"Breathing the Moment"

Contact impro & contemporary dance technique

Mirva Mäkinen (Finland)

What makes your body feel alive and awake? For me it is dance in different forms and breathing through movement. I would like to share some contact improvisation and contemporary dance technique in this intensive.

I think body is designed by nature, or has evolved in nature. It is like landscape with great efficiency. Like landscape we are breathing and changing naturally. I wonder if we can sometimes become aware how we use breath while we move? Breathing can also spark new ideas for the way we move our bodies.

We will learn different warm up techniques, series of floor work, different combinations through the space, principals of movements, creating dancing dialogue by using breathing, touch, movement, weight and balance.

How it is to have contemporary dance technique as a warm up of contact improvisation or vise versa? What kind of way learning series of movement can influence your contact improvisation technique and how CI might change your way of moving when you learn movement phrase from someone else? How different techniques come together in your body? After learning something can we separate one technique from other? Or is it just that we learn different skills and after learning it becomes one in your body? What it is to embody something?

I am curious how do we move our center when we move alone or together with partner. How can we continue movement after loosing touch from partner? Is there any gap between?

I tell to myself to breath with all of my questions ?

Where movement is coming from and where it is going at? Is there difference when i am moving alone or with partner. I guess some part of our body is always in stillness.

Mirva Mäkinen

I am a 36-year old dancer. I graduated (MA) from the Dance Department of the Theatre Academy of Finland in 2000, before that i study masters in Physical Education in University of Jyväskylä. Afters studies I have worked widely in Finland as a dancer, dance teacher and choreographer. My true passion is in movement. This year i was chosen to study PHD in Theatre Academy of Finland. My research will be about aesthetics of contact improvisation.

From 2000 onwards I have acted as dance teacher and lecturer for dance at the Kallio Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts in Finland. I have also taught at different international dance and contact improvisation festivals. As a dancer I have worked in several different dance companies, at the moment in Karttunen Kollektiv, Circo Aero and with Joona Halonen.

In dance I am interested in the feeling of flow and soft movement. I love to investigate movement, its rhythm and different ways of inhabiting the body. A feeling of dancing is created by being able to switch the body from total relaxation to extreme intensity and tension. I call this the body’s ability to breathe and create movement. My ideal is total presence, which makes every moment true and meaningful.

"Entering the Present"

Action Theater™ for Dancers:
What Stops You From Being Here? What Helps You Be Present?

Sten Rudstrøm (US/Germany)

Action Theater™ is a training system in physical theater improvisation that builds vocal, verbal, and physical performance skills, hones awareness and increases expressive range. The practice is an active play in embodied presence that constantly harvests the imagination. We are reunited with the interior world that causes us to live at our fullest reach. Trainings explore both solo and ensemble through exercises that are simple, playful and challenging. Every exercise expresses the relationship between attention, awareness, and action. We engage the mind and heart simultaneously, building solid improvisational skills, and uncovering another sense of freedom.

Action Theater™ awareness training is an improvisational body-based process used for the discovery of new forms of expression. Its main work mode is physical: the physical body and feelings that are contained inside. The training helps dancers expand their physical forms and inhabit those forms with humanity. Through the practice of working solo and with partners, Action Theater develops a better understanding of ensemble architecture, the use of space and composition. In exercises, all action is broken down into shifts, transformations and/or development. These exercises help establish the balance between inner and outer awareness. They specifically limit areas of action and response so that students open to the unknown, break free of fear and embrace the unfamiliar.

By bringing awareness to actions’ interior, Action Theater™ leads the dancer back into her body, broadens the range and quality of her movement. It helps develop a unique and idiosyncratic vocabulary, frees the individual and brings each performer to a fresh, new relationship with their movement.

When improvising, thoughts occur inside of actions while the actions are taking place. These thoughts are energetic parts of each moment, similar to kinesthetic sensation. And they can steal from the moment or add to it. If the improviser blocks these thoughts, then the improvisation stiffens and breaks down. If on the other hand, the performer greets these thoughts and incorporates them, the improvisation takes off.

To improvise skillfully one must be aware of the responses that are available within each given moment. This kind of awareness takes practice, dis-covering and saying yes to what arises from the body and mind. If the dancer doesn’t know herself, hasn’t investigated her quirks and desires, she will lose track of form and content. When the dancer is seduced by form, she loses her awareness. Who is she when she is doing this particular movement? How does she feel? When she is seduced by content, spatial use will decline, the particular qualities of movement will be lost, the body may be forgotten. What kinesthetic sensation triggers the feeling state that triggers the action that triggers the kinesthetic sensation? How and when does this cycle occur and where does awareness enter?

Action Theater™ enters the performance process, quiets the busy mind and allows for new choices. It helps the performer recognize her habits and moments of "turning off." It builds performance skills and serves as sourcework for the creation of set pieces. It increases performers’ presence. Performers feel more connected to their experience, connected to their partners. They feel embodied and alive.

This course is open only to experienced performers. We will be performing solo and group improvisations every day and analyzing what works, what doesn't and how to create more active connection between all players on stage. All participants must several years practice of performing in dance, theater or performance work.

Sten Rudstrom

Sten Rudstrom worked for over fifteen years with Ruth Zaporah, the founder of Action Theater ™, in their book "Action Theatre, The Improvisation of Presence," he has contributed significantly and is one of the few authorized teachers for this improvisation method. Self an experienced performer, he teaches his work in the U.S. and Europe. His workshops are characterized by high energy and articulate the development of Presence and a heightened awareness of the performer's whole body instrument.

The intensive is taught in English, but he speaks also good German, and there is translation available.

Visit the websites:
www.stenrudstrom.com
www.actiontheater.com

"Suprising Beings"

A movement-research with bodywork, dance-impro and painting

Ingo Rosenkranz (Germany)

What does it need to let ourselves be surprised? To me it means I am in a situation of comfort and relaxation in order to be open enough to allow life to surprise me. My mind is so clever to hold me away from this almost too often. Yet in my dancing, bodywork and painting I can find these surprising moments, in general supported through a meditative state of being.

We will dive into this state with our natural desire of movement and being touched. The more natural the touch and contact is, the easier and more powerful the movement resolves. Therefor we need to communicate with our partner to find this natural meeting place, so sharings will be part of this path.

Bodywork, through which the movement might begin more from inside out, allow a personal journey into the body in response to sensitive touch. One of our greatest desires is to be in touch with another human, so we get in contact with a partner and have our dance with hands-on practices to open up our senses. This can lead into dance-improvisation, a wonderful fusion which creates a deeper dimension to meet ourselves.

A third element will be the painting, for me a wonderful tool of expressive art to show some of my inside world. In addition to this we will be inspired to move because of the way my partner is painting and we wish to paint because of watching someone dance.

We use meditation to empty or slow down our active mind and to open up for the opportunities we might not know yet. We want to release and relax our bodies to feels comfortable and in a place of trust, so we can fall into full creativity and enjoy our expressive beings. "Not knowing" and "Playfullness" are as welcome as the joy of moving and feeling whatever appears.

Ingo Rosenkranz

Performing and teaching Contact Improvisation, Movement- and Dance-Theatre, bodywork (Shiatsu and others), Tai Chi and Qi Gong for more than 15 years. He is influenced by eastern philosophies, some martial arts, authentic movement, different bodywork and healing-forms and all the beautiful teachers he met on the way including many children and his daughter. An additional part of his work is to organize different Improvisation and Healing events in Germany, such as the Easterimprofestival in Göttingen.

In dance, bodywork and all creative processes I am interested in the present moment which allows me to follow the unknown and to be surprised. To be aware and awake in every moment in order to reach this state of being is one of my goals to enjoy life with more intensity and honesty. And life is an amazing teacher in this.

"Delicious Essentials"

A technical approach to Contact Improvisation

Jörg Hassmann (Germany)

The longer I practice and teach CI the more I become interested in the question “What is essential for this multilayered danceform?” I want to share some of my momentary answers hoping that they create new questiones for the participants – and me too. My approach is technical and I love details. Beginners will hopefully find a first understanding of how dealing with shared weight in movement could be easier. More advanced people might learn even more by finding lots of details and all sorts of connections within the body and towards the partner.

Efficiency and physical delight are my main criteria for movement. To improve we will practice to sense movement (in connection to gravity) from inside - looking for the tiny aahs and oohs and some full hearted juicyness. My wish for this intensive is to give more clarity, choice and a bigger variety of deliciousnesses into the dance.

Joerg Hassmann (*1970, Berlin/ Germany)

I am teaching CI since 1995. From my background as a dance and theatre improviser I entered the stage and eventually contemporary dance techniques. In 2000 I made dance my full time occupation. My work is influenced by anatomy based movement explorations, ideas from Alexander Technique, BMC, Capoeira, play and the urge and joy of discovery.

Teaching and performing is essential for my own learning process. I teach worldwide and I love the differences of cultures and how they show up in local CI communities. In 2007 I started teaching CI training intensiv programs in Berlin together with Daniel Werner, where we developed our systematic aproach to contact technique (www.dancecontact.de). I believe that CI is not the most rewarding danceform to be performed but still I am continously working on it – lately and happily together with Mirva Makinen from Helsinki. As the artistic director I am involved in the annual Contact Festival “contact-meets-contemporary” in Goettingen/ Germany (www.contact-meets-contemporary.de).