Pleyer.
Releasing into the unknown
Intensive in English
The workshop will offer studying the moving self through releasing work, (letting go, economy, image work, working with the breath and gravity), and observing the reflexes at work by following the natural laws of movements.
We are going to begin gently alone or with a partner and by listening to our inner sensations we will be practicing allowing and creating space in order to deepen into our inner landscape and explore our own dance in solo form as well as in duets, perhaps in trios.
We will practice simple moves and play with the basics of CI, find support with safety and trust while taking physical risks.
We will explore finding the wonder of our partners form, touch, imagination, force and structure.
We are going to enter the dance in different ways and challenge ourselves in longer/extended duets. The aim is to find physical answers to our "questions".