Sunday online CI classes
Sunday Online Contact Improvisation classes
for pairs of dancers in living rooms, private studios, and other spaces
With rotating instructors including: Andrew Wass (Berlin, Germany), Brad Stoller (Charlottesville, USA), Danya Elraz (Jerusalem, Israel), Delia Brett (Vancouver, Canada), Elske Seidel (Berlin, Germany), Irene Sposetti (Viterbo, Italy), Karl Frost (Leipzig, Germany), Mirva Mäkinen (Helsinki, Finland), Diana Bonilla (Madrid, Spain), Itay Yatuv (Tel Aviv, Israel), Matthias Früh (Bremen, Germany), Kira Kirsch (Berlin, Germany), AVID (Seattle, WA, USA), Cyrus Khambatta (Seattle, WA) and others…
Produced by Karl Frost/Body Research
The Sunday online CI classes are now finished. As the spring weather arrives, people are more outside, and in many places, there are starting to be openings for live dance gatherings again, particularly as corona numbers go down and vaccination rates increase. Thanks everyone for being a part of the series! We had over 500 people participate in the classes since they began in December!
I’m glad we were able to come together in this way to keep the torch of CI practice going. I wish everyone luck and hope we can all start soon to responsibly and cautiously come back together for small group gatherings as normality slowly starts to return. Hopefully we’ll be able to leave this behind us soon, but in case we do have a resurgence in the fall, we’ll start the classes back up again.
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Sundays: 6 December 2020 through 9 May 2021
Time: 7pm -9pm Central European Time (10am-12pm Pacific Standard Time, 1pm – 3pm Eastern Standard Time)
classes ongoing during the coronavirus pandemic as a support for dancers in a time of isolation
Classes are 10-20 euros/US$ per pair per class, NOTAFLOF.
Again, the primary audience for these classes are people who can meet physically with a dance partner. We usually do have a few people joining solo, which can be fun, but this then requires more self-responsibility and imagination to adapt the exercises to solo exploration.
Classes offered in English, with some classes also offered in two languages. see class notes.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused us to reduce or cancel altogether our contact improvisation gatherings: classes, workshops, jams, festivals. However, in the context of various lockdown measures, many of us are still able to meet with at least one other person. These classes allow internationally well-known instructors to continue to offer teaching and facilitation to dancers who are able to meet in pairs, working within the limits and new opportunities of our living spaces.
While regular partner switching is a useful feature of most classes, it is a unique opportunity of the class to deepen into a dance connection with one person for the whole class.
| Schedule of Teachers, December-May | |
| Who/When | Bio/class |
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6/12 Irene Sposetti |
www.beingmotion.com Irene is a multidisciplinary performing artist, teacher and dance maker. She studies drama, classical music and dance. While originally from Italy for the last twenty years she has been living, traveling and working abroad as an independent freelancer. She is being offering dance training, making performances and lectures in universities, schools, companies, festivals, cultural institutes, and independent platforms throughout Europe and Asia. Her artistic path has been therefore influenced by many different cultures and is deeply intertwined with self-inquiry investigations and practices. The main theme of her movement research is Improvisation. Through her practice she aims for a heightened state of presence, increased awareness in the body, effortless motion, and a broadening of the technical and investigative skills of the mover. She has a particular interest in intuitive learning processes, empowering individuals, and promoting independent research and artistic projects. In 2011 she created Being Motion, a platform for sharing her artistic practices, research, creations and educational projects. |
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13/12
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wasswasswass.com Influenced heavily by his undergraduate studies of Biochemistry at U.C. San Diego, Andrew’s current dance research interests are in developing theory by layering disparate practices upon one another. He has taught at universities, festivals, and theaters throughout Europe, the United States, and in Japan and Malaysia. Wass has performed with CI luminaries such as Nina Martin, Ray Chung, Scott Wells, Jess Curtis, Chris Aiken and Nancy Stark Smith. His performance work has been shown in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Marfa, Tijuana, Berlin, Tokyo, Geneva, Basel, and New York. A member of the performance collective, Lower Left, he is a graduate of the MA program Solo/Dance/Authorship in HZT in Berlin. Currently he is pursuing his PhD in Dance at Texas Woman’s University, looking at the intra-actions of phenomenology, cognitive science, and improvised dance-making.
Class Title: More than Two — This class will look at the ensemble that exists within the CI-based duet. Starting with practices from Paxton’s Material for the Spine, the class will combine classic CI scores with concepts from Ensemble Thinking into open dancing. |
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20/12
Danya Elraz |
My name is Danya, I have three kids, and have been dancing and teaching CI for many many years, yet it still feels like the beginning. I also teach Bartenieff, Body Education and work with babies through the Feldenkries method. In Jerusalem, I have a school for movement, Body Education, improvisation and of course- CI. I teach nationally and internationally, and am very happy to take part in this sweet project! (I will teach with Dafna Hemendinger.) |
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27/12
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Karl has been practicing, performing, and teaching contact improvisation and related works since the mid 80s in California. He is known for his articulate and accessible teaching for both novices and those with more developed practices. His research in CI ranges from the subtle technical to the dynamic and acrobatic to the experiential/sensory/psychological. His performance work alternates between traditional stage work and highly interactive performance happenings, taking the physically felt experience as its reference point. www.bodyresearch.org Class: Comfort Study … we will explore movement solo and together that uses a pursuit of “comfort in motion” to open up unexpected movement that challenges our habit movement patterns and unveils reserves of focus and energy often hidden behind of ordinary ideas of self-presentation. Constraints of injury or feeling of being “tired” can become unexpectedly gateways into new movement patterns as we let go of ideas and return to sensation and process that leaves the body revitalized from whatever our starting place. |
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3/1  photo by Patrick Beelaert Elske Seidel |
Elske Seidel based in Berlin, is a passionate CI dancer & teacher, deeply committed to CI and its community internationally. She has been teaching dance full time and wholeheartedly for over two decades, CI since 2004.Her boundless fascination and joy exploring and researching Contact Improvisation in all its depth and subtleties, inspires her workshops, privates, ongoing classes, and each of the projects she creates. Her work recognizes nature, improvisation and teaching itself as core sources for knowledge and understanding. She is the artistic director of the Annual Contact Festival Fuerteventura/ Spain and co-creates Dance Your Question: CI Research Week for Experienced Contact Dancers, CI Training Program Hamburg/ Germany, CI BASIC Training Program Hamburg/ Germany and Nature as Teacher Workshops. www.elskedance.de |
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10/1
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Brad Stoller is part of an early lineage in the form of Contact Improvisation (CI), Authentic Movement Practice (AMP) and Contemplative Dance Practice (CDP). He began his study in 1979 when these forms were in their incipient stages of growth. He also has also studied physical theater with Jerzy Grotowski, worked with Arne Mindel in process-oriented psychology, and for many years practiced Aikido. He has been teaching CI, AMP, and CDP sinse 1983 all over the U.S., Canada, Europe and Africa. He has been teaching CI at University of Virginia since 2013. |
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17/1  Delia Brett and Daelik Hackenbrook Delia Brett |
Delia is an established Vancouver performing artist. She took her 1st CI class from master teacher Peter Bingham when she was 14 and began training, almost daily in CI at the age of 18, 30 years ago (eek!). She has taught CI to people of all ages, abilities and genders across Canada, the US, Austria, France, Greece and Finland, as well as locally for, EDAM Dance, (Canada’s premeire contact company for whom she has been dancing for 23 years), The BPA Program and SFU. Pre-Covid Delia was a regular CI teacher at Vancouver’s, Contemporary dance training program, Modus Operandi and offered community class with her creative partner, Daelik, at their former studio, Left of Main. She is a Hatha yoga teacher with 18 years experience and has an extensive knowledge of anatomy and bio-mechanics. |
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24/1 Zita Pavlistova |
Zita is a teacher of contact improvisation in Czech Republic. In her work, she connects movement techniques with contact improvisation. She shares movement art based on listening to our bodies. In her work, she seeks for limits and loves extremes. She inquires into the body in movement and its connection with mind. She uses long, still and conscious watching to the inner movement, as well as pace, loss of control and risk – situations where body needs to be given an implicit trust. Zita operates in Prague. She founded and directs Druna – a space for CI, dance and movement. (www.druna.cz). For 7 years she has led her classes here, held evening and weekend jams, and invited teachers from the world. Every year she is organizing the month of international summer workshops in Eagle mountains. Today, she teaches in Prague and in the whole Czech Republic, and also in Spain, Germany, Poland and Philippines. |
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31/1 Mirva Mäkinen (Helsinki, Finland)
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Dance artist: Performer, Choreographer and Teacher, Contemporary Dance , Contact Improvisation Mirva Mäkinen graduated as a Doctor of Dance from University of Arts in Helsinki in 2018. Her doctoral research is about Somaesthetics of Contact Improvisation. She graduated (MA) from the Dance Department from the University of Arts, Finland in 2000, before that she did masters of Physical Education from University of Jyväskylä. Mirva Mäkinen has been performing and teaching contemporary dance internationally in more than 40 different countries. |
| 7/2 Elske Seidel (Berlin, Germany) photo by Patrick Beelaert |
Elske Seidel based in Berlin, is a passionate CI dancer & teacher, deeply committed to CI and its community internationally. She has been teaching dance full time and wholeheartedly for over two decades, CI since 2004.Her boundless fascination and joy exploring and researching Contact Improvisation in all its depth and subtleties, inspires her workshops, privates, ongoing classes, and each of the projects she creates. Her work recognizes nature, improvisation and teaching itself as core sources for knowledge and understanding. She is the artistic director of the Annual Contact Festival Fuerteventura/ Spain and co-creates Dance Your Question: CI Research Week for Experienced Contact Dancers, CI Training Program Hamburg/ Germany, CI BASIC Training Program Hamburg/ Germany and Nature as Teacher Workshops. www.elskedance.de |
| 14/2 Diana Bonilla (Madrid, Spain)  |
Bonilla began her studies in 1996 with classical dance, Spanish dance and flamenco in Madrid. In 1999 she continued her training in contemporary dance with the teacher Francesc Bravo, contact improvisation with Cristiane Boullosa as her main reference, capoeira with the Mestre Pantera, and improvisation technique with Shahar Dor, Katie Duck, Julien Hamilton and David Zambrano as well as other teachers, such as Stephanie Maher, Keith Hennessy, Jess Curtis, Joerg Hassmann. Since 2002 she has been dancing in different companies and for different choreographers such as Cristiane Boullosa and Francesc Bravo (Cía. Rayo Malayo). Since 2009 she has been collaborating as a dancer and assistant to the choreographer Mey-ling Bisogno in multiple works and projects. As an improviser and performer, she has been participating in the Omos Uno project since its inception, performing periodically since 2008 on independent circuits throughout Spain. Since 2006, Diana Bonilla has been teaching contact improvisation classes regularly, organizing JAMs and the annual Madrid Improvisation Contact Festival, as well as other Contact Impro festivals in Madrid. She is part of the management and teaching staff of Espacio FCI.
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| 21/2 Itay Yatuv (Tel Aviv, Israel)  |
Itay Yatuv is the Artistic Director of the Hakvutza Dance School, and has been practising and teaching contact improvisation (CI) worldwide for the last 17 years. Itay trained as a contemporary dancer in New York, U.S; Italy, and Israel; then went on to independently choreographing and leading several international projects of improvisational performances. Itay has been training in Aikido for the past ten years, a practice he integrates into his CI research. In recent years Itay has been developing ContaKids, where children and parents dance together. ContaKids Teachers trainings are offerred now in different european cities. |
| 28/2 Karl Frost (Liepzig, Germany)  |
Karl has been practicing, performing, and teaching contact improvisation and related works since the mid 80s in California. He is known for his articulate and accessible teaching for both novices and those with more developed practices. His research in CI ranges from the subtle technical to the dynamic and acrobatic to the experiential/sensory/psychological. His performance work alternates between traditional stage work and highly interactive performance happenings, taking the physically felt experience as its reference point. |
| 7/3 Matthias Früh (Bremen, Germany)  |
Matthias has ben dancing Contact since 1984 an is teaching in Bremen. He is also influenced by martial arts, like aikido, capoeira, kung fu, and body work (Feldenkrais/ Bewegungsevolution). For a long time he produced experimental performances. He now also works as a psychotherapist Matthias teaches a weekly online class Sunday for his regular students in Bremen, so we join the two classes for this Sunday. Note: originally, class was going to start a half hour earlier, but schedules have since been adjusted and class will begin at the normal time, 19:00 Central European Time |
| 14/3 Kira Kirsch (Berlin, Germany)  |
Kira Kirsch is a movement artist, community organizer, mother and initiator/curator born in East-Berlin. After many years abroad she now works and lives with her family in Berlin as residents of Lake Studios – an artist run dance, production and performance place. She is deeply invested into creating and shaping spaces for people to experience, learn about and sensitize their mind-body-movement continuum. She has pioneered, taught and continuously researched through the lens of the Axis Syllabus (AS) for over a decade, is a co-organizer of the Nomadic College at Earthdance, leads teacher laboratories and has build a community for AS research in the Bay Area, California from 2006 – 2012. |
| 21/3 Brad Stoller (Charlottesville, VA, USA)  |
Brad Stoller is part of an early lineage in the form of Contact Improvisation (CI), Authentic Movement Practice (AMP) and Contemplative Dance Practice (CDP). He began his study in 1979 when these forms were in their incipient stages of growth. He also has also studied physical theater with Jerzy Grotowski, worked with Arne Mindel in process-oriented psychology, and for many years practiced Aikido. He has been teaching CI, AMP, and CDP since 1983 all over the U.S., Canada, Europe and Africa. He has been teaching CI at University of Virginia since 2013. |
| 28/3 AVID (Scott Davis, Rachael Lincoln, Aiko Kinoshita, and Aaron Swartzman, Tamin Totzke ) (Seattle, WA, USA)   |
AVID is a Seattle-based dance company committed to interweaving art and life. Founded in 2014, the five co-creators meet regularly in an unwavering practice of ensemble improvisation. Our time together has fostered an evolving framework for this practice, an endless stream of questions and, most importantly, the conviction that our deep trust in each other and in the unknown is both relevant and essential. Our questions are vast; from why move? to the value of leaving vs. joining. Yet, both on and off stage, an overarching theme continuously reappears: how to bring the “all” of who we are, individually and collectively, into our practice; creating a level of honesty that anchors us in our humanity. https://www.avidmoves.com/ |
| 11/4 Danya Elraz (Jerusalem, Israel)  |
My name is Danya, I have three kids, and have been dancing and teaching CI for many many years, yet it still feels like the beginning. I also teach Bartenieff, Body Education and work with babies through the Feldenkries method. In Jerusalem, I have a school for movement, Body Education, improvisation and of course- CI. I teach nationally and internationally, and am very happy to take part in this sweet project! |
| 18/4 Kira Kirsch (Berlin, Germany) |
Kira Kirsch is a movement artist, community organizer, mother and initiator/curator born in East-Berlin. After many years abroad she now works and lives with her family in Berlin as residents of Lake Studios – an artist run dance, production and performance place. She is deeply invested into creating and shaping spaces for people to experience, learn about and sensitize their mind-body-movement continuum. She has pioneered, taught and continuously researched through the lens of the Axis Syllabus (AS) for over a decade, is a co-organizer of the Nomadic College at Earthdance, leads teacher laboratories and has build a community for AS research in the Bay Area, California from 2006 – 2012. www.movementartisans.net/kira-kirsch
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| 25/4 Karl Frost (Liepzig, Germany) |
Karl has been practicing, performing, and teaching contact improvisation and related works since the mid 80s in California. He is known for his articulate and accessible teaching for both novices and those with more developed practices. His research in CI ranges from the subtle technical to the dynamic and acrobatic to the experiential/sensory/psychological. His performance work alternates between traditional stage work and highly interactive performance happenings, taking the physically felt experience as its reference point. |
| 2/5 Matthias Früh (Bremen, Germany) |
Matthias has ben dancing Contact since 1984 an is teaching in Bremen. He is also influenced by martial arts, like aikido, capoeira, kung fu, and body work (Feldenkrais/ Bewegungsevolution). For a long time he produced experimental performances. He now also works as a psychotherapist Matthias teaches a weekly online class Sunday for his regular students in Bremen, so we join the two classes for this Sunday. |
| 9/5 Cyrus Khambatta (Seattle, WA)  |
Khambatta is founder and artistic director of Khambatta Dance Company. The company contrasts rigorous partnering and athletic movement to create emotionally moving dance. The programming of the company that moved from New York to Seattle in 2001 has been seen throughout the West Coast and abroad by more than 10,000 people. |
| The series ends after 5 months of Sundays on May 9. As the days get longer and the weather warmer, hopefully we will see a passing of this wave’s lockdown and more opportunity to be outside. Enjoy the outdoors! Re-embrace meetings as the situation allows! Hope to see you dancing! |
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| sign up for the e-mail list if you would like to receive information about future projects. Hopefully we will be past this with the summer, but should the situation turn in the autumn, I’ll start these classes back up again! | |
Each instructor will take the class where they will, but we’ll aim to minimize distracting “split focus” between screen and bodies, so that as we dance, our physical attention and presence can be with our live moving partner in the room.
Logistics
Mechanics of class
As you sign in, you could look to see if there is anything in the chat window about arriving and starting.
As you are in class, please keep your mic on “mute” unless we are having a Q&A or feedback moment, and then unmute yourself if you want to say or ask something and then remember to mute yourself after. You can always send a note in the chat window.
We’ll generally aim to clearly differentiate moments of needing to attend visually to the screen from working time to maximize the time spent fully present with a partner in the space and to minimize attention switching and split focus.