During the festival there will be intensives, workshops, jams, performances, underscore, morning practice and time for rest, walk, bodywork, sauna, discussions and conversations, etc.
There will be two intensives led by Sabine Parzer (A) and Urs Stauffer (CH). The offer is to choose one. The workshops will be held by Juli Gábor (HU), Julia Limaverde (BR), Mélanie Jolly (FR) and Angela-Mara Florant (GER).
- Radically Intimate
Intensive with Sabine Parzer
For dancers with contact experience
An exploration through dance, movement and touch focusing on internal and external factors that allow for intimacy to arise, stay and show in our dances and daily life. What conditions can we create as dancers for ourselves and others to open the doors of honesty, courage and expressivity? What is needed in order to create safe and explorative containers? How can my dance, my artistry, my resourcefulness, my style, my candor, my performance quality be influenced by this quality of intimacy?
The ability to connect with Self, Place and Others translates to the quality of connection and invites a more direct experience both for myself and my partner. We will work with and deepen research material from Holistic Dance which includes: Integrative Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement Plus, Somatics & Applied Anatomy,Contemporary Dance Improvisation, composition, and creative writing.
- Intimacy with self, place, and other
- Clearly setting and relinquishing boundaries
- The relationship between sensuality and sexuality in the dance context
- Performance as act of radical Intimacy
- The intimacy of acrobatics
- Riding the tiger – surrendering to the ecstatic dance
- Remembering Basic Functionality
Intensive with Urs Stauffer
In my class, I wish to share my definition of the field of research in CI which is physical, not emotional, nor social and not esthetic in the sense of artistic standards. I understand CI not as a practice, but as a TECHNIQUE which NEEDS practice. This is where we start.
Our body is shaped in order to be functional in movement, as well within ourselves as in relationship with others and our environment. Finding ways to access this natural and long lost functionality is very fundamental in CI. To understand and INCORPORATE it, we need the courage to spend time with basic principles which go way underneath (or beyond?) the acrobatic dances CI seems to be famous for. The study of some tools of Body-Mind Centering® can be very helpful to allow our body to remember its ancient knowledge of moving with ease and precision. In my work BMC® and CI keep informing each other constantly as two distinct techniques.
Feeling more comfortable and adequate in our bodies as well as more at ease in relation to our environment, we will open up new possibilities to improvise our dances with skill and pleasure. - Solo consciousness, collective body
Workshop with Juli Gábor
What are my needs and how can I fulfil them? Is this important for the collective? How can I connect to my own core and at the same time be aware of the others and their actions? How can I be an important part of a team and create something significant together? What is the relevance of these experiences for me as an individual?
These questions can be looked at from a purely physical point of view and are very relevant for practicing CI, but maybe it’s also interesting to investigate them in our everyday life and behaviours… We will take time to go into the physicality by solo movement and group scores and we will also reflect on how these ideas (can) manifest in our lives. - Listen to the void – beyond technique
Workshop with Julia Limaverde
As we sharpen the kinesthetic awareness, we may be able to set aside our usual patterns and find ourselves in a state of deep listening. Presence sets in during the dance when we stop thinking. This active meditation takes our dance to places unvisited. Breaking the expectation that we generate a spectacular dance can lead to a sensational experience. What is the difference between virtuosity and skill, repetition of acrobatics and spontaneous movement, spectacle and experience, trick and improvisation?
In this class we propose begin by focusing on some of the technique foundational to CI. We remind ourselves that these techniques are there as a guideline only, and that we have the option to forget the ‘moves and pathways’ and ask the body what it wants to do. We notice everything we have learnt and then let it go, and unlearn, allowing what is new to arise. The intention is to release the conventions and bring the dance closer to the nature of the movement; breathing, silencing patterns, recognizing addictions, deconstructing habits, exploring the new with naivete, without censorship, without reference or prerequisite. Trusting in the unknown, surrendering. Everything is safely out of control.
- Multi directionality – multi dimensionality
Workshop with Angela-Mara Florant
Especially in this highly digitalized age, the words of Andrea Olsen ring true to my ears: “It is easy to think of ourselves as flat; mirrors and photographs give us the illusion that we are two -dimensional. Instead, we have have sculpted fullness, and the curves and angles give force and agility to our body.”
Move through the room, following your personal body flow, dancing up and down through the different levels. Be pulled apart, pushed together. Leave a path trailing behind you, search for wide open spaces and return again to narrow, close, tight spaces.
We will use our breath and micro movements to modulate our inner spaces. Stimulating the fascia tissue, we experience tensegrity, not only inside ourselves, but also inside a group structure. We feel an inner pull in different directions and expand our attention in these directions.
We experience a network, a web, connecting us with the space and other dancers in the space. Can you be in and out at the same time? What does the space need in this moment? What do I need? How can these needs be balanced? How can you modulate between taking space and giving space? How can you be supportive by giving space?
We will work with the concept of multi-directionality in a physical and technical way. How can tensegrity and multi-dimensionality be transferred to other aspects of life, other fields?
- Inside/Outside – The touch and the skin
Workshop with Mélanie Jolly
This workshop will introduce experiences from Eutony Gerda Alexander®. Indeed, when I discovered eutony, I found it shared many principles with Contact Improvisation : gravity, the skeleton, the relationship through touch… And above all, Gerda Alexander defined a principle “Contact” ! For her, contact is different from touch. Touch gives us information about ourselves and the surrounding environment. Contact is widening the attention from the sensations towards the outside. However, Contact Improvisation explores precisely this double direction of touch : to perceive oneself and the other through the encounter.
In my workshop, we will dance a lot with closed eyes. We will mainly explore the information received through touch and skin. At first, touch will allow us to strengthen our presence to our own body. Starting from this presence to ourselves, we will be ready to widen our attention towards our partners, and develop our ability to perceive their position, tone, movement. And then, beyond the encounter through touch, explorations with closed eyes will allow us to feel the whole space of the room and further. We will widen our attention to the maximum and feel the effects on ourselves, sensation-wise. Then, we will refine the perception of our partner through looking, in order to make proposals to support them in their movement : to read the other’s body, then propose but not impose.
Gerda Alexander® Eutony is a practice aimed at accompanying everyone in a relationship with themselves and their body, through an attention to body sensations, in relation to the environment and to the others. The word eutony means the search for a balanced tone, that is flexible and available in order to live as adequately as possible to all the experiences of everyday life. It is both a therapeutic practice and a tool for developing freedom of movement and creativity.
And…
…of course we will have JAMS every day. Some of them are focused and open, with live music and also silent. This year the music will be provided by Nathaniel Damon. There will be one Underscore, maybe outside. As every year we will have space-time jam, where the time will be given for inclusive performance.
We will also have time for resting and regenerating. SAUNA will work every evenings. There will be space for RESTING and BODY WORKS. And there is forest and endless landscapes to escape and find your space if needed.
In addition we will have discussions, sharings, talkings around CI, community, care and safety. And some topics which will be present during the week.
We are happy to welcome you!