MIRVA MAKINEN:

"Soft fall"

We will move from a base of reaching, falling and melting through the joints. We practice holding and letting go to the soft fall. We will fall together and practice how we can let ourselves be held. Falling to rolling, falling to sliding, falling to reaching and melting will guide us to dance.

Level: Intermediate

MIRVA MAKINEN is 32 years old professional dancer, choreographer and teacher from Finland. She has totally felt in love to contact improvisation. She has done masters degree in art of Dance (Theatre Academy of Finland) and masters of Physical Education (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland). She has pursuit CI, dance and movement by studying, teaching, performing and practicing in past 13 years. She draws other inspiration from release technique, ashtanga yoga, aerial dance and acrobatics.

JUDIT KERI (Hungary):

"ROOTED TO FLY"

Contact Improvisation workshop
all levels


Contact Improvisation is a partnering form and otherwise known as the art of moving spontaneously with another person. Through investigations of weight, touch, energy and momentum, contact improvisers learn to relate to their own bodies and each other in new ways.

My focus is to create an atmosphere where we can express ourselves fully and be ready to meet others. We will pay special attention to gravity, to our center and our stability. We will also work with the spine, the center and our periphery, while enlivening the senses so we can be really open to finding immediate creative solutions.
Tuning, toning and enlivening our entire being, creates a state of readiness which leads us to fuller, vibrant, connected dancing.

Relaxed, gentle, easy…connected before we take off...


Judit Keri is a Hungarian dancer, performer and an experienced english and german speaking teacher in dance, theater, yoga and meditation. She finished her education in Hungary and studied in a number of major European cities with many renowned teachers and performers of new dance technique, contact improvisation and improvisation. She participated in and organized various festivals and seminars in different countries. Over the last 10 years, she has been teaching children, young adults, adults, older people and handicapped people in Europe, Israel, Canada and in Australia. She has also performed internationally in choreographed and improvised solo, duet and in group works. Since the fall of 2005 she has been touring, teaching and performing word wide with Andrew de L. Harwood.

Juha Viitamäki:
"TEDDY BEAR CAPOEIRA"

I will be teaching a class of Teddy Bear Capoeira (TBC), which is a playful version of Capoeira with added dance softness, listening, and expanded, relaxed floor support. With TBC it is easy to almost immediately access the playful joy, the free improvisation, the 3-dimensional movement, and the breathing space present in an advanced practice of Capoeira. And all this is possible without having to face the tough physical challenges, rigorous training, risks, and the occasional bloody-minded 'Seriousness' of traditional Capoeira itself!!

So hooray! for Teddy Bear Capoeira is accessible to all and everyone... Through it we can learn to gently offer space and create dance through slow-motion playing-fighting. In the end of the class we will play with some ideas of mixing Contact Improvisation with TBC.

Juha Viitamäki moved into Contact Improvisation and dance from Aikido and Capoeira eight years ago. He is most inspired about integrating elements from these two martial dances into Contact. Juha is now living and exploring in Helsinki and Moscow.

Katia Velichko

“Voice and Contact”

The central point of the class is to feel the physical aspect of the voice, its flesh, thickness, materiality.
Filling the contact dance with sounds, we will express emotions and feelings through breathing and speaking.
Moving, shaking and touching the body we will observe and explore the voice as the part of it.
As well our attention will be focused on the center, spine, facial muscles and support.
With the voice we will open the space inside the body and extend the volume of the dance.
I'm interested to feel the strength, integrity and brightness of the body through bringing the sound to our movement and contact dance.
In a process we will research the touch like a celebration with lots of tasty things.The Sound, like the feeling of sympathy in stomach.Body - is anorchestra wiht different soundings.Observ the breaht is an internal movement, wich determines hte movement of the body in the outside space.And movementchanges the breath.
To fall wiht sound, to fly up.Sound from resistance, from support, pleasure.Expressing the emotions, feelings.
Voice and the sound like the festival between the bodies!

CV
I’ve danced from my early childhood. After graduating from the acting department of Academy of ?rt, where , I fell in love with improvisation & ci . I started to teach in Moscow and travel to the festivals and classes in other countries. I had many CI teachers, including pioneers of the form – Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson. The classes of Ester Gal, Carol Swan and Martin Keogh influenced particularly on my understanding of the form. I participated in the laboratories and performed with Benno Woram, Ester Gal and Denny Lepkoff, participated in a vocal theatre project “Russian Epic”, worked in the dance company of the Russian Youth Theatre, performed in the theatre “Derevo” under the direction of Anton Adasinsky.Today I perform and teach as an independent artist.
I use and combine contact improvisation, acting techniques, improvisation, release, authentic movement and work with voice and breath.
In my work and life I am interested in people, their unique and diverse nature. Movement, dance and contact open opportunities to create, stay together and - like a child - enjoy your nature. For me, the key point in creation work is (qualities in improvisation are) vividness, openness and courage to be myself!

Gaby Koch

1st workshop: "Aireal Dance"

2nd workshop: "Contemporary Dance-Release Technique"

In Aireal dance the normal level are dissolved. We
leave the ground, able to move in every direction. Uwe
are able to move upside-down and to all sides, like we
know it from contactimprovisation. Swinging free we
got a new orientation. We can reach a potention and
quality of movement, a game of flow and momentum, we
can only experience flying in the air. We will have
the possibilities to dance on our own or with a
partner in one rope. Other dancers will support from
the floor, to integrate some other possibities and
elements of contactimprovisation.

Gabriele Koch is dancing since she was 5 years old.
After studying ballett and modern-dance, she
discovered her passion for contemporary dance,
improvisation and contactimprovisation. She works
since 1997 as a free-lanced dancer, choreographer and
teacher, always on the way of growing and increasing
in her teaching and performing way. In her teaching
she integrates her experience of improvised
performance, especially „site-specific-performance“ in
the public space outside the theater. As well she
integrates her year-long training in Qi Gong and her
curiosity of exploring the connection with her other
passions: moving in nature, rock-climbing and tango
argentino.

Olle Söderström

“3 dimensions in painting and dance”

I will focus my workshops on depth in space, movement and what makes something alive. In painting I always try to go with the moment but still in a very concrete way play with the physical reality I experience through my senses.
Moving in groups staying aware of the depth in space and the other persons. Working on creating shapes with and between bodies. Through touch and movement into 3 dimensionality. Painting from this experience with focus on the feeling of depth, creating depth, really going into the image. Trying to let the physical experience come first and the analyzing eye come second. Developing this into more movement opening up the space. Also going into speed and other present qualities. Playing with this experience in painting, and going back to movement.

Olle Söderström
I've always been creating with my hands, early getting into drawing and painting. When I quit highschool I was drawing popular comics for Egmont. I got into graffiti and streetart and worked with people in the vegan movement and reclaim the streets. For two years me and a couple of friends worked on a computer game which was never released but it got me into art university and I finished my studies there 2005 with focus on experimental animation.
I started moving by myself during these studies. I took a workshop in Capoeira, then I started a movement group and met more and more people interested in movement. When I finished my education I was sure I was going to dance. Beginning to take all kind of danceclasses while teaching kids in gymnastics and dance in school. Through butoh I got in touch with contact improvisation and has now been participating in festivals and more focused sharing in the nordic countries. Since autumn 2006 I am in a dancer-education in Finland. I've been invited to teach animation in Beijing and will go there for three months from January 2007. I will also study traditional chinese dance and kung fu.
Since artschool I have mainly been doing musicvideos for artists like Sophie Zelmani and El Pero Del Mar. I have also been creating a lot for my own sake in connection to movement.

RENATA PIOTROWSKA
“HeART’s Dance Impro “

How often you listen to your heart? How often your movement is support by the rhythm of your heart? Did you ever notice in the word “heart” exists word “art”? I believe everyone of us has art in the heart and heart in the art. My class will give you a space to try it out through movement and dance, to believe in it too.
This is the base for my class. We will listen to our hearts while moving, We will meet through dance improvisation yourself, partner and the group on emotional and physical level. Except dance improvisation (contact and contemporary) you will have the opportunity to experience dance therapy (movement metaphor, creative process) and Body Mind Centering.

RENATA PIOTROWSKA
Contact improviser, choreographer, actress ( MA in Theatre Academy), dance therapist (diploma of Polish Institute of Dance and Movement Therapy) from Poland (Warsaw). She is one of the pioneers in teaching contact improvisation/dance improvisation and working as a dance therapist in Poland. She was participating in many workshops, courses and festivals of contact improv and contemporary in Poland and abroad (for example The School of New Dance Development, Israeli Contact Festival, Freiburg Contact Festival, work with Milan Kozanek). Nowadays she is working as a dance therapist with victims of violence in the family, as a choreographer and actress in Theatre Academia from Warsaw( last performance “ Dybuk game”) and as a teacher of dance and theatre improvisation. She is also a founder of Center For Creative and Therapeutical Activities. While dancing she loves to improvise. While working she loves to meet people.

David Lakein (USA/Berlin)

" INTO THE JUNGLE"

What is presence?

Viva the Authority of Absence!

Can a body be neutral?

Long Live the Supreme Truth of Meaning!

When do transitions happen; do they exist?

They live only in the Realm of Thought, not in the Terrain of Action!

Why do we disconnect from our surroundings and the present moment?

Oh Rebels! Swim bravely through the Muddy Swamps of mysterious ever-shifting Inbetweeness!
Oh Gentle Warriors! Climb joyfully atop the Swinging Branches of curious never-ending Unfoldingness!

INTO THE JUNGLE is a laboratory for adventurers who want to probe their beliefs
about the performing body and question their assumptions about the performance moment.

David Lakein (USA/Berlin) is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher. He studied History,
Philosophy, Literature, and Acting in the United States and Improvisation, Release-Technique,
Composition, Body-Mind-Centering and Contact in Berlin and at the School for New Dance
Development in Amsterdam.
Lakein’s work inhabits the borders between theater, dance, cabaret and performance art.
He believes deeply in the collaborative process, and works with other theater makers, performers,
composers, musicians, visual and video artists, light- and set-designers.
Current performance ventures include: “Planet Hope” – a research-performance project about
the role of hope/Hope in different facets of life; “Café Urgency” – a community happening about the
Urgency in people’s lives: the pressing ideas, compelling needs, and burning desires that fill a day and
span a lifetime; “The Breath Series” – an improvisation solo about {abandoning} responsibility,
{embracing} failure, and {muddling} meaning & mystery.

Heike Pourian

"Tall and small moving"

Starting from the duet as a basic principle, children can only bring one adult, please, and vice versa. I will be accompanied by my daughter Nomi (who recently said: I’m eight years old and I’ve been dancing for nine years”).

Heike Pourian
To me Contact Improvisation is an essence of what I want to explore and embody: being attentive, open and soft, being connected to the earth. Playing and sensing, drawing from the power of this very moment. Being.
When I teach I thoroughly enjoy going with the learning and discovering processes of the groups and individuals, which continuously reveals new aspects to me.
My teaching started in 1992 with a DanceAbility project and has touched very different contexts since: weekly adult classes, community dance, kindergarten groups, pregnant women, parents and their children, deaf adolescents, girls with eating disorders as well as training units for professional ballet companies or actors.
I am also involved in children’s theatre: writing, directing, dancing. And: I am a mother of two.

Lior Ophir & Kabiro Scheller:

"City Performance"

Is being in the middle of all-day life environments and situations with the awareness of being not completely IN the situation BUT part of it.
So I know that I am playing with the environment and the situation but others not... or they feel something going on... or they find it slightly unusual... or they recognize you as a playful artist...
In this workshop we explore few aspects of group improvisation in different public places such as street corners, train stations, department stores, cafes... never predictable and always unique!
We shall explore the special awareness of the performer, and the contact among the performers in the group. Welcome to play!

Lior Ophir

lives in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and is in a constant search for balance between his profession as an engineer and his passion for dance, body-work, and meditation.
Lior practices, studies and teaches, in various locations (Israel, Europe, US, Japan) different forms of movement, awareness and therapy, including: Improvisation, Contact Improvisation, Shiatsu Therapy, Yoga, Vipassana Meditation, Tai-Qi, and Buto.

Kabiro Scheller

My dancing, moving , breathing nature dedicates her presents always into the opening of the moment...in Dance, Bodywork, Yoga and different other HeARTs.
Contact&danceImpro since 1994, over the last 5 yaers Teaching and learning different combinations of contact, danceImpro, theatre and Healing Rituell Hawaiin Massage .

Sebastian Garcia Ferro and Daniel Werner

"Improvisation and Compositon"

The workshop proposes a developmental process for contacters, dance, movement and dance theater artists and their creative and expressive skills.
In playful improvisation we develop new and surprising material, while just dancing and having fun. Deep physical and anatomical exploration influenced by the work from Body Mind Centering will be a source for movement qualities and principles.
A series of scores, skills and images help to develop different phrases gestures and strategies, which can be transformed into composed sequences for solo, duo or group material. In the working process we will choose a few themes from the following list to focus on:
Space: grid, center, side back, front, diagonals, focus, dimensions: how much space do we take or fill with movement and presence
Time: speed, quantity of movement for a certain amount of time, quantity of time for a certain movement, pause, silence, freeze
Skills: turns, lift, roll, inversion, contact qualities, weight and listening
Form: volume, fix point, suspension point
Interpretation and Composition: risk versus safety, development of material, repetition, opposition, complementation, neutrality

Isabelle Uski

“Enjoying the backspace”

Based on contact improvisation, this class will offer an exploration of the “backspace”. Developing awareness of the hidden places within or around the body. Understanding and opening our specific relationship to them. It is an invitation to play with the mysteries of what we cannot see or fully comprehend.

Isabelle Uski first studied medicine in Paris. Feeling strongly drawn to more alternative body and wellbeing approaches, she started to dedicate more fully to movement and communication. She has trained in release techniques and has been involved since 91 in various dance and research projects. When she met contact improvisation (CI), she was awed by its artistic, physical, social and philosophical wonders. She later investigated “Touch in CI” for a Master’s thesis, while studying in the dance department of University Paris 8,. She has been studying CI and improvisation with Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson, Kirstie Simson, Martin Keogh, Andrew Harwood, Didier Silhol, among others.. She has developed her teaching in Paris (and elsewhere in France / EU / South America) and is now eagerly helping CI to grow in Grenoble, French Alps. Her approach in CI draws from her experience in contemporary dance, Laban-Bartenieff, Authentic Movement, BMC®, Qi Gong and singing. Beside teaching and promoting CI in her local community, Isabelle now works on various projects combining voice and movement, and offers movement and communication trainings to professionals from the social and medical fields.
If ever you have a place for a link, here is the link to our website in Grenoble:
www.chorescence.org

Jagat Frenzel

Osteopathie and Dance

Vira Drotbohm

“Finger- Flow ”- Dancing with the Pen.”

This workshop is meant as an open, creatice space to experiment with the school of writing.

Everybody can write.There is no pre-experience needed, no level to adapt to, no bestsellers to present. It is just about to open up -to whatever the moment presents, to dance with the mind, to dance with the pen. It is a kind of active meditation.
During the class we gonna go through some basic writing exercises to open up the writing flow and to trust our intuition in creating either a poem,a paragraph or a short-story.
We gonna search for intersting stuff in the world right next to us, we want to write about.It’s like looking through kid’s eyes again, where the smallest detail of a flower may look like a miracle.
A quiet, focused, intimate space is going to support everyone’s creation.
Writing is magic. It’s mindblowing to feel the unique potential grow- so easily. And to share this with others- is a lot of fun!

It is also meant to fall in love with other writers , to hear their words, their rhythm of sentences, their unique perception of a fading out moment. Everyone who likes words is welcome to join.
You enjoy words? Then come and join us.

Vira Drotbohm
Bodywork Trainer (Holistik massage), Book Writer and Yogateacher
Studied Sports and Bodytherapy (Psychologischer Heilpraktiker), ganzheitliche Massage, Ayurveda und Yoga.
Dozentin an Heilpraktikerschule, Kinderbuch Co-Autorin (Nonino und der 4.Stern,Vol.2, ab Jan.2007 im Handel, Vol.3 in Arbeit) Texterin für die Osho Times Deutschland, Seminarerfahrung mit Satyananda.

Gabriele Neumann

"ContactImpro Basics"

Gesine Daniels

"Contemporary Dancetechnique"

Ingo Rosenkranz

"Dive into a long dance"

Let´s explore the meaning of falling into a deeper relationship while being in and out of contact with our partner. With having our solos integrated in the duet, we can always come back to our "homebase", to our nature. Allowing ourselves to be honest with our wishes, needs, feelings, questions and our personality, the dance will be more colourful and rich. Maybe we can feel the body-mind-soul integration as part of ourselves and the dance.

Ingo Rosenkranz

Dancer, actor, performer and teacher for the art of improvisation through movement, soundexperience, bodywork, communication and meditation.
Since '92 Contact Improvisation is one of his main interests, including the integration of different bodyexperiences and other artforms as a constant awareness practice.
Part of his work is to organise different events with these themes.

Katrin Lerche

Soundingbodies

This workshop invites you to a journey inside of your body. We go to empty ourselves for being available for the vibration which is almost there. More we find ourselves wellbalanced more our body system is able to vibrate and so our voice gets more free, easier, larger and in the same moment we`re working less, we get more and more rit of all intention.
In this moment everything in our case speaking voice, singing voice or movement even painting can unfold in a state of comfortable wellbeing. This class is an offer to celebrate acting without acting refering to the method of the Lichtenberger institute for experienced physiologie ot the voice.



Biography

Katrin Lerche has a master in voice, she`s a singer, singing teacher and director of a quire as well as a participant of a three years studies at the Lichtenberger Institute for experienced physiologie of the voice. She worked as a singing teacher and a singer and actor in opera, theatre and concert.
Beside singing she took over years interest in bodywork and dance.
My interest in work is like in life to be here in the moment and to explore what keeps me from that and if something keeps me away from that to accept also this. When I sing or dance this seems to be easier and also these always were the things I loved mostly to do.