*Tuning to Sensation – from Solo Dancing to Contact.*
How can dancing with a partner be a rich source for movement creation? We will look at how meeting and working with a partner supports, provokes, and inspires dancing, both solo and in contact.
Intensive with Laura Hicks, November 26/27 2022
What’s this skin we are in? When we touch – and are ‘touched’ – what kind of intensity is created?
How we respond, or how much our physiology is able to respond, to sensation and proprioception, is often due to what in improvisation we call “tuning.” Is the body ready to receive? Curious? Playful? Contact Improvisation is a meeting between bodies that are dancing with the kinesthetic sense – tuning it, playing with it, and creating with it.
I often show up at jams and look around and find myself wondering where the dancing is. Sometimes I see it, but often I see more lifting and moving around one another. However, when I first began practicing CI, even though I was already a dancer practicing improvisation at the time, CI gave me a whole new world of possibilities when it came to dancing and performing improvisation, and for the last 18 years this has become an ongoing study.
Contact can be a way to deepen the art of improvisation. Contact Improvisation taught me about kinesthetic states – the ability to use kinesthesia (our sense of movement) to find different ways of dancing, and to be in a state of kinesthetic flow while dancing. That moment when you feel like your sensations are leading you, and everything in the dance begins to make sense? That’s what I’m talking about. Tension masks sensation – so working with sensation can be a release. Sensation can also free us, tune us to the previously unperceivable, keep us safe(r), and be a great source of curiosity and creativity.
In this intensive we will spend time tuning our sensation though solo dancing, turning on the sensitivity of our skin to the floor, our weight to gravity, and our breath to movement. We will then look at ways that contact with a partner can be a great creative source for movement creation, and how the meeting and working with a partner supports, provokes, and inspires dancing.
Details
- Tanzzentrale Studio 1
- Saturday 26.11.
9:30 – 10:00 arrival
10:00 – 16:00 workshop
16:00 – 17:00 discussion
19:30 – 22:00, open score jam with live improvisation music - Sunday 27.11.
10:30 – 11:00 arrival
11:00 – 17:00 workshop
17:00 – 18:00 discussion and come together - Price: 100 – 200€ (sliding scale)
- Registration: send a message with a very short summary about your dancing experience to matthias@contactimpro-leipzig.de
Laura Hicks
Laura Hicks (1979) is a Canadian living in Germany, working in performance, choreography, and education. Her choreographic practice is an exploration of kinaesthetic states, affects and intensities that are constructed through improvisation. Creating several works as part of the duo Hicks&Bühler, “Der Klumpen” a work for 5 women moving in close contact will be remounted for the Tanz Festival Rhein-Main 2022. “Der Klumpen ” and “Making Impressions and Other Failures (a collaboration with Ilana Reynolds), were also selected by jury and performed as part of Hessische Theatertage 2019 and 2021 respectively. Her work Dritter Raum, looking at the relation between contact improvisation and the concept of 3rd Space was awarded the #TakeAction, Neustartkultur funding and a residency with CC Heidelberg and premiered in 2022. As a choreographer she has also worked with Schauspiel Frankfurt and company LIGNA, and Matter of Facts Studio.
She teaches anatomy for dancers and scenic body work for actors at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, holds a masters in Contemporary Dance Education, and has practiced CI since 2004, being greatly influenced by her teacher Peter Bingham, as well as Andrew Hardwood, Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, Nancy Stark Smith, Steve Paxton, Karen Nelson, Lisa Nelson, and others.