Details

Parent Category: History

Category: 2015

Program structure 2015

As you can see on the schedule, this festival offers various frames to learn, practice and to share the dance...

Intensives

The intensives give a sense of continuation - happening every day in the morning with the same teacher and the same group. They will all focus on fundamental principles, in a way that is accessable for people with basic skills but at the same time provides opportunity for the more advanced dancers to deepen their knowledge.

Classes

The other classes are single classes with one specific focus. Each time there will be one class focussing on fundamental principles in CI. The teachers will share what they found to be essential and still inspiring. The other two classes will be more specific or advanced and create links between CI and contemporary dance technique. A focus on Improvisation and the desire to give tools and inspirations to be tried out in the Jam Sessions and dance scores will be the link between all classes.

CI Skills

We want to offer two or three times in the afternoon one hour sessions, where very concrete CI skills will be taught. It is meant to support beginners but also people who want to focus more on the technical aspect of the form.

Supported Practice

'Supported practice' is inspired by the common festival format called one2ones. People dance and teachers are available for feed back - as a request or offer. It is a way to have the dance as the motor for individual labbing. We will have one afternoon for this format and are willing to develop it further.

Jam session

We imagine a space, where CI can be practiced and contemporary dance can be actually danced (instead of being only a preparation for the dance on the stage). We are curios how the classes, performative frames and the personal reflections will inform the jams sessions.

Soothing mind & Body

We usually won't have a guided warm up for the Jam. But half an hour before the Jam starts differnet teachers will offer a simple practice to sooth the body and to calm and clear the mind. So the Jams will begin with a un-pressured focussed energy, where people easily take on responsibility for their own journey through the Jam. We were super happy with this approach last year.

Dance Score

Once or twice the Jam will be started by a dance score - a set of rules or a clear comon focus - and will create a different flavour for the jam.

Performative frames

The traditional performance night is re-defined as the 'favorite bits presentation', where we want to create space to share dance connections, physical questiones or other revelationes that arose on this festival. A group score at another night will provide a low pressure frame to support the dance by witnessing. We'd wish to keep ego issues out of this space as good as we can. 

Reflection with Action

As last years we will keep the 30 minute time slots after each intensive session for reflection - not only through talking. And in the afternoons we'll have a one hour format, that wants to stimulate the mind to look at familiar practices and attitudes from a new perspective. At least twice it will be an interactive lecture. Depending on the occurring drive of the festival we'll shape a few other formats as well.

Do what you need

As we are back to a week long festival we put our 'do what you need' slogan three times into the schedule to remind us, that this should be the main attitude for the individual journey through this festival.

Experience level

We designed this festival for people who have at least a good basic knowledge in CI and/or contemporary technique with a sense for improvisational work. Our experience is that complete beginners get easily overwhelmed by the amount of new information and the mass of people.

Details

Parent Category: History

Category: 2015

Intensives 2015

Yaniv Mintzer (Israel)
imagination-sensation-intuition - a non technical approach to CI technique

Kristin Horrigan (USA)
Contact and Improvisation - What's gender got to do with it?

Ralf Jaroschinski (Brasil/ Germany)
Pathways - predetermined and improvised ones

Yaniv Mintzer (Israel)

I have been dancing and teaching contact for the past decade. Started a musical education in Israel and continued for a degree at Berklee college in Boston, where I also began dancing and training in CI. Some of the teachers I studied with were: Andrew Harwood, Chris Aiken, Martin Keogh and Nancy Starks-Smith.

Since returning to Israel in 2006 I have been teaching non professionals as well as professional dancer trainings in Israel. Currently I teach for the "vertigo dance company" training, the "yafo group school of dance", the Jerusalem Dance Academy and the "simulator" training for professional dancers in Tel Aviv. I also teach my own yearly training for advance CI skills in Jerusalem. I have also been touring extensively to teach in Europe, Russia, Japan and Greece.

For the last 7 years I assisted Mr Ilan Lev at his practitioner training of the Ilan Lev method, which is a new movement based therapy work, developed in Israel - ilanlev.org.

As a musician I have been involved in dance and theatre productions, mainly making live music, improvisation projects and playing for CI jams and performances. I have also produced two albums of music in of my own music in hebrew.

imagination-sensation-intuition - a non technical approach to CI technique

dancing CI we often follow sensations, responding with our reflexes, habits and our curiosity/interest. in my research, I find that the way we imagine or project images in our dance exploration, can bring major changes in sensations arriving to our body and shift our physicality completely. and vice versa- the way we move can feed our imagination and expand our mental perception. in this workshop I will approach familiar, as well as newly explored physical material and questions, within the framework of CI. some of the ideas we will expand on will be:

- traveling weight- how to not "carry" or "lift", but move my weight with my partner's weight. in any direction at any moment. understanding the support that comes from earth, not muscles.

- relaxation and physical integrity- using less muscle effort and extra momentum, and instead riding the natural wave of the movement and expanding it. exploring some special hi-tech body facilities which create magic in our movement!

- spiral flow- always having a possibility to go anywhere at any time, with any body part. having less physical hierarchy and more abundance of choices. playing with surprise and multi - directional space.

i will introduce hands-on work based on the Ilan Lev treatment method (ilanlev.org), with whom i work for the past 9 years. his work taps into the body's intuitive learning and allows fresh understanding of movement and touch.

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Kristin Horrigan (USA)

Kristin Horrigan is dance artist based in Vermont, USA, who divides her time between teaching at a small university and working internationally. A contact improviser since 1998, she has taught and performed CI around the world in places such as the USA, Germany, Denmark, Japan, Australia and Argentina.  Kristin holds an MFA in choreography from Ohio State University and is a Professor of Dance at Marlboro College, where she teaches her students contemporary dance technique, choreography, improvisation, contact improvisation, dance theory, and gender theory. She also spent ten years directing an intergenerational dance company, exploring improvisation scores, partnering work and choreography with a group of dancers in their 20s through 80s. Her current research focuses on the intersection of gender and dance, particularly in improvisation and contact improvisation.

Contact and Improvisation - What's gender got to do with it?

Contact and Improvisation - What's gender got to do with it?

Gender is the way we enact our masculinity, femininity, our queerness and even our rejection of societal norms. It is a daily performance. Something we do.

Dancing CI we may feel freed of gender norms…and yet gender is there in many subtle ways shaping our choices.

How gender is embedded in your dancing?

What aspects of your movement do you consider to be feminine? masculine? gender-neutral? gender-queer?

How do you perform your gender on and off the dance floor -- in improv settings, solo or CI, in the social situation of classes, at lunch?

Where do your ideas about your gender expand or limit your possibilities? 

Does your gender expression change depending on who you are dancing with?

How can contact improvisation allow a safe space for exploration beyond the confines of the gender you were raised to inhabit?

How does the gender lens change our ability to build our CI skills?

Exploring our CI technique, as well as working solo and in a group, we will investigate the deeply embodied notions of gender that we carry with us at all times. Let us find out how these ideas and behaviors influence the choices we make in our dancing and use this knowledge to clarify and enrich our physical choices.

A note from the organizers: Kristin taught a class on the gender topic last year and it surprisingly became a highlight of the festival. Even people who were sceptical about the theme found the class so inspiring that it changed the experience of their further journey on the festival. So, we couldn't resist and give Kristin a more intense frame for her very human and explorative way to look at and move through CI.

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Ralf Jaroschinski (Brasil/ Germany)

Born in Southern Germany and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Ralf graduated as a classical and modern dancer from the University of Music and Theater in Hannover, Germany, and then studied several contemporary dance and composition techniques in New York on a stipend from the German Academic Exchange Service.  He discovered contact improvisation for himself in 1994.  From 1998 until 2002, he directed the dance company of the City Theater of Hildesheim, Germany, and included contact improvisation as part of the dancers' training and the creation of his works.  He also got commissioned to create choreographies for several European and American national ballet companies and dance universities – so far, he has created some 100 dance pieces. 

Facilitating contact improvisation classes and workshops more regularly since 2004, Ralf has taught at numerous festivals, universities, dance schools and studios all over the world.  He has designed, produced and staged several contact improvisation scores and concerts, and he has trained the dancers of companies such as the Brazilian Curitiba Guaíra Ballet, the Swedish "GöteborgsOperans Danskompani", and the "Cullberg Baletten" in Stockholm in contact improvisation.

Pathways - predetermined and improvised ones

To find and create movements and their pathways spontaneously and together with one or more partner/s seems to me to be an essential part of contact improvisation.  However, the detailed study of premeditated moves can bring great insight and inform our choices tremendously regarding safety and clever use of resources like physical structure, balance and effort (effortlessness).

In these classes, we’ll go for both the predetermined and the improvised approach.  We’ll benefit from researching the details and physical components of certain movement pathways in cooperation with partners, and also from improvising with and around them.  In addition to that, we’ll have fun experiencing the freedom of informed yet spontaneous dancing and creative interacting as we gradually expand our dancing relying further and further on spatial support and momentum.

In any case, the set movement phrases that we’ll work with are rather on the easy side, since simple phrases already have large potential to trigger original creativity and luscious improvisations.

Details

Parent Category: History

Category: 2015

ContactFestival: Timetable 2015

This timetable is still in a dynamic process but can give you a first taste.

Details

Parent Category: History

Category: 2015

Classes 2015

On most days of the festival in the afternoon there will be three classes happen parallel. One of them is focusing on fundamental principles of CI. The other two classes will offer some diversity out of the field of CI and contemporary dance - partly targeting more experienced participants. In all classes there will be a common focus on the improvisational side of the dance to widen the awareness about the choices we make – as a preparation for more satisfying jamming.

To support CI beginners and people who want to focus strongly on CI technique we'll offer a CI class before the opening circle and 2-3 times in the late afternoon a one hour frame to focus on basic CI skills.

Teachers

Our teachers group is a very yummy mix of well established teachers (in the european festival landscape) and others who haven't been seen so much yet on these events.

• Albert Quesada - Assisted Solo

• Alyssa Lynes (USA) - Poetic Grammar in Movement
• Andrea Keiz (Berlin/ Germany) - Perception as a driving force
• Andrzej Woźniak - (Warsaw/ Poland) - CI technique
  
• Barbara Pfundt (Hildesheim/ Germany)
• Bastien Auber (Grenoble/ France)
• Bernd Knappe (Göttingen/ Germany) - improve improvisation
• Christoph Schuetz (Göttingen/ Germany) - Dancing in the Streets reloaded
• Daniel Werner (Göttingen/ Germany) - CI technique
• Elske Seidel (Berlin/ Germany)
• Gabriele Reuter (Berlin/ Germany)
• Nadja Schwarzenbach (Berlin/ Germany) - CI technique
• Natalia Oniśk (Warsaw/ Poland) - CI technique
• Roland Nordeck (Göttingen/ Germany)
• Tanja Striezel (Köln/ Germany) - being in contact - staying present
  

Special offers

• Christine Mauch (Berlin/ Germany)
• Diana Thielen (Berlin/ Germany) - morning practice
• Jörg Hassmann (Berlin/ Germany) - Lecture, Jam intros, CI skills
• Mokshia Frenzel (Canarian Islands/ Germany) - morning singing
• Kristin Horrigan (USA) - Lecture
• Nina Wehnert (Berlin/ Germany) - body awareness before the jams

Albert Quesada

My education has been based on contemporary dance and choreography through different schools in Europe (MTD, Amsterdam, PARTS, Brussels).Previously I studied Philosophy and Multimedia Engineering in Barcelona.I organised and curated contact and impro jams for four years in Brussels. I have taught 'contact dance' in several studios in Brussels, and eventually upon invitations from fellow dancers in other countries (Spain, Austria, India and USA).After my studies I started creating work for stage where both listening and dancing to music, and partnering, have been my main focus.My current goal at the moment is to continue creating, and at the same time to bring the interests and passions from my work and teaching into Contact Impro Festivals and other educational frames.

Alyssa Lynes (USA/ Germany)

Alyssa Lynes is a dancer and teacher interested in how communication and creative expression play out in partner dance forms.  She received a BA in Contemporary dance and a MS in education (NYC).  Since an inspirational training with Nancy Stark Smith, Alyssa came to Europe (2010) and explores human expression through her choreography/performance work, most recently “You Have To” (E-werk Kammerteatre, Freiburg, DE), in co-directing the film on CI (“Five Ways In”), and in her international CI teaching (Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Israel, the US). In Freiburg, she has acted as a founding member of the CI Freiburg Collective, a member of the CI Jam Team, a guest teacher at Bewegungs-art TIP School, and as a teacher of the Fortbildung CI Kompakt Training Intensive.  She is excited to return to CMC to share in the diversity of what CI is and how Release technique and other techniques support our growth -through jamming, talking, teaching and moving through our questions together.

Poetic Grammar in Movement: through Release Technique and Improvisation

Imagine your mother saying “It’s time to go to bed.” Try out different tones of voice, timing, and emphasis. Take one and dance it…

We will explore a range of tone in the body through increasing and releasing tension. With this movement spectrum warmed up, will converse in sentences of movement through form making that punctuate moments like exclamation points, pause the phrase like commas, and extend phrases into run-on mumbling speech. After exploring a few principles of tensegrity and learning a few set phrases, we will open to experience the poetics of improvisation. Ultimately solo and group conversations will form an orchestra, dancing improvised poetry.

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Andrzej Woźniak (Warsaw/ Poland)

I'm a dancer and a dance pedagogue. I've studied contact improvisation in Berlin, Warsaw and different workshops and festivals all around Europe. My most important teachers are Joerg Hassmann, Daniel Werner, Nancy Stark Smith and Julyen Hamilton. Since 2012 I have been teaching classes and workshops in contact improvisation in Poland and abroad. Since 2014 I have been involved in the first Body-Mind Centering programme in Poland. I am interested in the somatic approach to movement, martial arts and a performance as a socially engaged action. I am also a co-founder of „Ciało Się” Foundation which promotes working with the body in its therapeutic and artistic aspects.

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Barbara Pfundt (Hildesheim/ Germany)

Barbara Pfundt studied physical education and education. Since 1992 she has been on her journey of dancing contact and contemporary dance. She is teaching professional dancers as well as beginners and is also choreografing and performing. She is convinced by the mathematic hyperbel curve as the principle of movement and likes integrating elements of Tai Chi, Release Technique, Feldenkrais, Performance Skills and much more in her teaching. I dance CI because I have been fallen in love with this hugh universe of moving very physical, feeling myself, sensing my partner and the surrounding, taking again and again this challenge of opening up and developing an open hearted mind. It's simply a big gift.

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Bastien Auber (Grenoble/ France)

After ten years of practicing and teaching climbing, he discovers the contact improvisation in 2007 in Grenoble. He learns CI and instantaneous composition with I.Uski and, with the pleasure of travelling, he meets and works with different teachers in Europe, USA, India to explore more CI techniques, somatic practice and balances of life. Geologist, he is particularly interested by the similar forms and movements between nature and body.  With this material he research, and he makes some workshops of contact improvisation, but also some creation and performances in solo or with a group. His dance likes dynamic, spirals and surprises!!

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Bernd Knappe (Göttingen/ Germany)

Since a few years Bernd Knappe is exclusively engaged in contactimprovisation, after freelance work as painter, musician and architect. In order to build up local CI-communities  he is teaching all around in Europe - especially interested in the question, how people without a specialised dance background body-training and knowledge can find an easy, effortless and playful way into physical improvisation as an arts form. He supports and initiates integrative dance projects and cooperates  with "DanceAbility International"

• video
• www.dancedancedance.de

Improve IMPROVISATION - 'spices' for the next jam

Dancing contact improvisation starts
inside the body we have,
with the floor we are on,
with the air touching our skin,
with the rhythm that´s inside you and me,
with the sounds around us
or the pattern we notice in the space.
Let´s take it as a beginning and a listening
to what is already there.

I want to focus on the "improvisation-side" of contact improvisation. My questions: How to make relations to others with and without physical connection, how to create non verbal talk, a curious mutual  conversation, in solo, duet or group settings? We will get awareness of the main tools in compositional Improvisation - synchronization and contrasting, speed, proximity, level, rhythm, voluming, direction in space. All this will get us more familiar with the idea of an contact improvisation as an ensemble-work. It´s about decision making and space design: Realizing or initiating frames, shoals,
cluster, pattern and other formats.

The class is open for everyBODY

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Christoph Schuetz (Göttingen/ Germany)

... is a performing artist and improviser. He used to work with ex nihilo, a street dance company of Marseille-France, with whom he is still associated. He is about to co found insitu, a site specific contemporary dance company with Heike Wrede (Kassel). Strongly influenced by Anna Halprin and Butoh Dance he was always interested to bring the dance back to the site specific-it comes from there, isn't it so?

He danced and performed in oceans, rocks, woods and other natural environments as well as warehouses, urban places, on concrete and asphalt...

Dancing in the Streets-reloaded

This year my site specific laboratory will focus on partnering in different aspects. Nourishing by what is already given in an outside environment, like people, sounds, rough textures, ambients…we want to bring all our skills of techniques and improvisation, of suddleness and speed, of melting and support to the street and toward a public view. Your dance will change through the outside as well as the site will be different with your dance…

This lab will fiddle with the scoring rather than the performance aspect. The Warming up, the talking, the scoring, everything will happen already outside. When you dance outside you will be part of the environment...

Please, bring solid but flexible shoes you can dance with, kneepads and rough but daily clothes to get the streets dance...

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Daniel Werner (Göttingen/ Germany)

As one of the organizers I noticed that teaching on our festival helps me to not get stuck in my organizers mind but to connect more directly to the main purpose of this event: the practice of dancing and learning. I teach CI since 1997, and love to continuously discover new dimensions of this amazing dance form on stage, in teaching and in the jam. My teaching is nurtured by the passion to systematically understand and categorize the underlying principles in CI. I studied contemporary dance at the North Karelia College in Finland and enjoy to work internationally as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. Essential influences for my work also come from Body-Mind Centering, Release-Techniques and Asian Movement Arts. Further I am involved in the following projects: www.easterimprofestival.info, www.body-mind-presence.de, www.in-touch.es and www.canarian.contactfestival.info.

CI technique

I will share knowledge that has its origin in the CI  basic training programme in Berlin, in which Jörg and me developed our so called 'systematic approach' to contact. To allow a smooth and committed CI duett we want to develop, keeping the shared weight moving through all levels and the space.

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Elske Seidel (Berlin)

Elske Seidel, based in Berlin, is a passionate CI dancer & teacher, deeply committed to CI and its community internationally. She has been teaching dance full time and wholeheartedly for two decades, CI since 2004. In her teaching she believes in ‘opening spaces where dance in all its vital magic and play can happen’.

She likes to create CI events that bring the studio focus outside into nature and into the experience. She enjoys gathering community merging life and dance together. She loves to support practice, jamming and research. She has taught CI in Europe, Canada, the U.S., Argentina, Israel, Russia and Japan.

She is the artistic director of the Annual Contact Festival Fuerteventura/ Spain, Contact Saturday Berlin, as well as co-creating the Berlin Weekend Jam, 23h Jam Berlin, North Sea CI Camp/ Germany, Dance Your Questions: CI Research Week for Experienced Contact Dancers in Arlequi/ Spain, CI Training Program Hamburg/ Germany and CI Workshop Series BASICS in Berlin & Hamburg.

www.elskedance.de (in process), www.improtanz.de, canarian.contactfestival.info

Listening through the Skin - CI essentials (all level)

In this class we will deepen our communication language in contact by listening into the skin. We can sense how the different layers under the skin move slide and even swim. As we feel our weight passing through the point of contact the sensation of 'swimming under the skin' continues, various layers within us respond. As we move together sharing one common center of weight we can 'hear' and read our partner, their structure, their bones, noticing weight moving, falling, constantly adjusting while balancing together.Any small detail may offer a door into a whole world of information and life, creating possibility, depth and freedom.

For our festival this class offers a deepening quality, a greater possibility into the dance by fine-tuning our ability to listen and read through our skin.

Creating a mutual language together which is rooted in a deep way invites a satisfying quality for advanced contact dancers as well as an eye opener for dancers with less experience in CI. Together we share the essence from which everything can happen - from here we play.

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Gabriele Reuter (Berlin/ Germany)

is a dance artist based in Berlin and Nottingham. Has been guest teacher for contemporary Dance, Improvisation and Contact Improvisation at several Universities in the UK, Workshops and professional class in Portugal, Norway, Brasil, Chile and across Germany and the UK. She has danced in the works of Rick Nodine since 2004 as well as for Sioned Huws, Christoph Winkler, Frauke Requardt. Her own choreographies were shown at several international festivals, including nottdance (UK), Springdance Festival Utrecht, SpringLoaded at The Place London, idans Istanbul. During the past years she has initiated and co-organised several improvised performance series and events in Germany and the UK and performed with many artists including Susanne Martin, Rick Nodine, Adam Benjamin, Ray Chung, Ingo Reulecke, Lily Kiara and Simon Ellis. Together with Christa Flaig she runs the Workshop Programs and teaches in the regular course programme of Tanzfabrik Berlin. www.gabrielereuter.de

Shifting Weight

Gabriele brings together release-based Contemporary Dance and technical information from Contact Improvisation. Exercises and phrase-work moves fluently between improvisations and short set movement phrases that emphasize on the traveling of weight, the use of momentum and the balance between effort and release, tension and softness in the body. The movement material is athletic and bold, makes use of the floor and invites the up side down. We improvise through choreographed material and refine clarity and precision in improvised movements. An interest in generous, imaginative and expansive use of space and dancing for and with each other is crucial to this class.

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Nadja Schwarzenbach (Berlin/ Germany)

a dancer, teacher and improviser based in Berlin. She is passionate about CI and its technique while she does not lose the very human layers of connectedness. She has a sense for subtle vibrations in group settings, where the line between inspired learning versus painful failing can be so thin.The years of assisting Daniel and Joerg in their training program accompanied her smooth way to develop her own teaching approach and she is now happily offering her qualities in teaching. Her trainings and ongoing practice in massage and natural medicine informed her sense for touch and the understanding of the human body moving.She is embedded in the CI community through dancing, teaching and organising CI relatet events. She is Co-Organizer of In Touch Contact Festivals Berlin and Contact meets Contemporary Festival, Goettingen.

CI technique

The class description will come ...

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Natalia Oniśk (Warsaw/ Poland)

I'm a contact improvisation dancer, CI teacher and an organizer of dance and movement events in Poland, also co-founder of CIAŁO SIĘ Foundation, which aim to promote and support somatic approach to dance and movement.

I learn CI through teaching and encountering people who are passionate about exploring movement. After a few years of intense researching of this dance form I'm getting more clear about where my interests go. What attracts me and makes me curious is a somatic approach to movement and its effects on solo dancing, contact improvisation and performance work. In the recent years apart form CI I've been studying and practising the Feldenkreis Method® and Body-Mind Centering® and I enjoy applying ideas from these practices into contact improvisation.

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Roland Nordeck (Göttingen/Germany)

I see both movement and touch as valuable forms of human communication, as they can reach beyond the field of verbal expression. I have been practicing CI for about seventeen years and for three years fulltime I studied contemporary dance in Outokumpu, Finnland. For many years my interest in Shiatsu massage has been affecting my sense of perceptive touch and intuition while dancing. I believe that being seen, being heard and being touched are basic human needs that affect the world of dance a lot. Meeting these needs I with profound listening skills – listening to space, sounds, touch, (...) and rhythm can form the basis of improvisational art. Bodywork and improvisational dance complement my general interest in communication.

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Tanja Striezel (Bonn/ Germany)

... is a dancer and teacher for Alexander-Technique, Contact Improvisation and Experiential Anatomy. She has been involved in the field of New Dance/CI and Bodywork since 1994 and passionately practises and studies Contact Improvisation continuously with different teachers, in work groups, at festivals and on jams. Her teaching is influenced and inspired by the Alexander-Technique, Body-Mind Centering®, Authentic Movement, working with Nancy Stark Smith, and last but not least by the students that gave her the possibility to develop and define her work. Practicing CI for the last 20 years and teaching continuously for the last 8 years, she is still or even more fascinated by this complex and deep dance form and how learning and understanding on the many layers never ends.
www.tanjastriezel.de

being in contact - staying present

„Beginning with yourself, but not ending with yourself“ Martin Buber

After all these years of practice and teaching, one of the most exciting questions for me is: how am I in contact with myself and my partner and how can I evoke a certain state of presence in my body - mind? And what does one have to do with the other?

As the name suggests, in Contact Improvisation the main focus is to be in contact. There are many partners we are in contact with such as the floor as our constant reliable partner, and the space around us. But first of all it is about being in touch with ourselves, our body, our mind, our presence, before we meet the other person.

Beginning in solo opens ones awareness to the inner state of mind and body. Giving attention to different body layers gives the mind some aspects to focus on for the play with gravity and other physical forces. To be awake, relaxed and responsive, listening to ones own body impulses and to know where to draw back to, allows us to feel safe and secure. We need to build trust and open our reflexes and senses within ourselves to navigate and negotiate sharing weight with the other partner. Only when we are fully present and connected with ourselves, can we be fully in contact with the other dancing body at the same time. It may sound paradoxical, but when everybody in the dance listens to and follows their own impulses, the dance can magically unfold into a satisfying connection with each other.

There are moments in the dance, when we are too busy with the other person or with questions that arise, such as: “Am I doing it right? Does he or she like my dancing?” etc. How can we be in contact with our underlying constant partners like the floor and the space when we are in contact with ourselves and meet different bodies? How can we stay physically connected within ourselves and be in contact with our dance partner? And how can we let go of too much thinking and evoke a non-doing state so as to let the „IT“ take over the dance.

We will use Authentic Movement to develop trust in our solo dance and we will use that ground to dive open mindedly into the beautiful unknown of a contact dance.

All levels, suitable for beginners

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Special Offers

Christine Mauch (Berlin/ Germany)

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 researchand interest in the field of body awareness, (Contact) Improvisation, and her interest in creating new formats for exchanging on and practicing dance.

Her special offer is still in progress ...

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Diana Thielen (Berlin/ Germany) – Morning practice

Diana Thielen received her diploma in contemporary dance techniques at the Salzburg Academy of Dance (SEAD) in Salzburg / Austria. During her time in Austria, she has come in touch with the Axis Syllabus, since 2012 she is in the teacher certification process. The growing community which is researching, collecting and evaluating information about anatomy, biomechanics and physics et al. is creating the Axis Syllabus lexicon to apply these findings in various movement disciplines. Since 2008 she teaches yoga and dance / improvisation and she is making a stab at breaking down the set esthetical ideas of it to replace it with the understanding and appreciation of the moving body in space.

Morning practice: The Axis of Asana- contemporary perspectives of yoga practices

“The story of modern Yoga is obviously the story of innovation, in which various Indian traditions; heavily influenced by western concepts of physical education, were shaped into something new.”

My yoga morning sessions build on observations I have compiled from experiences in the integration of bio-mechanical principles in my Yoga classes and personal practice. My resource for these principles is The Axis Syllabus human movement lexicon. My studies made me aware of basic anatomical guidelines that indicate the risk of certain activities and positions, and as a result I have even been so bold as to slightly alter the postures themselves. I'd like to take space and time to look at and investigate standard yoga vocabulary. I am fascinated by the approach to create space and frame in which the "end product" isn´t priority but rather the way to a conscious choice entering the learning process.

Get inspired: “Hunting for Traces – the history of modern Asana practice” by: Imogen Dalmann and Martin Soder

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Jörg Hassmann (Berlin/ Germany)

I am part of the festival team, taking care of the schedule and its content - like teachers and what they offer, and the different frames to practice and to share our knowledge.

For more than 20 years now I see myself in a slow but steady learning process with CI (as the center of my dance practice and profession) and I am amazed about the depth and complexity that is still unfolding. My work is influenced by anatomy based movement explorations, contemporary dance, ideas from BMC, Capoeira, play and the urge and joy of discovery. Teaching and performing has always been essential for me on this journey and I have been fortunate enough to teach all over the world. Seven years ago I started teaching CI training intensive programmes in Berlin together with Daniel Werner, where we developed our systematic approach to contact technique (www.dancecontact.de).

Lecture, Jam intros & CI skills

I won't teach a class but share my knowledge through creating frames for focussed jamming, by giving a lecture and probably teaching a one session about basic CI skills.

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Kristin Horrigan (USA) - interactive lecture

Kristin Horrigan is an improviser, choreographer, performer and teacher based in Vermont, USA.  A contact improviser since 1998, she holds an MFA in choreography from Ohio State University and has taught and performed contact improvisation at festivals and universities in the USA, Germany, Japan, and Argentina.  Kristin works as a Professor of Dance at Marlboro College in Vermont, USA, teaching her students contemporary dance technique, choreography, improvisation, contact improvisation and dance theory.  She also directs the intergenerational performance company, Dance Generators where she explores improvisation scores, partnering work and choreography with a group of dancers in their 20s through 80s.

Gender and Improvisation (interactive lecture)

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Mokshia Frenzel (Canarian Islands/ Germany) - morning singing

Moksha is a passionate dancer, bodyworker, singer, movement and consciousness teacher. He created since the mid-90s liberating playgrounds for effortless and sensual experience of learning and Being.
Inspired by the diverse artistic and therapeutic systems, he enjoys himself more and more in letting go of all concepts. Moksha lives in a community on the Canary Island Benahoare.
www.somaart.de

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Nina Wehnert (Berlin/ Germany) - body awareness in the morning and before the jams

Nina Wehnert works as a dancer and yogateacher in and outside of berlin. She studied Vinyasa Yoga at OM Yoga New York a Yogaschool that combines clear, precise alignment (Iyengar) with the form of vinyasa and buddhist meditation, she studied Yin Yoga with Sarah Powers and is a certified BMC©&Yoga Teacher (Body Mind Centering ©), currently finishing the Somatic Movement Educator Program of BMC©. Next to Yoga she teaches Contact Improvisation and organizes Contact Improvisation events in different formats, from 2008-2010 she co-hosted with Christine Mauch the CI gathering "satellites' return" at Ponderosa/Stolzenhagen. Inspired by many great teachers such as Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Nancy Stark Smith, Christine Mauch, Jörg Hassmann and many yoga teachers, she has great joy in sharing her experience and is happy to pass on what she received. 

Nina will support this festival by offering moments to reconnect to oneself in this environment of sometimes 'too much information and interaction':

Vinyasa Yoga - morning classes

Vinyasa Yoga - a form of Yoga that combines movement and breath, moves through asanas in consequencially built sequences.  The classes lead from a warm up and sun salutions to a blend of standing postures, back bends, seated postures to shavasana. Short pranayama/meditation excercises will be added.

I will combine clear, precise alignment with the form of vinyasa in a calmly paced way. Finding a juicy, powerful and at the same time tender quality in the movement, getting your body and mind ready and welcoming for the day. My classes are inspired by my knowledge and special interest in Embodied Anatomy / BMC© aswell as my experience in Anusara and Yin Yoga (a restorative form of yoga).

Sooth your body & mind

these short classes will happen on most days before the jam. They will give you the possiblity to take a concious rest-  a stretching, breathing, nourishing break from the turmoil of the festival to soothe your soul and meet yourself again. We will do very calm Yin Yoga Poses that not only stretch your muscles but feed your body/mind, We will do Pranayama (Breathing) and short meditations. And these offers will create a calm and focussed environment for the jams find fertile grounds.

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