Despite it being a postmodern approach to dancing, contact improvisation contextualizes and unites the “me” and the “other”, it establishes community, and thus counterbalances the fragmentation and deconstruction of reality which are rather typical for postmodernism. Contact improvisation provides a sensed flux of experience and furthermore reciprocally shared sensation and experience.

Due to the multi-dimensionality of the dancers’ interactions, there’s a lot of space for possibility which brings forth notions of depth, coherence, belonging, originality and authenticity. Perpetrating involvement, bonding and direct (physical) communication amongst the participants, contact improvisation makes us more human, present and more fully embodied, and virtues like solidarity and generosity become natural and normal again.

Even though co-presence and co-creativity are emphasized, the individual’s autonomy doesn’t get lost underway, it’s much rather reinforced through the continuous process of constantly being mirrored and met. Clearer orientation, sharpened perceptivity, and renewed empowerment are further palpable aspects of this form’s healing effects.

RALF JAROSCHINSKI Germany, Brazil

Born in Southern Germany, Ralf grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He studied dance in Hannover, Germany, and in New York, USA.  That’s also where he discovered contact improvisation for himself in 1994.  He directed the German Hildesheim City Theater dance company from 1998 until 2002.  Since then, he’s been working free-lance as a teacher for contact improvisation and choreographer for various dance companies, universities, festivals, dance schools and studios throughout Europe and the Americas, Asia and Australia.

To feel our temporary bodies as divine, we need to take a step, to make a jump, to be curious about how nature works. We have capacity to be both a microcosm and macrocosm, to discover the interplay of water, air, earth, and fire elements. To join them in their unfolding and have them expressed in our bodies, in space, in dance. We can manifest our shamanic aspects, we can shake, vibrate, dance the power animals, allowing the force of elements and archetypes to flow through our body.

All practice in this workshop is about giving care to the body and receiving secrets of movement and self-expression in exchange.

Several ways to develop our dance, to make it “advanced”:

• Coordination between the center of the body and its extremities, awareness of the body in its wholeness
• Integration of spiral movements into our dance, using three-dimensional, multilayered, constantly changing space around us
• Conscious interest in upside-down positions. Including the “space behind” into the dance
• Relaxation, letting go of tensions in the body. Understanding the tone of the body, capacity to flow over, pour, move the body as WEIGHT
• Practice of “small dance”
• Interest in the meaning and application of the point of contact
• Including composition and improvisation into the dance

I will take one of those ways as my main focus: developing the vision of myself as a 3-dimensional moving spiral body.

It is not only the physical body, but also it is about the space around me, that I—consciously or not—rotate, turn, roll out. It is also the body of my partner whom I involve in my play, into my movement, to whom I show the way, from whom I learn the way.

It is also a group, “jamming” involvement into movement taking shapes of acts of nature, such as a vortex, tornado, snail house, grape tendrils grasping support.

Within our theme of spirals, I will use bodywork to bring our consciousness into a flow state and our body to new trajectories—through exhaling, letting go of our thick boundaries/membranes .

We will do a detailed and intentional work to multiply our possibilities in lifts with spiral additions, carefully dosing tone and effort.

We will use feet as hands, sensing our way in space, rotating into support of the body, of the floor and air, experimenting with it, integrating new pathways on different levels.

Together, we will study compatibility of trajectories with a partner and in a group. We will be finding and losing each other through spirals. We will practice CI in relationship to the composition of the space, time, and place. We’ll work with attention, understanding the principles of movement. We will be developing our capacity to be clear in chaos and spontaneous in a clear framework of a particular form.

Research is a necessary condition for contact improvisation:

What does it mean to be here?

Where does childhood go?

What is an empty space and what is a dense space?

How do we know where is up and down?

In a certain sense, I propose co-creation, a laboratory where we can have a level playing field with nature to use our body, to open and dance its trajectories in the most innocent and clear manifestation.

The very first relationship of a child with the world starts with an embrace.

The cleanest entrance into dance happens as an embrace, making peace with one’s thoughts, body limitations and fears. The force of life that twists the vine tendril upwards, towards the sun, can become our teacher.

ANJELIKA DONIY is a dance improviser, choreographer and teacher focused on contact.

After 5 years of formal studies of choreography, ballet dance and other stage disciplines at the Higher School of Culture (St-Petersburg), she worked for 10 Years as a theater choreographer. Until…

In 1997, I was at the Impulse Dance Festival in Vienna. There, I saw a wonder of CI, watched Steve Paxton on stage, flew into Andrew Harwood workshop where some 70 dancers were rolling over each other. This was unbelievable, the earth was becoming alive. I saw a realization of my dream of the world growing from connection, interaction, harmony between one and many.

It was love from the first sight. From 2002 I started facilitating first jams and CI workshops in Russia and initiated International Contact Improvisation and Performance Festival in Moscow in 2006–2010.

My path in CI as a teacher began as long journey of workshops for beginners. I love to guide people into the dance, inspire them with their own body, and awaken to what is already there. I love to surprise long-time dancers with secrets of the body as little keys opening a familiar dance into new spaces. This year, I am following a program of the Institute for Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy to go deeper into the body and its anatomy, to touch the cells, to breathe through the navel, and to use this resource in my practice.

My special interest in contact improvisation is clarity. Clarity towards the practice. Honesty towards how I move my weight in the space of Gravity. Attention towards clearing the dance from the personal. Letting things happen as they go.

I am grateful to have met and studied with such teachers as Regine Chopinot, Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Danny Lepkoff, Benno Voorham, Lisa Nelson, Esther Gal, Yaniv Mintzer, Martin Keo and many others.

Anjelica taught over 200 workshops all over the world for all levels from complete beginners to professional dancers. Her teaching is rooted in many years of work of acquiring and transmitting technical skills and equally long path of meditation and mindfulness practice. She blends them into a life dance, contact improvisation.

MIRVA MÄKINEN

I graduated as a Doctor of Dance from University of Arts in Helsinki in 2018. My doctoral research is about Somaesthetics of Contact Improvisation. Artistic research is focusing on values in contact improvisation and how it is presented in a somaesthetic performance context. I graduated (MA) from the Dance Department from the University of Arts, Finland in 2000, before that I did masters of Physical Education from University of Jyväskylä.

In dance I am interested in the feeling of flow and research of kinetic energy. I love to investigate movement, its rhythm and different ways of inhabiting the body. A feeling of dancing is created by management of gravitational forces, falling responses and inertia.  
My Choreographies, Dance Pedagogy and Art Pedagogy refers to artistic activity infused by pedagogical viewpoints, generating a field of continuous learning. My choreographies provide a strong foundation for creative and critical thinking, as well as development of solid artistic-pedagogical skills. I believe that making art is based on listening to and encountering each other. It is an open process of interaction and learning, where we step into the unknown, take risks and try out new ways of doing.

From 2000 onwards I have worked as a dance teacher, choreographer and lecturer for dance at the Kallio Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts. During the last 25 years I have been teaching in several international dance schools and professional dance companies including for example Cullberg Ballet in Sweden. I am regularly teaching bachelor and MA students in University of the Arts, Helsinki.

I have been working as an choreographer and as a dancer with many different dance companies and choreographers, here few of them: Helsinki Dance Company, Tampereen Työväen Teatteri, Center for new dance Zodiak, Dance theatre Minimi, Dance company Karttunen Kollektiv (choreographer Jyrki Karttunen), New Circus Company Circo Aereo, choreographer Joona Halonen, Echo Echo dance company (Northern Ireland), collaboration with Frey Faust and collaboration with Joerg Hassmann. During 2014-2024 I have been working as a dancer with finnish choreographer Valtteri Raekallio. I have  been performing and teaching contemporary dance internationally in more than 40 different countries.

Foto: Borys Boryshenko