Body Research Contact Festival -- August 20-25, 2010

Festival Presenters 2010

click on here for schedule of presentations

• Laura Bishop - Santa Cruz, CA -- I would like to share the Luminous Body principle of 'alignment,' which accesses ground, universal energies, and awareness of the balance between feeling and personal will. In addition, if there is interest or time, I would like to present the four 'bodies' (electro-magnetic, emotional, mental and astral) as a jumping off place for contact dance. The group would work to identify the energies in themselves and then begin to sense them in others, using these rich templates to gather information in the dance.
• Cathie Caraker - San Francisco, CA -- Touch Imaging: How do we image-ine touch? Playing with specific touch images as a kinesthetic source for dancing, we'll explore the interface between imagination, sensation and composition. We'll go beyond our habitual perceptions of touch and movement response to find new qualities in our dancing that surprise and delight.
• Leslie Howabauten - Arcata, CA -- contact improvisation and time...i would like to explore the sense of time in the body (heart, nervous system processes, blood), also time in the dance...a series of short dances juxtaposed with longer ones...and sense of time in how we shift from one state to another...
• Rosemary Hannon - Berkeley, CA -- UN-CREATING Can we use our awareness of space and interrelationship to discover physical release in the body? What if we begin with the acknowledgement that we are always already in interaction, effected by every action within the field of experience and disturbing the field with each of our own actions. Can this shifting of awareness offer new possibilities for receptivity and response rather than habitual patterns of reaction? Can the acknowledgement of our lack of separation from the field change our conditioned conceptions of our relationship to environment? We are the space that we are also moving through and changing. Can this expansive awareness replace a narrower focused type of attention? By taking a backward step into non-doing, un-creating, being done, can we get out of our own way and listen to the dispersed intelligence throughout each cell of our own bodies and the field of action? Can tapping into the awareness of energy constantly changing form offer us released responses in the body-mind?
• Michael Hodapp - Seattle, WA -- Receptive vs. Creative: In this lab, we’ll explore and tension and interplay between doing contact from receptive and creative spaces. In receptive states we work to fully sink into embodied sensory awareness and energetic connections, quiet our minds, and allow spontaneous dances to emerge. In creative states we actively engage the curious mind in the dance, scanning for details and possibilities, and make conscious decisions to explore physical and narrative ideas and impulses. We’ll use gaze exercises, scores, dialogue, and personal exploration to explore extremes of the two states, juxtapositions, and the limits of how fully we can exist in both states at the same time.
• Vitali Kononov - Berkeley, CA -- The Field of Touch. What happens in space when we move? Does the movement end when we stop moving? What happens when we focus on the impact created by our movements? What if we extend our awareness into the Field created by our Action? What happens in space when we touch an object or somebody? Does the touch end when we stop touching? What if we bring our focus to the process of imprinting the environment with our touch?
• Maxima  Putnam - Grass Valley, CA -- "Dance as Relationship, Relationship as Dance." What I'm looking at is how our way of being in the dance oftens mirrors our way of being in relationship and moving in the world. I believe we can use the dance to discover deep insights about ourselves and then playfully open new pathways, giving ourselves a broader palette of options in our dancing, our relationships and our lives, and we can find humor in the process. I invite participants into a shared inquiry, using solo, duet and group studies to engage our patterns and potentially explode them.
• Kat Single - Vancouver, BC -- narrative in dance. For the past three years I have been experimenting with this combination, in performance, choreography and classes. Using games from clowning and theater improvisation, and applying them to contact improvisation, I have discovered some inroads for allowing narrative, character and context to emerge from the body. The workshop would include elements such as impulse pass and impulse exchange, free association and talking while dancing, character embodiment, finding the "body of delight" and more. I would aim to help others find the pleasure in opening up these dimensions in a contact dance...permission to play!
  
• Karl Frost - Davis, CA -- Questions of Ecology and Contact -- a mix of contemplative work under the parachute tent and wandering contact work out in the forest, exploring how we can use contact to explore our relationship to other, place, feeling, memory, and politics (part of Karl's MFA thesis work exploring human/environment connection and disconnect)
• Fundamentals Lab -- presenters will facilitate exploration of the fundamental physical practices of contact improvisation in a laboratory format, with a mixture of discussion, demonstration, and open dancing. Are there universal central practices and fundamental skills or are there different ways of organizing contact exploration to deal with similar problems? How have practices changed over time and how have different communities approached skill development? Are fundamentals something learned and then forgotten or are they the seed or cornerstones of more advanced skills?