Inner and outer space

In this class we are diving deep into inner structures. Through hands on exploration we get an understanding of our inner and outer space. By following honestly whatever appears – untypical pathways may emerge. The aim is to bring attention to the possibilities of the complex inner space and get understanding of the spectrum of textures we can play with.

Our starting point is softening our rib cage and center. Starting slowly wakening our awareness towards experimental researching – going towards sharing experiences and ending up with complex variety of solo, duet and group dances.

 Eevi Tolvanen is a freelance dance artist currently based in Finland who teaches, performs, choreographs and works in and with different communities. Through her work she has explored the potential of genuine presence and touch employing her experience of contact improvisation. Tolvanen is interested in developing a feeling of togetherness through shared experience. She has a special focus on a somatic experience and feeling of the body, effortless moving through natural pathways and ergonomic movement by listening a clever body. Lately she has been exploring the power relations and boundaries in her performative work.

 Touching Authenticity
Authentic Movement meets Contact Improvisation

Seeing, touching, dancing, sharing… those simple words which are so meaningful for us as Contact Improvisation dancers. When I am in a festival context, I see myself coming with the intention to meet truly and sincerely with everyone, to be open and available. Picking up those words from our dear Nancy : “to see each of us as a flower”, “to see each of us as a potential for a wonderful dance”.

How do I make myself available?
How being present do serve my dance?
What does it mean for me to really meet someone?
When the meeting is happening? Before, during, after the dance?

Part of my research in Contact Improvisation includes my practise of Authentic Movement.

During this class we will enter and dive into Contact Improvisation supported by the clarity and the simplicity of Authentic Movement.

We will find comfort, we will listen and see, we will enter the unknown and the empty space by creating a safe frame.

Grégory Chevalier
I started my career in China being employed for show dancing in clubs at the age of 23, then back to Europe I studied intensively contemporary and improvisation techniques.
When I discovered Contact Improvisation I gradually made it my main practise. I travelled to Vienna to complete a dance teacher training in 2012 guided by Sabine Parzer specialised into Authentic Movement. I am continuing my Authentic Movement studies with her this year. Then five years learning and assisting a non official Body Mind Centering training led by Kálmán Ferenc. I offer Contact Improvisation, Body Consciousness based Improvisation and Authentic Movement sessions in weekly classes, weekend workshops, schools and international festivals (Georgia, France, Austria, Hungary, Israel, Serbia, Italy, Holland, Ukraine, Switzerland, Germany).
I performed and collaborated in performance projects with/for Claire Filmon, Bérczi Zsofi (Living Art Pictures company), Berger Gyula (Zerobalett company), Dora Attila, Ruri Mito, Lior Lazarof, Hrotkó Heléna and our Butoh company, Rubik Ernő Zoltán and Lévai Viola (Levegru company). I am mainly inspired by Nancy Stark Smith, Steve Paxton, Stéphanie Auberville, Otto Ramstad, Karczag Éva, Janet Adler, Josef Nadj and Julyen Hamilton’s works.
I love community projects and I recently initiated an Underscore research group, the Hungarian Contact Improvisation Festival (www.kontaktland.com) and a Central European CI teachers gathering.
For years I was connecting BMC together with CI. Now I am interested in solo practise whithin CI, mainly inspiring from Material for the spine, and also in exploring intimacy from our environment, especially nature, closed and open eyes.

More infos about my workshops :
https://www.facebook.com/gregorychevalierbudapest/

About Kontaktland and the Hungarian Contact Improvisation festival : https://www.facebook.com/kontaktland/
www.kontaktland.com

Insenses

In this class we will explore our senses, of ourselves as well as of others on a quiet fine level but not only. The main objective is deepening our sensitivity to nourish our consciousness and structural movement. Working on directions by meeting others with weight for more adapting soft body structures. Aware from our senses we will rise and fall together, explore and apply limiting factors. Connect with oneself and with each other to make this journey as beautiful as possible.

Mathieu Chappuis is a shiatsu and yoga practitioner that dove into contact improv as soon as he discovered it. As a non-professional dancer he found in Contact Impro tremendous resources for his self growth and harmony. Contact impro influenced him in both wilderness and sensitivity that play big part in what he believes and practices. He loves to share what he observes and to observe what can be shared, creating spaces outside and inside the body that frame and liberates what is.

 Commitment

Commitment will be the frame for this class. Commitment to oneself, to partners, to space. Commitment to presence and to the dance. This class will aim towards turning on every part of our being, softening and sharpening our bodies. Finding sensitivity within our wild physicality. We will ask the question: how to stay committed to our own dance while entering duets, trios and ensemble work?

Molly Nyeland

Molly Nyeland is a dance artist and teacher from Denmark. Her foundation for work is within contemporary dance and centered around improvisation and instant composition. Alongside her creative work she carries a teaching practice and is currently studying at the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus university. Working with courage, curiosity and the empowerment to say yes and no in her dancing, as well as living, is fundamental to her practice. She understands the bodymind as the way to engage with the world and sees dancing and moving as a way of training how to relate and communicate with other beings. How are beings bodily relating to oneself and other beings? How are beings bodily communicating with each other? When and how are presence and attention tactile? She sees contact Improvisation as an opportunity to tune into the essence of being human.

Inspirational teachers for her practice include Nita Little, Anya Cloud, Charlie Morrissey, Dorte Bjerre Jensen, Andrew Harwood, Jori Snell.

WAITING AND SURPRISE

"To be surprised is to begin to understand" Ortega and Gasset.

Connecting with the unknown, take it as an adventure of knowledge, from joy, opening space to curiosity and attention in to the dance. Dancing the fall, from all levels and towards all levels, inhabiting disorientation, aware of spherical space, present and available to change state managing and reacting to any situation... These principles are part of the base of the practic of Contact Improvisation, i am interested in how to use all of these “tools” in order to develop the maximum care in the most extreme movements during the dance, opening new ways and possibilities in ower dance.

Sergio Palomares Vicente

Acrobat, performance, dancer and facilitator of Contact Improvisation. Background in martial arts (taekwondo, capoeira and aikido), trampoline gymnastics and circus acrobatics, started dance Contact Improvisation in 2011. I have traveled to perform, teach and dance in more than 20 countries on 4 continents. About CI i have had the opportunity to learn and share this practice with teachers such as Nancy Stark Smith, Angelyca Dioniy, Martin Keogh, Mirva M.kinen, Ingo Reuckle, Anya Cloud and many others. In February 2019 i taught a training module in Contact Improvisation in the first course of the Diploma of Technical Training in Contemporary Circus of ELCIRCA (Latin American School of Circus and Arts of Jalisco, Guadalajara Mexico), researching about the mix of acrobatics, dance and improvisation by groups in a performance. I attended the Nancy Stark Smith's January Workshop in January 2020 in Massachusetts, USA. I currently live in Barcelona, Spain.