Colliding into Dance // curs intensiv – Contact Improvisation

Curs

practice will include free practice sessions called jam sessions and will take place over 3 weekends (22 hours) between 16 NOV – 8 DEC with this schedule:

>> SATURDAY: 16 NOVEMBER AND 7 DEC
7:00 pm – 9:30 pm course

>> SUNDAY: NOV 17 and 8 DEC
12:00 – 15:00 course
15:00 – 17:00 break / picnic / fresh air
17:00 – 19:00 jam session with warm-up (open to non-participants on a free donation basis)

>> SATURDAY: 23 NOVEMBER
11:00 – 13:30 course
1:30 pm – 3:00 pm jam session (open to non-participants on a free donation basis)

>> SUNDAY: 24 NOVEMBER
12:00 – 15:00 course

For the integrity of the learning process, partial participation is not possible except for jam sessions (see the program above).

FULL PRICE OF PARTICIPATION: 250 RON (10 places)
REDUCED PRICE for students: 120 RON (4 places)

REGISTER: contactbucharestfest@gmail.com

Why do people dance since the world and why do people dance today? Why do we raise our hands and move our pelvis and take steps in different directions when it is not necessarily necessary? Is dance only for certain people? Do we dance only when we hear music, or does the body have its melody and rhythm that it can follow? Do we just dance with the opposite sex or do we dance with anyone regardless of gender, age or lifestyle?
These are questions we cannot answer easily and it is important to take time, to really reflect on them. Of course, we can do this only when we are not burdened with other questions and problems that are far more pressing than art. Therefore, if you are at a time when I am attracted to these questions and you are curious to investigate them, I invite you to an intensive Contact Improvisation course.

In Contact Improvisation dance is a process of reflection, we dance starting from a question without insisting on finding an ultimate answer. How does gravity influence your movement? Why do I move in a certain way? What is the imbalance? and so on It is not a mystical act in the sense that I ask the oracle what to do in life or what is the meaning of life, waiting for an answer that will exempt me from the responsibility of thinking.

“Thinking is not dancing, but thinking is part of dancing.”
– Stephen Batts

In contact dance we use physical contact as a first question from which we begin to dance, to research and to improvise. When we improvise we do not make random movements, but engage in an active process of making decisions – in real time and space – or we observe what are the unconscious decisions we make and if we can intervene in this process. What are the limits and what are the opportunities that physical contact in dance brings and how do they bring novelty to dance without a partner?

We will explore the basic principles of Contact Improvisation (running, falling, lifting with a partner), thinking about moving, practicing fixed structures of movement which we will then deconstruct to make room for freedom of action, adapting the exercises of the experience level of to each participant so that each can take new things that they can develop later in the individual practice.

I believe that if there is a therapeutic side in art, it is the interest and practice of art for the sake of art and not with the purpose of finding final answers to continuous problems. That is why I invite both professionals and amateurs or curious people who try a dance course for the first time.