Teachers and Classes

Workshop description

In this vertical dance workshop, we will work with chest harnesses and semi-static rope on a wall between 10-14m high. It will be an introduction to vertical dance on the wall from a healthy and conscious place. We will use the vertical supports of the wall/rock and the harness to understand our bodies in other planes where we can dance in dialogue with the inertia of the pendulum and the sensation of hanging or anti-gravity.

LINKS AND VIDEOS ABOUT THE DISCIPLINE

Workshop description

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."
Lao Tzu (Dao de jing)

In this workshop we will explore some connections between the practice of CI and the Taoist principle of Wei wu wei, or simply wu wei, that can be freely translated as "action without action".
Wu wei doesn't mean inaction or paralysis, but rather moving and being in a state deeply tunned with the wider flow of events that are always changing. I consider that this principle can be a very good root for understanding and practicing improvisation, as well as to find a state of wide openness and listening in dance.

To explore and investigate it, we'll focus on:

• sensing and experiencing the ongoing life and wisdom of our body and organs
• precising and investigating types, intentions and layers of contact
• deepening our practice of listening by tunning to the senses and acknowledging gaps in awareness and moments of anticipation
• finding different meanings for pausing, waiting, proposing, following, suggesting, leading
• allowing and opening space for surprise and uncommon paths
• building a sense of trust in what already is happening and a sense of being supported by the current situation
• dropping, taking care of or addressing the need to control and to anticipate
• allowing all that was said or concluded to be questioned and continuously reformulated

Lecture and shared discussion: The issue of sexuality in CI

Sexuality is a topic that has been widely raised and discussed throughout the decades of development of Contact Improvisation. Even though a lot has been said and thought about sexuality and CI, we consider that it is still a relevant issue to reflect about and to discuss collectively, given that it's an alive aspect of human life, with implications and nuances that change throughout time and along with wider changes in history and culture in general.

How do we conceive and think nowadays about sexuality and its implications and overlaps with the practice of CI? What are our experiences and thoughts about this topic? How recent collective discussions and formulations about consent, safe spaces, inclusivity and diversity are influencing our experience with CI in general, and regarding the topic of sexuality specifically?

In order to share reflections and discuss it all together, we will start reading fragments of texts published in the Contact Quarterly Journal about this topic, then we'll have a moment of discussion in small groups, guided by a score in order to facilitate the participation of everyone, then we'll finish sharing and debating in a circle with all participants together.

Workshop description

In this two-part workshop we will research our senses and how bringing attention to them might enrich our CI dance practice. As we reach towards honing our tools, a collective experiment will be conducted in which you will be invited to participate. There will be an opportunity to isolate the different senses of sound, sight and touch, for the possibility of a deeper awareness of the present moment.

This class will include grounding work, embodied meditation techniques and deep listening. We reclaim presence by ‘emptying’ ourselves to arrive on the dance floor fully and then rebuild from the ground up.. Whilst journeying along the path of exploration we might also ask ourselves, how do we cultivate a deeper sense of receptivity? And receptible to what?

Let’s get out of the way of ourselves and let the dance through!

Workshop description

The title references Steve Paxton’s early musings about the experience of the Newtonian apple as it falls from the tree. It acknowledges the time that’s passed since then, and the incredible journey and evolution of Contact Improvisation as a series of questions and experiments; as a diaspora of bodies; a form; and a complex web of extrapolations and transformations.

I will return to some of the basic propositions and questions of CI; to how we notice ourselves as bodies/masses in relation to physical forces in a physical world - to visit them anew, to roll our bodies on the the body of the earth, to observe ourselves and simultaneously be ourselves as we fall and rise again, as we slide and jump, and bounce and tumble along with the questions, propositions and particularities of the other bodies we negotiate as we go.

I will be calling on my own versions and developments of materials I met and explored in the studio with Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson to inform our explorations, and those materials (for the spine, and for the senses amongst other things) will be woven into my own questions about movement, experience and imagination - how we include in our image of the experience of the apple falling, the other parts of its journey and its return to the tree to fall again.

This is an invitation to widen attention, to include perceived impossibilities and to dive into the adventure of Contact Improvisation all over again.

The work will be explored via simple scores which allow for each person’s own layers of complexity to be noticed and included; there will be physical maps and pathways to research and play with as well as perceptual/imaginative explorations in solo, duet, trio and ensemble scores.

This workshop invites us to see movement