Contact Improvisation; The Onflowing Connection

Catalog description

This course will introduce the students to the fundamentals of Contact Improvisation and its tenets for creativity and personal expression. The focus will be on exploring the potential of the body's primal urge to move, inspired by deep energies released through human interaction. The course will be built on very simple physical principles allowing students to explore their experience of moving and to understand their own bodies more profoundly, which is often experienced as joyful and liberating. At times we will draw from adjacent movement techniques for freeing up the body with greater ease and grace, and to allow the dancing to happen more naturally. We will concentrate on weight release, skeletal structure, floor-work, inversions, and at times utilize facia based bodywork for embodied anatomy analysis as well as for preparing to safely and respectfully partner together. At a fundamental level this form is about being present with the modulation of tone and weight in the body, so that the touch remains alive and creative. Due to the sensitive nature of direct person to person contact, it should be anticipated that direct partnering will be introduced in a measured and controlled way over several sessions at a pace determined by the comfort level of the class. The goals for the course are to enable every student to be proficient at basic partnering, weight sharing, low and high lifts, rolling patterns, cartwheels, handstands and working comfortably in a 360 degree relationship to space. Any level of experience is welcome; please come with curiosity, creativity and desire for play.