Vienna Austria
Contact Improvisation workshop series :
Beginner’s Mind
May to June 2024

Contact Improvisation workshop series : Beginner’s Mind

This workshop series serves both as a solid introduction to the practice of CI for beginners, while simultaneously challenging experienced contact dancers to extend beyond habitual pathways and truly improvise in the present moment.

We will study two fundamental modalities of the practice of CI: how to improvise while in touch in with others; and how to navigate through an open improvisational dance situation … also known as a contact jam!

It is open to everyone no matter what your experience, background, physicality or ability. Beginners are strongly advised to follow the series in order, ideally coming for all three. Non-beginners can attend any combination of weekends.

Workshop Themes

Weekend One 4/5th May : Connection – How to develop the quality of connectedness within oneself, how to connect through touch with others in a mutually respectful way, and how to play with connections in a jam situation.

Weekend Two 1/2nd June : Support – How to develop the quality of support within oneself; how to read support through touch; and developing resources to support oneself in a jam situation.

Weekend Three 29/30th June : Change – How to track changing needs and desires in oneself; how to stay open to change within interactions with others without holding on to what was happening and without pushing for what you’d like to happen; and how to flow through the changing possibilities of a jam situation.

Playing in contact with others

We will move between exercises aiming to clarify the sensations which lie at the heart of CI and exploring improvisational scores through which different types of CI vocabulary emerge.

The idea of this approach is to minimise the teaching of set material (moves, tricks, etc) and instead to maximise the opportunities of participants to discover material for themselves through their own improvisational research.

Very simply, I set up calm and simple experiments in which we can experience a range of sensations, and and then we dance a lot. Often there are unusual rules for the dances. Sometimes there are none and you can improvise freely.

This was how CI was originally taught.

Dancing in a group

Once we become comfortable dancing in contact with other bodies, the question then arises how to navigate through a room full of people dancing together. In CI we call this a contact jam.

We will study how to enter into and exit from contact with others. How to move from situation to situation while maintaining a sense of continuity for ourselves? How to dance with the room.

In other words, jamming skills.