Schedule

 

tentative schedule for Focus and Score Jams at the Leipzig Big Winter CI Focus Jam

(The Schedule will  be fine-tuned  as we get closer to the event and in feedback with those who sign up.  It’s our starting place that we can adjust to fit energy and interest.)

All sessions start with structure moving into open jamming.  They all start with themes typical of classic contact improvisation investigations, with freedom to explore from the quiet and introspective to the wild and athletic.  The Focus Jams are not “classes”.  There will be some instruction and facilitation, but this is just to bring us into a shared investigation, where we each follow our own curiosities.

Look below for descriptions of each session.

Time Wednesday 27.12 Thursday 28.12 Friday 29.12 Saturday 30.12
10h+ Encuentro Fluid Movement (Gabi Koch, Wuppertal) CI with and as Bodywork (Ingrid Hoerlzeder, Vienna) Slowness in CI
14h+ Support and interdependent structure Skills Lab: lifts, movement pathways, tricks, and techniques Exploring  the Underscore (Roman Semchenko, Odessa/Leipzig) Physical Poetics: Sensation and Physics
19h+ Physical Listening, Consciousness in stimulis/response (Mariano Laplume, Buenos Aires / Rotterdam) Round Robin into open jam CI and music Encuentro
  • Encuentro: A simple open structure.  We start with a conversation about our personal curiosities and wants in CI.  From there we have an open jam lightly influenced by that conversation. Afterward, we come back together and talk about what we experienced, saw, discovered.
  • Exploring and Deconstructing the Underscore: The Underscore is a popular frame for improvisation coming out of contact improvisation.  It is a very open frame that is structured by naming and contemplating the options that we have in a contact jam  from personal to duet to group exploration, joining, amplifying, clashing, telescoping awareness and curiosity from the small details to the gross mechanical to the whole space.  Sometimes it manifests as “strong suggestions” or score, and at others as just a way of looking at what we do.  We introduce the Underscore ideas and then explore them or challenge them.
  • Physical Listening: Physical listening is core to CI.  Listening itself can generate the dance.  Listening happens through the skin, but also through our felt sense (proprioception).  Practices from Alexander Technique give a lens on physical listening and brining consciousness to stimulus/response in contact.
  • Fluidity: Fluidity of movement allows for safer movement into and out of the floor, more pleasurable physical encounter, and access to soft power. This can be explored both mechanically and through image and metaphor of fluid.
  • Skills Lab:  straightforward… we work on skills, naming our curiosities, giving each other pointers, helping each other get better at technique and awareness.  We turn the jam into part dance and part mutually supportive training.  Maybe that means lifts.  Maybe that means qualities of connection and physical listening.  Maybe that means different movement pathways through 3-dimensional space or improved functional body awareness and use.
  • Round Robin: The Round Robin is the score that in the 70s eventually turned into the “contact jam”.  Dancers start in a circle on the side of the space, coming into the space to dance and then leaving to the side to watch/witness.  We help each other deepen into the exploration through supportive and curious witnessing. We offer our curious experimentation to be observed. We regularly cut in and trade partners so that we all have a chance to dance with many different people.
  • CI with and as Bodywork: A core of classic CI is that the movement should be good for the body, activating and relaxing the body and expanding awareness and range of possible movement choices.  Bodywork is a tool for getting us ready for contact.  We can also dance as bodywork.  Practices from Trager work give us a starting point.
  • CI and working with Music:  classic CI is done without music.  It is the experience of many that music can shape and homogenize our dances.  A habitual response to rhythm can distract us from the ever-changing organic flow of physics. At the same time, music can catapult our dances into places it would usually not go, inspiring us and coordinating us.  Throughout the 4 days we’ll work with and without music.  In this Focus Jam, we’ll really examine how we use and are used by music in CI.
  • Slowness: Many training practices use slow movement as a path to awareness and self-study… Tai Chi, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Butoh.  We use the restriction of slow movement to inhibit habitual reactions and open up awareness of new possibilities for movement. We also explore different kinds of slow… how different specific speeds change our awareness and state.
  • Physical Poetics… Sensation and Physics:  curiosity in the senses and mechanical curiosity are two mutually supportive paths of investigation in CI.  We can follow a dance that is all about attending to the sensations of the skin or weight.  We can also follow a dance that is examining the mechanical repercussions of folding and unfolding joints in two interdependent structures.  We go back and forth between sensation  and physics focus. 

Note: Some of this schedule may change and a different focus might be traded in or out, depending on proposals and group interest.