AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS & LAboratories

Workshops of movement research inspired by or supporting the practice of Contact Improvisation. Facilitated laboratories to continue to the research, group and individual investigation, and share a space for curiosity and development.

Additional formats include the Underscore jam, new comers support group, feed-backing sessions, and focused jamming.

2020 workshop descriptions below.

Zuzanna Bukowski (DE)

Mini Intensive 3 classes/ Underscore

Contact Improvisation essentials

Each class begins with developing our solo dance. Discovering movement through the lense of bio mechanics; material inspired by Axis Syllabus. Supporting our practice later in contact when flying and falling, and giving inspiration inside the jam to play and explore in solo.

We will then expand our movement vocabulary of contact improvisation by focusing on essential techniques that can be applied in every dance. Exploring pathways of contact, sharing weight, practicing to listen and offer invitations, to understand and respond through the body.

Ending each class with space for integration through improvisation of the practices.

Tu Le (VN)

Class – Improvising paradoxes

Contact Improvisation is a dance between discipline and surrender, a dialogue between ourselves and the world around us and all the spaces in between. My invitation is to re-visit our physical sensations as the starting point of our movement and to enliven the dance with both awareness and playfulness. In 2 hours, we will explore paradoxes as possibilities in Contact Improvisation and also look at our physical and social habits from a different perspective.

Nitipat “Ong” Pholchai (TH)

Laboratory – Existence as Magic

In this lab, I’d like us to investigate the physical body as a site of ongoing existential questions. Our body parts and body systems exist as much as they co-exist based on both oneness and differentiation. We will play with the notion of sameness and difference, together and alone, self and others, conscious and unconscious. I propose that framing CI practice through these ideas, we may realise that our body and our community can operate as if in a magical realm; that we may just all be swimming in the liminal sea of relationships, where our existence (physical and temporal) become fractal and full of possibilities.

Sveta Bird & Daniel Drogeoescu

2 CLASSes

Contact Improvisation

David Lim (MY)

Class – Senses Sensing Sensations

One of the more distinctive qualities of contact improvisation is the dancer’s constant heightened awareness to the sensations of touch and weight. We will therefore focus on accessing the ideal range of muscle tones that will enable us to move with simplicity and efficiency, which will in turn help us to listen more fully to our bodies’ reception of touch and weight.

Kieran Mitchell (AU)

Class

We will begin by bringing our attention to our awareness. Using several exercises that encourage the cultivation of presence, in particular we will use the breath as a gateway to present moment awareness. We will then focus on some of the technique foundational to CI. This will include floor work, technical safety issues, basing and flying. After drilling some of these methods through exercises that reinforce the technical aspect, we will remind ourselves that these techniques are a guideline only and that we have permission to forget the ‘pathways’ and ask the body what it wants to do.

Yurie Irino (JP)

Class – Falling softly and boldly

In this class, we’re going to practice falling into different directions from different heights. We’ll start with simple solo forms including Aikido roll to learn how to fall safely, then incorporating them into more complex and dynamic movements with partner(s). Later in the class, we’ll explore falling in more open space; deepening the known forms and evolving them by applying the principles you learned from practicing the forms. We’ll try to balance between them, being humble and sometimes daring, eventually integrating them and making our dance more accurate and more playful.

JULIE Rieffel (fr)

Morning class Yin Yoga / Water Dance

Julie Aloha is passionate with the body, mind, heart connection. She has been a massage therapist since 2008, travelling around Oceania and Asia for the past 7 years where she keeps learning and exploring the art of touch. Now she is based in Thailand on koh Phangan Island. She learnt a wide range of therapies to adapt the offering to the person she treats, Water therapies, Womb Healing, Chi Nei Tsang, PNF (Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation), holding, cupping massage and yin yoga.

Zinn Da Alive (IN)

Fire puja

Purification

Ina Elanor (DE)

Class – Authentic Movement

In Authentic Movement, we tap into an infinity of possibilities, where the ‘unknown’ is a place to be discovered through the body. In this practice we witness and we move without seeing, giving sense and meaning in an empathic and non-judgmental way. Moving in couples of a blindfolded mover and an observer, we are creating a living experiment, that can show us new aspects about ourselves and how to embody the very present moment – however that may look like. As we trust and give in to the flow of motion, intuitive exploration and spontaneous action can then build a bridge to the subconscious and show us hidden aspects of our true body.

Authentic Movement was developed in the 1950’s by Dance Therapist Amy Starks Whitehouse as “movement in depth” and is widely practiced in modern dance and movement- environments.