Contact Improvisation has informed and clarified my practice as a contemporary dancer for over ten years now. My teaching reflects this by exchanging technical information between CI and Contemporary Dance. Its main aim is a ready and safe practice that allows for a playful virtuosity in movement, both with and without a partner.

Since 2002 I have taught company class, dance technique and workshops in improvisation and Contact Improvisation in the UK, Germany, Portugal, Norway and South America.

Contemporary Dance Class

This class is based on technical information from Release-based Contemporary Dance and Contact Improvisation. Exercises and phrasework emphasize on the travelling of weight and momentum and the balance between effort and release, tension and softness in the body. The movement material is athletic and bold, makes us 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.

Solo & Contact Workshops

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 – to enrich, inform and inspire our solo dances.  Addressing the balance between releasing and resisting, both in contact with the floor and with a partner will be another focus in this workshop as well as finding space for jamming open dancing together at the end of each day.