• Cost : $150
• Friday 18h30-21h30
• Saturday and Sunday 10h30-17h30
• Informal performance Sunday October 6 from 18h00-19h00
A workshop-laboratory for teachers, performers and experienced students/practitioners of Contact Improvisation with an informal performance at the end of the workshop on Sunday night. A strong grasp of contact fundamentals is essential. Participants must commit to the entire weekend including the presentation without exception.
In contact improvisation, experienced practitioners are constantly faced with the tendency to run through the gamut of known physical techniques and to make the same choices over and over, again and again, and yet never really improvise fully or freely. The freedom contact improvisation offers doesn’t come without the courage to accept what is already taking place in our bodies and in the space, to use all our known and unknown resources, and to embrace the ever-present making-a-fool quality. In my view, true contact adepts are willing to work with everything, turning even the most difficult and awkward circumstances into brilliant creative moments. The unknown becomes a friend, absurdity is worn well, and the tyranny of being interesting is overcome.
This trend may also be countered by working with partners who can remind you that there are other options you may not have considered. Appreciating that invitation is one of the challenges contact offers. In addition, the opportunity to be seen in front of a captive audience, heightens our senses, charges the space and propels us beyond our usual behavior.
Lily Lapierre
Coordonnatrice et co-fondatrice de Fleur d’asphalte studio de danse et de création
Cellulaire: 514-943-1736
Studio: 514-529-6635
Andrew Harwood :
Harwood’s current interests lie within the immediate and fullest use of all the senses, the subtle interplay between intuition and instinct, the dilation of the attention to it’s fullest, and the finely tuned use of the perceptions in performance.
Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood began his dance career in 1975. After three years of study in contemporary techniques, he quickly gravitated toward instantaneous composition and contact improvisation which allowed him a greater freedom of expression while incorporating many other disciplines such as gymnastics, athletics, yoga, meditation, martial arts and various somatic approaches that he had previously studied.
Formerly artistic director of AH HA Productions, Andrew has dedicated himself to the research, education, development and dissemination of improvisation as a performing art for 38 years. He studied and performed with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and Nita Little, founders of contact improvisation and danced for the companies of Marie Chouinard, Jean-Pierre Perreault and Jo Lechay. He is known and respected internationally in the field of instantaneous choreography and contact/compositional improvisation and has taught and performed throughout North America and Europe as well as South America, Mexico, Australia, Eastern Europe, Israel and Russia. He is the recipient of the Canada Council’s Jacqueline-Lemieux award for the year 2000.