ContactFestival: Festival 2009

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Mirva Mäkinen (Finland)

Details in the Dance – basics and spices for Contact Improvisation

During this intensive i am curious to find tools what helps to dance Contact improvisation. How to create alive dancing dialogue by using touch, movement, weight and balance? What kind of details we can find from dance by listening the alive situation. What if I have in every moment many possibilities where i can guide or allow the dance to go. How well do we recognize when we are leading or following the dance? From light contact and softness we move towards more weight and intensity ­ working with skin, muscle and bones and using this knowledge as a structure to build the dance but also to build a connection to the other person. We try to find safe and effective strategies of moving into and out of the floor; flying low and flying high.So this intensive will be lot about what kind of choices we make in dance and also about juicy details and basic principles of Contact Improvisation.

Mirva Mäkinen

I am a 34-year old dancer. I graduated (MA) from the Dance Department of the Theatre Academy of Finland in 2000. After studies I have worked widely in Finland as a dancer, dance teacher and choreographer. From 2000 onwards I have acted as dance teacher and lecturer for dance at the Kallio highschool of Performing Arts. I have also taught at domestic and international dance, contact improvisation festivals. Beside that I work as a freelance dancer and choreographer. At the moment I am working in dance company Karttunen Kollektiv and in Circo Aereo, company for new circus.
In dance I am interested in the feeling of flow and soft movement. I love to investigate movement, its rhythm and different ways of inhabiting the body. A feeling of dancing is created by being able to switch the body from total relaxation to extreme intensity and “tension”. I call this the body’s ability to breathe and create movement. My ideal is curiosity and presence, which makes every moment true and meaningful.
I have learned CI by practicing, studying, teaching and performing. I love to explore my body and I am curious for all the movement possibilities. I find other inspiration from contemporary dance, astanga yoga, meditation, aerial dance and acrobatics.

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Thomas Kampe (GB)

The Art of Making Choices - the Feldenkrais Method as resource for instant composition

In this workshop we will use practices and concepts drawn from the The Feldenkrais Method©as a resource for solo and contact improvisations. We will explore how 'Awareness through Movement' lessons, taught through verbal instruction, and hands-on partner work based on 'Functional Integration' practices can inform our compositional choices, and serve as embodied scores for emerging improvisations.

The Feldenkrais Method was developed in the by nuclear physicist Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), and is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most influential movement and body-learning systems. Based on a ‘dynamic systems’ understanding of movement behaviour, it combines investigative strategies drawn from scientific methods with a focus on self-awareness and self-education.

Thomas Kampe

Thomas Kampe trained as a visual artist in Germany and subsequently trained in dance at the Laban Centre and at Middlesex University in London. He has worked internationally in theatre for more than twenty-five years, as a choreographer, director, designer and as a performer, including working with Liz Aggiss, Hilde Holger, Rosemary Lee, and Julia Pascal.

He received a British Council Fellowship in 1986, and a Lisa Ullmann Travelling Scholarship in 1994 to study at LIMS, Susan Klein School and at the Erick Hawkins studio in New York City. His previous work has included solo performances in venues such as Moltkerei Cologne, The ICA London and The Purcell Room London, international collaborations with dance and theatre companies, installation work in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and site-specific choreography with a cast of 150 performers in St. Pauli Stadium in Hamburg, Germany, in 2003.
He recently appeared in several dance-for-screen projects for Divas Dance Company, and as part of an internationally toured 3D screen installation. In 2006 he coordinated a reconstruction programme of pre-WW2 dance works by Austrian expressionist dancer Hilde Holger.

Thomas' research interests are in the developing of a contemporary, anatomically informed perspective on dance technique training, as well as in applying choreographic knowledge and methodologies to a wider theatrical context.
He is a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method©, which forms a foundation for most of his practical teaching.

Thomas has taught and directed internationally in Higher Education for more than 20 years including work at Limerick University, Ireland, The School for New Dance Development/Theatre School Amsterdam, Central School for Speech and Drama, and Rose Bruford College.
He was a senior lecturer at University College Chichester for nine years before joining the Performing Arts section of London Metropolitan University as Senior Lecturer for Dance and Movement studies in 2002.

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Ingo Reulecke (D)

extending the boundaries - Contemporary Technique into Group Spatial Awareness

In this Intensive, the focus will be on widening our individual body awareness to include the other dancers in the room. Shifting our focus in this way helps us to come out of our own kinesphere into the broader space. With the expansion of the border between internal and external, a playspace opens for the dancers, creating a multitude of material allowing us to interact with each other.

Through the training, (primarily drawing on principles from Susan Klein Method and Alexander Technique) we will work towards creating a body which is awake and holistically available for movements in all possible dimensions. With this basis we can experience space in all it’s different dimensions, and time in all it’s different dynamics.

A mixture of both improvisation exercises and fixed movement phrases will be offered. As we go along, simple choreographic and performance ideas will be integrated. Playing with these instructions creates a greater clarity in space and time and will provide more pleasure in working alone, and more contours in the group work.

Ingo Reulecke

studied choreography at the college of the arts "Ernst Busch" Berlin after completing his training in contemporary dance. 1994 and 97 study grants from the Berlin Senate for New York City. Guest lecturer at the collage of the arts "Ernst Busch" in Berlin and at the Palucca Hochschule in Dresden since 1995. 1998/99 DAAD scholarship for a year in NYC. 
International Dance Festival NRW with "Sheik Yerbouti". Artist in Residence of the Tanzfabrik Berlin since 1999.

Since 1998, Ingo has choreographed and performed with various artists in parts of Germany and Sweden, and in 2006 won first prize in the theatre festival "vorort" Muenster with "diminuendo 2".
Since 2005 Ingo Reulecke has a professorship in choreography and is leading the dance departement in the college of the arts "Ernst Busch" Berlin.
2006 he started the directorship in the co-operative dance education centre berlin.

Iiris Raipala (Helsinki)

"Trace your base"

In this class we work with finding our center, moving from the center and exploring what center or being centered means for you. We also investigate what makes you feel more grounded and connected to your base, strengh and gut-feeling. Some technical themes for the class are tracing the pathway of your center in space, opening your movement more into the space and bringing more dynamics into the contact dance through awareness of our center and its pathway in space.

here's another one just to get some idea of my teaching style and focus:

“Hip drop”
In this class we focus on opening and releasing the hip joint. As we learn to initiate more movement from the hips, our range of movement will widen and we'll find released and unexpected way to dance. We work both in solos and duets. We'll be encouraged to move towards off-balance and free falling.

 
Iiris Raipala

is a dance artist; performer and teacher living in Helsinki. She graduated in 2004 as Master of Arts in dance from the Theatre Academy of Finland. Since then she's been working closely with improvisation and contact improvisation in several performing groups . At the moment she is studying to become a Iyengar yoga teacher. Besides dancing her passions are meditation, red wine and travelling.

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Manuela Blanchard (CH)

Dynamic Trio

Because of its inherent instability, a Trio invites us to continously compose the dance. Familiar patterns and too tight connections easily dissolve. Trios seduce us to play with contrasts and support -- with and without physical contact. We will explore new facets of CI, enriching the dance with a more open sense for rhythm and space in order to create clearer connections as well as a stronger autonomy.

Manuela Blanchard

has taught contact improvisation and new dance in Switzerland since 2004, after having trained intensively and performed in contemporary dance, physical theatre and clown for the past 18 years. Butoh and BMC also nourrish her movement material. Discovering improvised dance touched a very profound core in her, and led her to meet great teachers, such as N. Stark Smith, K. Simson, S. Paxton, M. Keogh and A. Harwood. She organises a regular jam and is a member of several improvisation groups. Manuela is also a water body therapist, trained in “Waterdance” and “Healing Dance”. Her love for contact improvisation and aquatic bodywork has brought her to regularly teach contact dance in water.

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Markus Hoft (D)

From Contact Improvisation to Partnering

Choreographed “Contact Improvisation” is very often used in contemporary dance companies like DV8, Ultima Vez, Sasha Waltz and many others, called “Partnering”. The great advance of choreographed contact is that you can do fast and risky moves. I will introduce Partnering techniques and specially focus on manipulations. We explore grounded support, leading clear directions and to be open to follow (be instable) in the next millisecond. I am interested in choreographing momentum based movements into juicy fluid partnering sequences. I also show how to use Partnering techniques for Jamming.

Markus Hoft

studied dance at moving arts, Köln. To get more Technical impact he went to the Scottish School of Contemporary Dance, Dundee, to combine modern dance technique with contact improvisation. (It works!). Markus also trained intensively in physical theatre, action theatre, Contact Tango and Capoeira Angola and is teaching Yoga and Pilates. His focus is to explore the physical possibilities of contact improvisation and to deepen the range of contact improvisation with other dance technique. He is dancing in companies and choreographing his own projects. www.fooldance.de

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Danya Elraz (Israel)

from developemental movement into contact improvisation

This class will investigate several principles of Developmental Movement and applying them in slow and dynamic dances. We will see how simple floor patterns and hands on work and  can create focus and satisfaction while enlargening our movement range.

Can we focus inwards and outwards at the same time?

Can our movement patterns change and grow?

Can we change and grow?

Danya

is a performer, teacher and dancer, and one of the leading figures in the Contact Improvisation community in Israel. She graduated from the School of Visual Theater, is a certified Somatic Educator and has a B.A. in Arts and Education. Danya has recieved various prizes for her work, and has taught and performed in Israel, Europe and North America. She combines dance and theater with a deep curiosity how it connects to our personal development and presence in the world.

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Heike Pourian (D)

CI Basics for all levels - starting from the pelvis

Understanding anatomic structures leads into sensing the own body and will help us to discover movement from within. We will use the playful investigation of the pelvic bones and joints as a starting point for dynamic and sensitive duets.

Awareness and freedom in the hip joint can increase mobility and open pathways for easily staying with the point of contact travelling through space.

Heike Pourian

To me Contact Improvisation is an essence of what I want to explore and embody in life: being attentive, open and soft, being connected to the earth, to each other. Playing and sensing, drawing from the power of this very moment. Being.

When I teach I thoroughly enjoy going with the learning and discovering processes of the groups and individuals, which continuously reveals new aspects to me.

I studied community dance and theatre (University of Hildesheim/Germany, Dartington College of Arts, U.K)

My teaching started in 1992 with a DanceAbility project and has touched very different aspects of the form since: weekly adult classes, community dance, kindergarten groups, pregnant women, parents and their children, deaf adolescents, girls with eating disorders as well as training units for professional ballet companies or actors. I regard teaching as one way of learning and my view on contact improvisation has widened and gained a lot from all the different people I’ve worked with. I’m looking forward to what is round the corner … and the next one …. and the next one.

Katri Luukkonen

Playing with spirals

Last years I have been interested about spirals, and the soft and breathing quality arising through this spiralling movement. Spiralling with our bodies can allow us to travel smoothly from up to down, down to up, and also moving us in the space. Spiralling can create organic and soft pathways

also in and out of contact-dance.

Sometimes we get stuck in our dance, but this delicate balance between being in core-contact and floating out of that is helping us to keep our dancing breathing and alive.

I am also interested how the hands can be a playful and organic, not grabbing tool to enter and exit the dance. Through hands we can guide the movement from periphery to the center and find new directions. Through spirals and hands we can redirect the movement inside the body without gaps or bumps, making the dance surprising and playful fun.

We will start easy and soft, creating first relaxed state of body and mind. Finding smoothly our supportsystem, giving & taking weight, releasing our joints, and letting our senses to come more responsive… From there we start to build some tools for playing with spirals in different levels & going in and out from contact. This can be our basis for improvising and exploring, without forgetting to enjoy!

Katri Luukkonen

I am 34-years old dancer, danceteacher and theatre-pedagog from Helsinki, Finland. Last spring I finished my master studies from Teatterikorkeakoulu (Theatre Academy) as a danceteacher and theatreteacher. Before that I have gone through also another school, which was more about theatre- and dance-education and devising methods of making art. All my life I have been moving, starting as a child with figure skating, gymnastics, circus-school and then dance. Later on I started to do also aikido, astanga-yoga and contact-improvisation.

But I think I did contact-improvisation before I even knew that there exists a danceform called that. We just loved to roll around with my friends...! But my first “real” contactclass I did on 1995 with Kirsi Monni. After that it still took a while before contact came for me as important, as it is now. In contact I love playfulness, variation of different qualities, meeting and melting, flowing with no mind….

My main teachers are the whole Helsinki contact-community. With them I have been dancing together during last 8 years, and going through my individual growth as an dancer and artist, and seen the development of all of us... Since last two years we have been also organizing our own finnish contactfestival, Skiing On Skin.

Gabriele Reuter (Berlin)

"Contemporary Dance Technique"

I am interested in finding means and methods of understanding, prioritising and articulating which physical and mental preparation we need for a day of rehearsals as dancers, choreographers and performers. A dance training should offer both inspiration and challenge for the ongoing learning interests of the participants and be a well balanced mix of preparatory exercises directly relevant to practitioners going on to work with movement, voice and touch.

The dance class I teach is influenced by release-based movement techniques, rooted in the principles of the Alexander Technique. We start with aerobic, playful improvisations as a whole group. We continue on our own with alignment and awareness practise, as well as technical improvisations alternating set exercises and movement phrases. Throughout the class, there is a strong emphasis on floor-work, employing skills and exercises from Release-based dance techniques, Capoeira and Contact Improvisation, to develop a vocabulary of challenging physical movement phrases in safety and playfulness. Understanding the need to practice performing to each other as part of our everyday training is also a key emphasis of this class.

Gabriele Reuter

is a dance artist based in Berlin and England. Her interest in improvisation is influenced by teachers such as Julyen Hamilton, KJ Holmes, Andrew Harwood, Kirstie Simpson, Scott Wells and Rick Nodine. As a dancer Gabriele has most recently performed for Rick Nodine, Sioned Huws Frauke Requardt and Christoph Winkler as well as in her own works and collaborations. Since 2002 Gabriele has taught company class, dance technique and workshops in improvisation and Contact Improvisation in the UK, Germany, Portugal, Norway and South America. She trained at London Contemporary Dance School and De Montfort University Leicester.

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Jessy Tuddenham (USA/D)

Improvisation into Technique, Technique into Improvisation

This class explores the conversation between the technical underpinnings of movement and the freedom of expression found in improvisational dance. By focusing on movement principles, and being easy about the exact mimicry of set steps, students will discover how improvisation can improve their dance technique, and then how improved dancing can further their improvisational skills. This class looks at how proper alignment and efficiency of movement can offer greater power and choice to both contact and solo improvisation. We will start from nothing, add some breath and momentum, and before long we will be dipping, diving and flying through the space. As friends with the floor, and lovers of the vertical, this dance class caters to a diversity of levels, experience, and personal discovery.

Jessy Tuddenham

is curious and explores creativity in various shapes and sizes.  Most easily stated, she is a teacher of dance and a performer of movement, text, improvisation and set choreography.  She uses theater stages, art galleries, street corners and the many spaces between as venues of expression.

Currently: Jessy lives and works in Berlin, Germany.  She is on staff at Tanzakademie Balance1, where she teaches classes in technique, improvisation and contact.  She also travels the world to teach at various dance festivals and studios.  Her main performance focus in recent years is a solo series under the title, "Biographies", where she explores the world of story telling.

Historically: Jessy was born 1975 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and received her MFA degree in Dance Performance and Choreography in 2003 from Mills College in Oakland, California.  She has danced professionally for the Bay Area based companies Lizz Roman and Dancers and Dance Elixir, and in Berlin for Howard Katz Productions, Zen In the Basement, and Stephanie Maher’s Slick Nickels.

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Barbara Pfundt (D)

Presence – a question of focus?

If I see dance performances I notice myself questioning, what it is that touches me, and when it is that a picture or a movement has taken me. This brought me to the issue of presence.

Wether a piece is improvised or set, it’s always very important how the dancer fills its movements.

With special excersises focussing our awareness we enrich our sensitivity for different aspects of our movement and its behaviour in form, space and time.

We create a state of being awake about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it and experience an “integrating consciousness” what in my opinion leds to presence.

A very physical invitation to deepen this issue.

Barbara Pfundt

After trying out every physical task I could find in my childhood I studied sports. But only when I got to know Contact and New Dance in 1993 I had finally found the sort of movement that fits me. After heeps of workshops and a longer stay in San Francisco I went into business for myself in 1999 as a dancer, dance teacher and choreographer. Since then I have taught beginners and professionals at different places, leaded a one year contact training and performed in many projects.

The question of presence took me specially in my solo performing but also during contact improvisation on stage.

www.tanzkontakt.de

Ulla Mäkinen (Finland/D)

HEADFIRST!

In this class, we will focus on the head righting reactions and their influence in our dancing. Rather than keeping the head upright, we let go of this fixed vertical to access exceptional directions and relations of our bodies to gravity and space. With the help of hands-on work, we can find dynamic alignment, trust the reflexes of our bodies, and be liberated from fears that inhibit us to release our heads. From specific exercises and somatic work, we open space also for exploration through improvisation and contact improvisation.

Ulla Mäkinen

is a dancer and dance/movement teacher, based in Helsinki. Currently she lives in Frankfurt am Main studying in the HfMDK Master of Arts Program in Contemporary Dance Pedagogy. She teaches and performs improvisation and contact improvisation since 2002 in events and workshops worldwide. Her interests are based in combining several somatic, body awareness and dance methods mixed with her life philosophy and community work. She is a dedicated organizer of festivals such as the Contact Festival Finland (www.contactfestival.fi) and Barcelona International Dance Exchange (www.bide.be)

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Robert Anderson (England)

compositional aspects of open ensemble improvisation

Arriving into a sensitized-grounded-centred self, we’ll expand awareness and movement into space and composition. Entering the ‘open score’ of group improvisation, we’ll map space through vertical and horizontal axes. Moving in and out of contact, we’ll practice shifting our attention between witnessing and action using both vision and touch. As we attune to the dance of the ensemble we’ll focus on how we support the space. Maybe less is more, stillness as valuable as movement? We’ll look at ideas of the tableau, of flocking and swarming as techniques for sculpting and enlivening space.

Robert Anderson

has been passionately involved with Contact Improvisation since 1996. He has been teaching and facilitating CI classes, workshops and jams in London since 2000. He is active within the international contact community, teaching and performing at workshops, festivals and teaching exchanges in Europe and America. Robert performs with improvisation ensemble SoFT and has been a company member of Touchdown Dance since 2002. His classes encourage a state of alertness and openness and invite a sense of pleasure, play and poetry for the dancing body.

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Elske Seidel

meeting places – meeting in dance

Who needs a studio?

This workshop will reveal that we don’t need a studio in general … especially in summer!

This workshop will be about MEETING in DANCE nurtured by a deep experience in nature/ the open space.

We will start with arriving in the body, connecting to the core just being, breathing, sensing being alive, opening from this place of home into receiving the information around - from the richness inside to the richness outside.

Reaching out, bonding and communicating with places, meeting places and continuing from a dialogue with a specific place to a dialogue with a specific person in dance. Bringing your physicality and aliveness to share and meet this person in dance.

This workshop will give some technical support to work outdoors and take the deep elemental experience in nature into duet work and instant group composition/ outdoor performance play.

Elske Seidel

is a dedicated CI teacher living in Berlin - teaching all over the place - with a great desire for exchanging, exploring and researching with other movers. She has travelled a lot, following her movement interest, sharing knowledge with different CI communities, living in Canada and the U.S. and doing contact-based performance work (e.g. the contact dance-skateboard film ‘decoding the undertow’, a German-Canadian co-production for ARTE). She is creating CI events/ jams and has a special interest in those which bring together studio focus and nature work (‘Surfing Bodies, Surfing Waves’ – Contact Surf Festival Fuerteventura). She has been fascinated by the art of teaching dance for over 16 years and dancing contact improvisation for 10 years.

Teaching contact – for her - is about listening and creating, it’s making art, it’s moving energy within a group, it’s about understanding movement more deeply and it’s laying the ground so that this dance can happen.

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Ville Johansson

Improvisation class “Dance discussion”

The meaning and reading in action and dancing. The focus in class is to understand my own dancing, the messages of dance and my interpretation. We will use some labeling methods to clarify action and get stronger output from dance. We will get into "copy-paste" basics of improvisation and different nuances how to apply it in dialogical dance improvisation. We will focus on how to perform dancing and same time have a dance discussion going one. A word "Discuss" comes from Latin and means shake apart.

We are taking apart our dancing and having dialogue and discuss it.

Ville Johanson

Me and my body are friends. Not always connected but deeply

interacting with each other. I am sometimes performing dancing and for that reason I have been thinking the essence of body communication to others. I have been working with Ilona Kenova, Riitta Vainio, Rajaton, Nikolay Shchetnev, Liisa Pentti and Nancy Stark-Smith. Mean while dancing I study mathematics.

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