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Lucia Walker (UK) Lucia is based in Oxford, England and Durban, South Africa.
She travels and teaches internationally, exploring a lifelong delight in movement and communication. She was introduced to Contact Improvisation in 1985, studying with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Julyen Hamilton and Kirstie Simson. She has been learning, teaching and practising the form ever since. Lucia worked for many years with Jointwork Dance Group, working with schools and community groups. Besides choreography Jointwork focused on exploring improvised performance and Lucia continued this research with Telling Times International Theatre project. She continues to work in many contexts leading workshops and collaborating in dance, physical theatre, communication and movement research projects.
In 1987 Lucia qualified as a teacher of Alexander Technique. She teaches individuals, groups and on teacher training programmes, working with a wide range of interests and abilities.
Recent work includes workshops with Rosetta Life (creative and movement expression for those with terminal illness),"Prepared for Nothing and Ready for Anything" with Flatfoot Dance Company Durban, "Not I but You and Us" with students from Coventry University, "What If……?" with children for the Saturday Club at St. Michael's Hospice and solo improvisation "The Planet is my Partner".
Class Description
Contact Improvisation is one of the best techniques I know for learning to be fully present and for connecting to other people and the elements of the physical world.
In the workshop we will allow dancing to develop from the interplay of balance, gravity, momentum, weight, touch and intention. We will also notice the flow of choices and co-incidences that allow us to enjoy and influence the dance.
Becoming more conscious of aspects of our experience, including sensation, vision, mood, thought, intention and choice, we will explore how to bring more depth to our dancing and more presence to our performance.
There will be opportunity to access your natural playfulness, sensory awareness and ease of movement and to recognise how your state of mind affects your dancing. The intention is to develop our abilities to be both soft and strong, supported and supportive, active and responsive.
I am interested in exploring the principles underlying movement skill and making content that is challenging and relevant for a range of age, movement ability and style; from people only capable of the smallest movement to skilled and athletic dancers.
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Charlie Morrissey (UK) Charlie Morrissey is a performer, teacher, director and researcher.
He has been working in the UK and in many other countries around the world for over twenty years.
He creates large and small-scale site-specific and theatre and gallery based performance work in diverse contexts working with set and improvised materials.
His teaching is informed by his own research and by ongoing and long-term collaborative working relationships with dance makers such as Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Scott Smith, Kirstie Simson, K.J.Holmes and many others.
Charlie is part of the trio Moving Men with Jean-Hughes Miredin and Adrian Russi who have been teaching and performing together across Europe since 2007. They have performed in Rome, Bern, Brighton, Moscow, Rotterdam, Warwick and Freiburg.
He co-organises a group called Movement 12 in Brighton – a group of dance artists who curate an international professional development programme. www.movement12.org
He is currently directing the performance of a major new sit-specific work The Tree of Light to be performed by 1,200 people in 2012 as part of the Cultural Olympiad. He continues to work with Siobhan Davies Dance; is developing a new 3D film installation with Marisa Zanotti; choreographing a new work for MAPdance; and developing a new work for 2013 with composer Orlando Gough.
Charlie is also an Associate Artist of South East Dance and of Brighton Festival and Dome. More information at www.charliemorrissey.com
Class Description: Breathing Space
Breathing Space
This workshop continues a fascination with looking at how our bodies are in a constant interaction with space both internally and externally.
The exercises in the workshop look to work with the breath as a base for expansive and integrated movement.
What happens when we bring our attention to our breath and allow it more room to inform and support our dancing?
The workshop is about listening with the body, about notions of allowing the mind to rest in the body and observing how movement arises from the body.
There will be technical exercises to offer us practical support for our movement, guided exploration, and a lot of dancing.
This work is also about stimulating our appetite for movement and taking a ride on the momentum of that appetite.
We will work in and out of contact – dancing CI and re-inventing it.
I think of Contact Improvisation as a dance of listening, and it's training to be about tuning ourselves to hear more: The sharper our listening, the more we can hear and the more we can respond to – the more choice we have in our dancing.
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Mirva Mäkinen (Finland) I am a 36-year old dancer. I graduated (MA) from the Dance Department of the Theatre Academy of Finland in 2000, before that I completed my masters in Physical Education in University of Jyväskylä. After my studies I have worked widely in Finland as a dancer, dance teacher and choreographer. My true passion is in movement. In 2010 I was chosen to do my PHD in the Theatre Academy in Helsinki, Finland. My research is about the "Aesthetics of Contact improvisation".
From 2000 onwards I have been a dance teacher and lecturer for dance at the Kallio Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts in Finland. I have also taught at different international dance and contact improvisation festivals. As a dancer I have worked in several different dance companies, at the moment in Karttunen Kollektiv, Circo Aero and with Joona Halonen. 2010 we made a duet together with Frey Faust. We have been performing Balance Project in Finland, Austria and Ukraine.
In dance I am interested in the feeling of flow and soft movement. I love to investigate movement, its rhythm and different ways of inhabiting the body. A feeling of dancing is created by being able to switch the body from total relaxation to extreme intensity and tension. I call this the body's ability to breathe and create movement. My ideal is total presence, which makes every moment true and meaningful.
During 2011 I have been traveling in USA as a Fulbright scholar.
Class Description: Breathing the Movement
What makes your body feel alive and awake? For me it is dancing in different forms and breathing through movement. I would like to share some contact improvisation and movement techniques in this workshop.
I think the body is designed by nature and has evolved in nature. It is like the landscape and moves with great efficiency. Like the landscape we are breathing and changing naturally. I wonder if we can become aware of how we use breath while we move? Breathing can also spark new ideas for the way we move our bodies. We will learn different warm up techniques, a series of floor work, different combinations moving through the space, principles of movement and creating dancing dialogue by using breath, touch, movement, weight and balance.
How it is to have breathing and movement techniques as a warm up for contact improvisation or vise versa? What ways do learning a series of movement influence your contact improvisation technique and how might your way of moving in CI change when you learn movement phrase from someone else? How do different techniques come together in your body? After learning something can we separate one technique from other? Or is it just that we learn different skills and after learning it becomes one in your body? What it is to embody something?
I am curious how do we move our center when we move alone or together with a partner. How can we continue movement after loosing touch with a partner? Is there any gap between? I tell myself to breath with all of my questions ☺ Where is movement coming from and where it is going? Is there a difference when I am moving alone or with a partner? I guess some part of our body is always in stillness.
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