Biography
Eszter Gál is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, a certified Skinner Releasing Technique teacher who practiced, studied, and taught releasing work and improvisation including Contact Improvisation for over 25 years. Creating her work, performing solo and group improvisation since 1993, and teaching Master workshops in International Festivals since 1998. She organized the Kontakt Budapest International Improvisation Festival for 15 years. In 2020, she joined the Berlin-based Cranky Bodies a/company to research collaborative performance-art making within an international frame and make the artistry of the Postmodern dance legacy visible. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student at the University of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest.
“Somatic approaches to dancing or dance and movement training mean listening to the sensation of the body, focusing on the lived experience, and guiding the attention to bodily sensation while moving or being still. When I enter the practice of Contact Improvisation, it begins with listening inward while opening outward. Begins with observing, begins with turning to the mind of the body. Listening and observing shifts to noticing and forming questions like how do I know I am breathing? what is the sensation of gravity at work in my body? how can I move with the sense of weight? what does it mean to allow ‘it’ to happen? how much do I / should I know to not know? Dancing Contact Improvisation for me is entering the unknown, to turn towards the dancing with an ever-fresh, open-minded ready state. The moment is always unique. Every contact teaches something new. At this (very) moment: somatic for me is the presence of the ever-curious whole self, and I am delighted to be danced.” (Eszter Gál)