Contact Improvisation has informed and clarified my practice as a contemporary dancer for over twenty years now. My teaching reflects this by exchanging information between Contact Improvisation, Contemporary Dance and everyday life. It aims to support a ready and safe practice that allows for a playful virtuosity in movement, both inside and outside the studio and your body.

Since 2002 I have taught company class, dance technique and workshops in improvisation and Contact Improvisation in the UK, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Palestine a.o. at places such as Tanzfabrik Berlin, London Contemporary Dance School, Roehampton University, De Montfort University, CAT Youth Dance Scheme for Dance4 Nottingham, Jose Vidal Dance Company Chile, Freiburg Contact Festival, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin (HZT), Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln.

Selection/ teaching samples:

Practicing Collectivity at Wintertanz Workshops Tanzfabrik Berlin (2023)

Improvising groups have their own intelligence. They constantly co-create, re-invent, remember, forget and forgive. They are a trusting and courageous, temporary collective of performers.

This workshop offers a range of compositional rules and tools for performing in groups. We feed from the intelligence of the other bodies. We practice non-stop listening, noticing and responding, sensing when to stay out and when to come in. We celebrate getting lost. We train our awareness of beginnings and endings. We watch each other move through decisions. From time to time we will talk about what we do and look at other knowledge around team performance. How might practicing collectivity inside the dance studio relate to other contexts of teamwork outside of it?

Contemporary Dance / Intermediate & Beginners at Tanzfabrik Berlin (2014-16)

This class brings together release-based Contemporary Dance and technical information from Contact Improvisation for solo dancing. Exercises and phrasework emphasize on the travelling of weight, the use of momentum and the balance between effort and release, tension and softness in the body. The movement material is athletic and bold, makes use of the floor and invites the up side down. An interest in generous and expansive use of space, ongoing practice of performance skills and a sense of improvising through choreographed material is crucial to this class.

“In and out of contact – CI, Technique and Improvisation” at Saryyet Ramallah, Palestine 2016 – Summer Intensive 

We begin each day by breaking down and practicing principles and patterns of falling, folding and softening into the floor and being up-side down. This strengthens core muscles and allows safety and confidence when moving on to enter contact with a partner. We use crucial skills in CI -like opening the sensitivity of our skin, muscles and bones towards the weight of another person, trusting ourselves to take weight and to give weight – to enrich, inform and inspire both duets and solo dances.  The second part of each day will be dedicated to improvisation in the group, applying technical information learnt and improving compositional and performance skills in a supported environment.

“Shifting Weight” – at Contact-meets-Contemporary Festival 2015 – Göttingen

This workshop brings together release-based Contemporary Dance and technical information from Contact Improvisation. Exercises and phrase-work moves fluently between improvisations and short set movement phrases that emphasize on the traveling of weight, the use of momentum and the balance between effort and release, tension and softness in the body. The movement material is athletic and bold, makes use of the floor and invites the up side down. We improvise through choreographed material and refine clarity and precision in improvised movements. An interest in generous, imaginative and expansive use of space and dancing for and with each other is crucial to this work.