Sabine Parzer (Austria)

From The Inside Out - Holistic Dance Technique

My particular style of dancing is blend of all the techniques and experiences that have formed and inspired me as a dancer over 25 years. This includes: release technique, Limon, the Feldenkrais Method® (ATM and functional integration), Kleintechnique, martial arts, and contemporary and contact improvisation.

In the warm up we will focus on the underlying muscles, on the „moving from the bones“, on the breathing and the connections we find between body mass and gravity. Individual alignment can be recognized and easily changed through focus, breath and the attention of staying within boundaries. Bodywork creates a physical understanding of our anatomy, the connections between the skeleton, muscles and connective tissue, it allows us to let go of patterns and moves us into detailed body awareness.

The choreography part consists of release-based, organic movement material in which we keep the focus on the radiating qualities of the center: „from the inside out“. Sliding and falling, setting accents and going for the „flow“ of momentum. Gravity provides a springboard to move vertically and horizontally. Floor work „happens“ as a result. All of this is enlivened by a bit of improvisation to keep the creative juices flowing.

Biography

Sabine Parzer (Fabie) is a dancer, choreographer, holistic dance- and movement teacher and works in a dance therapeutic setting. Born and raised in Vienna, Austria, she spent ten years abroad (USA and Germany). In Chicago she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Modern Dance and danced professionally a.o. in Mordine & Company Dance Theatre and many independent productions. Sabine has taught people from the age of 2 till 92 in improvisation, release/ holistic dance technique, contact improvisation and authentic movement. Since 1999 she has been teaching dance and movement at a rehabilitation centre in Austria for people after work/ traffic accidents and neurological diseases. Sabine is a practitioner of Systemische und Integrative Bewegungslehre® (an extended Feldenkrais method) and ZenBodytherapy® in her private practice. 

Nina Wehnert (D)

Lungs /Heart - Upper Body

The lungs are not only for breathing and distributing oxygen into the blood and through the blood into the cells, they can also be helpful as a support for the arms and upper body. We will have an anatomical look at this beautiful and important organ and it's neighbour, the heart. Through Partnerwork we give them presence, fullness, and subtlety. An upper body which is alive, moveable and strong creates a lot of possibilties to react to your partner in contact dances. We will examine the connection from lungs/heart to arms and hands and how to distribute the weight onto them whenever we touch the floor in upsidedown movements. Through teaching Yoga I'm constantly in negotiation with the connection of breath and mind. We will do excercises which not only support and activate your upper body but also calm the mind and help to relax the nervous system- might be nice during the turmoil of a festival!

Biography

Nina Wehnert works as a dancer and yogateacher in and outside of Berlin. She is currently very much inspired by her BMC&Yoga and BMC SME Training. Next to set material she is perfoming dance improvisation and CI on stage. She is organizing CI gatherings in different formats in Berlin and from 2008-2010 co-hosted with Christine Mauch the CI festival "satellites' return" at Ponderosa/Stolzenhagen. Very happy to be here at the festival again!

Katri Luukkonen (Finland)

Contact Improvisation - LIQUID FLOW ... Moving like water

In this class I want to bring in some basic principles and qualities, which I love in contact-improvisation. Soft waves in the spine, spine connected to the center. Connection with the earth and gravity, and within that playing with the body tone - how the body needs to organize itself in each situation? Effortless, organic movement, soft strength, principles of the joints... Spirals and momentum, mobile underdancing, moving in and out from contact... 

These qualities are bringing me into the state of dancing, which I love - center to center easily following each other... Playful, spontaneous, creative state of being within shared language of contact improvisation! 

Biography

Katri Luukkonen 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&Goa. Besides contactimprovisation, contemporary dance and theatre, she has been practicing aikido and yoga, OSHO's active meditations and authentic movement.

Katri sings like an angel, looks like a spiralling carrot, smells like Vanilla Tiger, and feels like soft heaven. She is sweet girl, who has spontaneous and passionate relationship with her surroundings, and her inner child is alive & kicking.  

Christoph Schütz (Göttingen)

"Physical Stories" - Working on Solo and Duet -

Dance is about telling a story in a physical way. To give meaning into motion we have to open up ourselves toward what is going on inside of us, physically, mentally and emotionally, toward what is happening right now behind the obvious...

This class is about the essence of your dance. What is your body about to tell us? Let's go beyond techniques and tricks to see how your Solo or Duet can make the difference.

We will develop different aspects of solo and duet work, whether you come from performing, dancing, acting, teaching...we work with elements of improvisation, scores and maybe even your personal dance material you bring with you.

Lecture:  'Presence' (Tuesday afternoon)

Presence in its origin describes the “ Moment of Now”… but the term “presence” is used in different meanings:

• Being there in the manner of time and space

• Something to look at

• It is/ you are available

• And others…

Wikipedia puts presence in the context of time, space, marking out and availability. Especially in the context of stage we should ask us about presence. What is it that makes someone more present (on stage)? What are the inner and outer aspects of presence? I invite you to listen, to talk and to explore more about presence…

Biography 

Cristoph Schütz, Jg 1964, seit 1985 Tänzer, Choreograph, Pädagoge, hat sich als Künstler besonders der Improvisation zugewandt und begegnet in seinen Projekten gerne Musikern und der bildnerischen Kunst. Ihn interessieren besonders die Zwischenwelten von unterschiedlichen Disziplinen und festgelegten Begriffen. Unterschiedliche Stilrichtungen haben seine Ausdrucksweise beeinflusst, wie der Ausdruckstanz, das Bewegungstheater, Butoh, zeitgenössischer Tanz, Life/ Art Process (Anna Halprin) und nicht zuletzt die Contact Improvisation, die er mit Leidenschaft unterrichtet.

Langjährige Erfahrung im Inszenieren und Bespielen von Site Specific Art in unterschiedlichen Umgebungen, z.B. Wattenmeer, Industriegelände, Hotel, Ausstellungen...

Er unterrichtet und leitet seit vielen Jahren Schultanz und –theater Projekte im Rahmen seiner Kompagnie Engagements und mit der musa, Göttingen.

Günter Klingler (Freiburg)  & Alyssa Lynes (USA)

Acrobatic Partnering

We will use principles of Contactimprovisation to research acrobatic partnering elements. We will focus on energy flow, leading from the center and the practice of maintaining “easy joints“.  Contemporary dance technics will help us to stay alive and attentive in the repetition of fixed partnering phrases.  By exploring the combination of acrobatics, CI principals and Contemporary phrase-work, we prepare ourselves to be available and creative in new and challenging situations.

Biographies

Günter Klingler is a dancer, circus artist, choreographer and teacher. After graduating from the movement-theatre-school “Scuola Teatro Dimitri“ he worked in “Circus Monti” in Switzerland as a Clown. At the “Kuopion Conservatory for Music and Dance” in Finland he deepened his dance abilities and performed afterwards in various companies (Compagnia Vitale/ Artistiktheater Mixtura Unica/ Trivial Dance Theatre). Since 1999 he is touring with his own solo artist comedy program as “Heinz Herrmann“ and teaches contemporary dance, creative juggling and acrobatics at different universities and education programs.

In 2006 he founded his own Company for New Circus, Dance and Theatre, “HeadFeedHands”, which continues to tour internationally with 3 productions. The methods of Gestalt-Therapy influence his teaching work and have become more and more important while he choreographs for the stage. Günter has been practising and teaching CI for the last 15 years and is especially interested in how CI enters into the performing arts. www.headfeedhands.de, www.heinz-herrmann.com

Alyssa Lynes (USA) is a dancer, performer, and teacher.  She grew up in Boston, Massachussets dancing Jazz, Horton, Limon, Rhythm Tap, and Musical Theater.  She then moved to NYC for ten years where she received a BA in Contemporary dance, a MS in childhood education, where she free-lanced as a dancer in a number of companies and projects, and overworked herself as a bilingual primary school teacher.  Her focus on Contact improvisation with great teachers (known and less known) finally led her to train with Nancy Stark Smith and this experience catapulted her off on a CI devoted trip to Europe with no end date.  She has been in Europe now since 2010 and trains and works as a free-lance dancer and teacher of Contact Improvisation, Contemporary Dance, children, and English.  In 2011 she performed in a work by Juha Marsalo, and in a production by Thomas Mettler (CH). In her research and choreography she explores the overlaps of techniques she has trained in that range from Contact Improvisation & Release technique to Salsa and Tango.  The link in all her work recently is a focus in partner dance forms and communication.

Markus Hoft (Bremen)

Contactimprovisation Performance Project - Into the Blue

This is a performance project for up to 30 dancers wearing blue working overalls. We will perform in the city of Göttingen. The Overalls are very good to grab and pull-which will allow new contact lifts through the cloth grabbing. I will show ways we found out how to use the clothes for our last dance piece "Atempausen" at the dance bremen festival in March. We will have a score- with space to improvise with the clothes in public places!

Biography

Markus Hoft, dancer, choreographer, yoga/pilates teacher, and leader of the theater kreatür (actiontheater based physical theater). Studied new dance at Moving Arts Köln and contemporary dance at SCCD Scotland. Also influenced from Capoeira Angola. Dancing contactimprovisation since 1995, teaching since 1999. Focused on performing contactimprovisation in public places on a professional level. Organizer of the Potsdam Jam and Contact Jam Festival Bremen. More infos at www.fooldance.de, www.jam-festival-bremen.de.

Ulla Mäkinen (Finland)

Minor Revolutions

Experiential anatomy into movement

Diving into the details of our bodies; finding pathways, release, alignment, space. Learning and unlearning by using imagery and touch. From the anatomy, we bring ourselves into movement and into dancing, letting ourselves be curious of the small details, causing possibly big changes…

Ulla Mäkinen is a dancer and teacher based in Helsinki, Finland. She has taught movement in educations, schools, festivals and communities in Europe, Asia and USA since eight years. She has graduated as MA in contemporary dance pedagogy and has studied numerous somatic practices. In her work she emphasizes gentle discipline, curiosity and open-minded presence. www.ullamakinen.com

Johan Nilson (Sweden)

Contact Improvisation - Images Inside

Letting our eyes look inside. Sensing through the inner vision.

For my own dancing and learning I use inner pictures, or maybe rather visualisations, were I give myself certain tasks or new ways to percieve the information that journeys from outside to inside. set up these different scores to challenge me and to discover new pathways for my awarenss when in journeys in my inner landscape.

I love to read and enhance my partners dance in contact. In this class I will work with awaken the reading that comes from touch. Letting our eyes rest and sometimes even be blind.

I will give different images and imaginary tools that I find useful for my own dancing and especially for my own learning about my partners structure, movement and choices. Letting our awareness travel inside gives us an experienced map of our inside, letting our awarness travel into our partner makes our map bigger. Through touch and shared weight we appear as a new being with more limps, more surfaces and our joined bodies form a bigger landscape and gives us more movement possibilities.

We will explore this through very clear structures of sharing weight, hands-on reading of movements, coming in and out of contact. For people new to contact the exercises will be structured and on a lower level, for more experienced I want to encourage higher levels and a deeper research.

To enhance; to be a moving support, to initiate from above, giving support while falling, h does the touch start – reaching out with your awareness.

Biography

I am exploring and working with natural sciences and art. I am a trained gardener and teacher in Biodynamic farming. In dance and improvisation I experience the same fascination as when I was achild playing in the forest, in contact with nature, in a world full of imagination and playfulness. My interest in movement deepend when I discovered Contact Improvisation 2004. Before my movement history includes sports, capoeira, african dance, worlddance and fire spinning. Since I started with Contact Improvisation my main inspiration comes from Måns Erlandsson and Malin Anclair, Stockholm. The last years I have been participating as teacher and performer in several projects,festivals and dance events in Europe. Since five years I teach classes and organize CI events in Järna and Stockholm. I am inspired by how physical, emotional and intellectual levels can be simultaneously contained and expressed in contact improvisation... and I definitely love to take a certain amount of risk.  

Christine Mauch

Investigating Self and Environment: Scores for Moving with Closed Eyes

Improvised movement is instructed by many circumstances, conditions and decisions; these two hours we are focussing on variations of a simple proposal: Where do our movement choices, our timing, our interest take us, when our eyes are closed in solo, duet and group constellations?
It is an invitation enter the world of personal imagination, to read and interpret our body and our environment, and to experience our connection to our dancing partners, whilst we are moving with our eyes closed.

Since a lot of my dancing and teaching these days revolves around the issue of relaxing while staying engaged, or - in other words: not forcing things without giving up, this attitude will provide another baseline for our time together.

Biography

Christine Mauch came to dancing as a young adult. She studied extensively with Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson and Kirstie Simson, is a graduated Zen Shiatsu practitioner, and dances, teaches and performs in various forms of collaborations. Together with Andrew Morrish und Andrea Keiz she was artist in residence for "improvised solo performance" at fabrik potsdam. From 2008 to 2010 she was co-organizing the CI Satellites’ Return Weeks at Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen.
Her teaching and performing draws on her intense research and interest in the field of body awareness, (Contact) Improvisation, and her interest in creating new formats for exchanging on and practicing dance.

Guest teachers

Barbara Pfundt (Hildesheim) - www.tanzkontakt.de

Johann Wyss (CH)

Kim Lasdon

has been dancing Contact Improvisation for 10 years and teaching CI for 4 years to all levels of movers in the US and Europe. She has studied dance with Nancy Stark-Smith, Martin Keogh, Gretchen Spiro, Mark Zemelman, Kirstie Simson, Keith Hennessey, Eckhard Mueller and Daniela Schwartz and clowning with Patch Adams. She currently resides in Madison, WI, where she teaches at UW Madison, is an active organizer in the Madison CI jam community, the Great Lakes Area CI Enthusiast Retreat and the Midwest CI Teachers Exchange. Her true goal is embodying the compassionate trickster.

Lea Kieffer (France)

Roland Nordeck (Göttingen) - www.improtanz.de

Tara Brandel (Uk) - www.croiglan.com

is a contemporary dancer, choreograher and CI teacher, and currently artistic Director of Croi Glan, an Integrated Dance company in Ireland (www.croiglan.com). She trained in contempoary dance at the Laban Centre, and trained in CI with Steve Paxton, Juleyn Hamilton and Kirstie Simpson. She has danced for Ka Rustler, Feri de Gues, Jess Curtis, and Emilyn Claid, among others, and has taught at Tanz Fabrik, Ponderosa, Seattle Festival of Dance and Imprvisation (SFADI), West Coast Contact Festival (San Francisco), GLACIER, Liverpool Parforming Arts School (LIPA) and Chisenhale Dance Space amongt others.

Zack Bernstein (USA) - www.tangocontact.com

Ka Rustler (D)

Tensegrity Structures

Finding a connective network

While we move we constantly receive information from our internal and external world. How we perceive, filter, reject, use and accept, has a major influence on our instantaneous composition and how our senses create our environment.One unique aspect in this physical landscape is the support of the fascia. Fascia is strong connective tissue found throughout the body and wraps all our muscles and organs and participates in every body movement. It plays a crucial role in muscular force transmission and is also a sensory organ, actually our richest and most important in terms of body perception.  In this Workshop we will learn to access the different aspects of this sensing tissue, fluids and tensile structures and its influence on our perception and movement patterns. Any inefficient pattern will shape the efficiency of all later patterns. Experience and choice expands and deepens our sensory –motor knowledge, offering diverse layers to our movement qualities and patterns.  In structured forms, set exercises and Contact Improvisation we will explore the fascia diving into juicy, luscious dancingcreating a continuous dialogue and change of focus. Within an embodied reception we develop inner calm, clear intention and dynamic dancing, experiencing change within our total matrix of movement.    

Biography

Ruslan Santah (Ukraine)

choice and spontaneous space play

... not only in Contact Improvisation

I imagine CI as a Dance of joy and spontaneous playing with space, where you, your partner and your interactions become unseparable. You become a whole and simply enjoy playfulness, diversity and creativity of all that is happening. Actively participating in everyrhing, without controlling your dance, just being aware, observing.
But first and foremost, you are having a dance, and it is good to know, how to move with the least physical effort, how to relax, how to fall down comfortably, how to stand up quickly and easily. In that regard I find modern dance techniques very useful. When we lose contact with our partner, we need to know, how to continue moving.

Biography

Ruslan Santah (Baranov) - dancer, choreographer, modern dance stage manager and Contact Improvisation (CI) teacher.
Obtained complete dancing education at the best Kiev Schools. Worked as ballet-dancer in professional Ukrainian folk dance groups. Participated in musicals "Dracula" (Czechia), "Keep Cool" (Switzerland). Was a stage manager of different show programs at nightclubs. At 1999 for the first time got acquainted with Contact Improvisation at Vienna summer dancing week's festival "Dance Web-99" (Austria) and since 2000 became the first CI teacher in Ukraine. His CI teachers were Ester Gall (Hungary), Daniel Lepkof (USA), Benno Vooram and Zibrig Dohter (Sweden), Brenton Chang (USA), Ekhard Muller (Germany) and at different projects he often met almost all present CI teachers of Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Byelorussia and Poland. Not once conducted CI seminars in all these countries. Has been conducted regular CI lessons in Kiev since 2002 till present time. Teaches Contact Improvisation at Kiev National University of Arts and Humanities.

Paul Singh (USA)

Moving Mind meets Thinking Body

This class will try to use contemporary ideas for contact dancing. Both styles of dance have such useful information to help the main purpose of dance - to communicate with each other. Contact Improvisation and Contemporary dance have themes that are specific to each, yet cross-over into both. Contemporary dance gives us clarity in rhythm, powerful choices through unison ideas, and a focus of intention while dancing. Contact Improvisation gives us animal instincts, freedom in every second, and a chance to constantly physically support and be supported. Both forms let us maintain vulnerability and strength at the same time. We will work on naming and understanding the concepts that link the two types of dance, as well as practicing actually movement ideas that facilitate them both. Some questions we will address: How can we learn to see our partners while dancing? What movement patterns help us prepare our bodies for contact work AND give us a shared language for clear, thoughtful dancing? How do we get in touch with all parts of our creative selves and then bring this out into the jam atmosphere? how can having a clear intention help us choreograph an improvised dance? How do we make the word "contemporary" less scary for contact dancers and make the word "contact" less scary for contemporary dancers? It is time to get honest with our feet, our limbs, our minds and our sweat!

Biography

Paul Singh is a dancing fool that lives and works in New York City, USA. He has danced for over 25 different artists in New York and had his choreographic work professionally presented and curated at multiple modern dance venues. Experimental dance is his passion and he continues to seek new ways to challenge the standard ideas of human relationships in the larger world. He earned his BFA degree in Dance from the University of Illinois, USA, where he focused on a variety of dance techniques including Alexander Technique, Ballet, Modern and Contact Improvisation. He began his studies in CI with Chris Aiken and since then has had the pleasure of studying with Angela Dony, Yaniv Mintzer, Ray Chung and others. While recently visiting CI festivals in Israel, Russia and Germany, Paul spent time participating in intensives as well as assisting or teaching fundamentals in falling, flying, failing and laughing. As a student and teacher, he uses his understanding of Bartenieff Fundamentals as well as his innate sense of spatial awareness to explore more deeply the ideas of being grounded, becoming softer, and forgetting the difference between up and down. While in New York, Paul hopes to continue making work for his company, Singh & Dance, until his feet fall off.

http://paulsinghdance.com