Registrations on the Zeffy website
(Coming September 15th)Questions? Stephanie Gaudreau: stageintensif@contactimpro.org
This year we have the privilege of welcoming Karen Nelson back. In fact, it was in November 2013 that we were able to experience her teaching.
She is one of the pioneers from the first generations of dancers who contributed to the development of Contact Improvisation in the 1970s.
It is an honor to have her with us for the MTL ANNUAL JAM and the intensive workshop.
We invite all dancers, of all experience levels, to participate in an intensive week of training, leading up to the annual jam, to build your Contact body.
Open to all experience levels!
Monday 28 to Wednesday 30 October from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
CONTENU: SMALL DANCE UNIVERSE
Small dance practices instigated by Steve Paxton (1939-2024) can open us to consciously experiencing the reflexes of balance which are faster than thought. Taking a ride on our own balance-dance in combination with a partner’s within the living, changing, unpredictable universe of moving in touch is an out of this world dance experience, bigger than size.
Our own reflexes become even more ready to protect us in disorienting spaces. We will touch on spiral rolls, falling puzzles, and essential images from Material for the Spine (Paxton) and other home-made extensions of small dancing.
Offered to participants who have mastered the fundamental basics of Contact Improvisation and are seeking challenges beyond the usual practice.
Thursday October 31 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday November 1 from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
CONTENU: Develop composition in CI through ’Tuning Scores.’
Presentation of the research during the annual jam. A magical moment to experience as a group!
“Tuning Scores” originated by Lisa Nelson, bring awareness of the space in which we are dancing. Our observer selves grow to include consciously communicating image and meaning into our reflex-based CI dancing, so that we can make communal and collaborative choices within our group of dance makers.
In this workshop, Tuning warm-ups and scores will play with opening touch and imagination, resting our eyes from social concerns to pick up their own sensing of light, shape, color, movement. We will learn movement with our eyes closed and transmit to others thru a process of non-authoritarian collaboration— and produce a dance in the process!
To bring facile, singular focus CI dancing into making compositional choices that engages and communicates visceral meaning is a potent craft, and our workshop will result in creating a performance score to show at the Montréal Annual Jam.
Biography
Biography
Karen Nelson : (she/her/chuki) rests playfully within dance improvisation and spiritual practice. As explorer-collaborator, teacher, maker, touring performer, author/contributor to Dancing with Dharma and Contact Quarterly she has been a mutator of the form Contact Improvisation since 1977.
She co-founded mixed-ability experiments Dance Ability and Diverse Dance Research Retreat and integrates Material for the Spine (Steve Paxton) and Tuning Scores (Lisa Nelson/Image Lab) into her physical-sensation based approach to dancing, along with investigating dominant cultural narratives and re-vers(ion)ing these fictions within her own embodiment and wider community.
www.explomov.weebly.com