Dance Improvisation Practices that offer Resilience and Support in Difficult Times
Intensive with Kirstie Simson (UK)
There is deep inspiration and rigour in a practice of improvisation that posits vulnerability at its heart. Developing the skills to be able to care for, engage, respect, and respond to that state of openness in oneself, others and our environment generates creative work that is powerful and transformative. Learning from a place of interconnectedness can give us the resilience and insight to face life’s challenges and complexities.
In this workshop Kirstie shares the movement practices and underlying philosophies she has developed over forty years of her committed involvement with dance improvisation as a ‘life-practice’ that has helped her negotiate life’s ups and downs. Integral with the physical practices she will elucidate how she views embodied practices as vitally important for developing the resilience to face into and respond to the challenging times we are living through. Having gone through recent life-threatening illness herself, Kirstie draws first hand on how grounded dance practices can guide and sustain us as we face into life’s greatest challenges, and the life-affirming health benefits they offer us.
Kirstie draws from her extensive experience of Contact Improvisation, dance techniques, the Alexander technique, Aikido, meditation, and her broad knowledge of improvisation in performance. She shares her work through facilitated exercises, open time for play and exploration, movement scores, observations, self-reflection, deep listening, discussion, and humour. Much of the work is experienced through partnering and connection with others, balanced with solo time for processing and reflection. This is a rare opportunity for participants to delve deeply into the wisdom embedded within embodied practices, both in the studio space, as well as the possibility to explore movement scores in the natural environment. Kirstie will facilitate her work, guided by her own depth of bodymind-knowledge gleaned over the years in which she has pursued a dedicated practice of deep listening and inquiry, centered in the essential importance of life-affirming embodied knowledge.
Biography
Kirstie Simson (UK) has been a continuous explosion in the contemporary dance scene, bringing audiences into contact with the vitality of pure creation in moment after moment of virtuoso improvisation. Called “a force of nature” by the New York Times, she is an award-winning dancer and teacher who has “immeasurably enriched and expanded the boundaries of New Dance” according to Time Out Magazine, London. Simson’s eternal subject is freedom, as she dares to go beyond the boundaries of form and structure to create movement out of the rhythm of life itself.
For the past forty-five years Kirstie has had a committed Dance Improvisation practice, collaborating with many dancers and musicians who share a common interest in Improvisation, including Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Simone Forti, Michael Schumacher, Russell Malliphant, Charlie Morrissey and musician Le Quan Ninh. She was awarded a London Time Out ‘Dance and Performance Award’ as “a unique figure in the dance world” and Jennifer Dunning of the New York Times said of her dancing “Kirstie Simson is justly celebrated in Britain for exquisite, sensuous dancing that seems to come from some simple force of nature”.
She is renowned today as an excellent teacher and captivating performer who is a leading light in the field of Dance Improvisation. She is invited to teach and perform all over the world working with major dance companies including Sasha Waltz and Guests; DV8; Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan, teaching in universities and conservatories, in performance festivals and private studios.
A documentary film has been made about her work by filmmaker Katrina McPherson called Force of Nature available through Amazon.com.
Kirstie spent thirteen years as an Associate Professor teaching improvisation in the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois, USA. In August 2020 she returned to her home base in Wales from where she continues to explore and share her work as an Independent Artist throughout the world.
After finishing my formal dance training in London, I joined the Rosemary Butcher Dance Company and together we to the Dartington College Dance Festival where Mary Fulkerson was heading the dance department in the early 1980’s.
She brought Steve Paxton and others to the festival including Simone Forti, who were exploring new forms of dance/movement that had emerged from the Judson Church experimentation in NYC in the 60’s and 70’s.
At the festival Steve was sharing new material he was exploring called Contact Improvisation and we were all very excited to take class from him.
In my 2nd class with Steve, I had a profound experience that changed my life forever.
He led us through a simple movement exercise with a partner. We leaned against each other in mutual support and trust, and for the first time I experienced what it was like to share a common physical centre with another.
During this sharing of weight, incredibly, a voice emerged from within my being and said very clearly to me:
‘Everything you will ever need in this life, is already inherently present within you.’
This experience changed my relationship to life forever and became the bedrock of my work in dance.
I instinctively understood that I no longer needed to ‘build myself up’ to become ‘someone’ worthy of inclusion within the human realm, but rather would embark on a process of ‘undoing’ all the conditioned habits and perspectives preventing me from realizing my full potential as a human being with a unique voice. One united within a choir of unique voices, here in service of Life.
At that moment I decided I was an “improviser”.
The principles and practices of improvisation would become my language, and the vehicle through which I have continued to explore, express, and affirm Life.
I had the great good fortune to be invited by Steve to perform alongside him and others over the ensuing few years. This was always an honour.
I also visited him a couple of times at the farm in Vermont where he lived.
I have an enormous amount of gratitude to Steve for having had such a formative and huge influence on my life.
Even though my work has evolved away from the form of Contact Improvisation as we know it, my roots are embedded in the work and exploration of the body that Steve brought into this world.
