TEACHERS - Touch&Play - Back to the Roots

About Karlijn Kabira

Biography

Karlijn Kabira is an open, intuitive, expressive free spirit with a passion for personal transformation and conscious liberation. She holds a MSc in Psychology, is a certified Tantra and Hatha Yoga Teacher and has a background in leadership development and change management at a global consulting firm. She has been facilitating workshops and events for over 10 years, finding those places where shame, guilt and fear is transformed into liberation, expansion and opening.

Her workshops are based on Tantra Yoga, Psychology, Change Management, Dialogical Leadership, Authentic Movement, Deep Democracy, Osho, ISTA, Magic of Love and some Dutch grounded intuition.

Intensive description
From Lust to Spirit
We will embark on a Tantric journey from sex to spirit. Dropping conditioning, fear and shame we discover the bliss of raising sexual energy to unconditional love, presence and deeper states of consciousness. We will combine breath, dance, heart opening, sexual sublimation techniques, kundalini meditation, conscious touch & relating, orgasmic streaming, Tantric healing and body work to experience embodied ecstacy.
Tantra, a magical world, that:
– Turns an ordinary life into an amazing one
– Works with truly experiencing bliss in the body as a gateway to love and go beyond duality
– Isn’t afraid of sexuality
– …or anything actually – not even your weirdest mind boggles or unrealistic wettest dreams
Sounds worth exploring… right?

Warning: be prepared to find magic in your life thereafter

About Alex Zampini

Biography

I am a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist active in the field of music, film and performance art.
To me, art is a self-knowledge tool, where I can question things and get into a process. My projects are indeed process-oriented experiences. Contaminated by a range of diverse musical influences, including ambient, desert rock, punk, Indian music, baroque tunes and psychedelia, as a musician I perform multi-instrumental sound sculptures made of hybrid textures, silence and harmonic dissonances based on improvisation. My approach to music is bi-directional, nourished by the surroundings which inspire my sound and vice-versa. It’s not about me or you, but about the space we are creating together.

www.alexzampini.com

About Dieter Heitkamp

Biography
Dieter Heitkamp is professor for contemporary dance at the University for Music and Performing Arts (HfMDK) Frankfurt a.M. His artistic work focuses on the collaboration of conceptions, movement, pictures, objects, light, film and music, as well as on systematic movement research, that examines the human body in its complexity in the context of its social environment. For over 40 years he has been devoted to studying, teaching and performing contact improvisation. He has been a dancer, choreographer, member and one of the artistic heads of Tanzfabrik Berlin. His choreographic work has been shown in many countries in Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

Intensive description
School of Sensitivity – stretching boundaries/setting boundaries
Are there specific qualities of movement associated with the skin?
What does skin contribute to communication in dance?
Communication through touch is a fundamental element in Contact Improvisation. Letting oneself be touched can be a playful, adventurous journey into risky territory – not necessarily breathtaking acrobatics, but who knows? Not knowing as an option. We will also explore other senses and might meet some boundaries. When and how are we pushing/setting boundaries?

About Irina Trippel

Biography

Irina is a cultural pedagogue, dancer and networker born in Kirgistan, based in Freiburg. Her passion goes for collaborative projects that connect meaningful interaction with the body as an artist, group sharing practices and various body-mind connecting practices.
To unite the necessary dialogue between feeling and thinking, experiencing and reflecting is a major interest of her. She is practising and researching within the field of human body language since 9 Years. Her bachelor thesis, Contact Improvisation- perceiving, moving and creating in relationships“ brought her a deeper and wider understanding of the origin of the form. The future potential of the form inspires her massively to contribute to its continues shaping.

Class description

Authentic Relating & CI
Authentic Relating Games are a collection of experiences that give (Touch &) Players a direct taste of both the joy and skills of interpersonal connection.
The workshop will take you through a series of interactions that are designed to: highlighting and training body awareness, creating deeper connection, boosting empathy, strengthen community and a sense of belonging and to have fun! I invite you to listen and reflect in real-time, to share your emotional state, to notice and reach into your desire, and to become self-aware within connection. From meditative depths of presence, exciting heights of joy and heartfelt fun, I guide you through an experience all the way through different states of human being-ness. We will put this practice then into our contact dance and see how it shapes our experience of the dance.

About Daniel Hernandez

Biography

My name is Daniel Hernandez. I am an itinerant mischief-maker exploring the ritual roots of performance. The deeper I have dived into teaching, performing, and living in this rich territory, the more I have seen archaic/ shamanic clown and mask cosmologies become fascinating and colourful routes into individuation: containing a vast treasure box of rituals, dance, liminal states, grotesque archetypes and clown-lore. My performances, projects, ceremonies and workshops draw upon a wide variety of related traditions: These include Dance, Clown, Bouffon, Butoh, Contact Improvisation, Tao/Tantra, Vodou, Mask, Psychomagic, Art, Sacred Sexuality and Breathwork. I am continually researching and developing my practice through trainings, readings, writings, ceremonies, experiments, and mistakes.

My first love was music. I don’t claim to be a master of anything.

Intensive Description
Carnal Alchemy

“carnal”
ˈkɑːn(ə)l/
adjectiv
relating to physical, especially sexual, needs and activities

“alchemy”
ˈalkɪmi/
noun
a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.

What is the relationship between bodies dancing in space?
What is the transformational potential of performance?
How aware are we of the ways we are harnessing the potency of our fertile, sexual/creative life force in our dance?
What does ‘magical’ mean to us?
What is the place of ritual in our lives?
How much is our persona performed/constructed?
In a container such as Touch and Play, what are our desires and fantasies and how can we dance them? When are we in harmony?
When are we luminous?
Can we build a container strong enough hold and perform our carnal dances?

In this lab, each participant will bring a question from their life into the game. This question, riddle or conundrum will be woven into a creative process in which – drawing on personal, intra-personal, archetypal, and mytho-poetic inspirations – we will devise and live through poetic acts, rituals, scores and choreographies.
The workshop will be physical and embodied, drawing upon my own research into the worlds of Contact Improvisation, Clown, Mask, Song, Butoh, Haitian Vodoun, Sacred Sexuality, Psychomagic, Ritual, Oracles, Myth, Bodywork, and a plethora of experiential somatic and movement practices.
Time will go quickly and the pace will be intense and at times chaotic. We will probably be left with many more questions than we began with. Participants must be willing to take responsibility and care for themselves in this experimental space. The work will adapt according to the flow of the work and the needs of the group.
All practitioners/curious minds are welcome. In this work we can imagine a ritual space into which – as well as dance – any combination of artistic act is woven – solo, opera, choreography, installation, ensemble work, kink, magic, experiment, trance, ordeal, butoh, cabaret/burlesque, monologue, improv, poetry, music, film, painting, performance, experiment, interactive piece, mistake.
No experience is necessary.
More info can be found here
or contact tryhardtobekind@gmail.com

About Ulli Wittemann

Biography
A passion for movement and growth has drawn Ulli to new directions since he was a child.
From practising Ballroom Dance and Hip Hop as a teenager and many years of studying different Martial Arts forms (Judo, Aikido, Kickboxing and Boxing) he finally fell in love with Contact Improvisation in 2001 during his actor’s studies at the University of Performing Arts in Frankfurt, Germany. After eight years of performing more than 1000 shows in the German State Theater system, he decided to change his focus from performing to sharing his love for Contact Improvisation, Acting, Awareness and Communication in Munich and abroad. In the last years, he taught Workshops, Classes and Retreats in China, Japan, India, Thailand, Israel, Palestine, USA, Canada, Turkey and many European Countries. He is one of the Founders of the Tempelhof Contact Festival and the Conscious Flow Festival and co-organized three editions of the Touch & Play Festival.

Class descriptions

Playfight
In this format, I combine my desire for intensity and dynamic play with the awareness of Contact Improvisation. From 23 years of practice in different martial arts forms (Judo, Aikido, Kickboxing and Boxing) and Playfighting I created many exercises, which also enable fewer sportive people to explore and enjoy their warrior energy in a safe environment. Since 2011 I’ve been offering this work various times in workshops and festivals all over the globe and the reactions never were less than enthusiastic. The focus of our work is to replace old stereotypes of violent conflicts (or even trauma) with a joyful and playful togetherness, to enjoy intensity together with presence and respect!

Being Human
A Sensorial Exploration of Self & Other in Nature
In this session we will leave the studio and open our senses in nature.
We will slow down and get aware, discovering our surrounding with fresh eyes, opening our senses to a new level of perception. We will then use this quality of curiosity and connectedness to explore ourselves and interact with each other, maybe discovering new things about ourselves and the human body. We will be using the power of not knowing and doing nothing. Giving space to our inner animal, listening to our impulses and enjoying our exploration guided by our surrounding. Be ready for your individual journey as part of a collective experience.

About Leonie Fromme & Farina Myr

Biographies

Leonie Fromme
Fascinated by creative activities and bodies in motion, I started moving with acrobatics and urban dance at several youth centres in Berlin.
Since than I didn’ t stop moving or dancing. My focus is improvisation and instant composition. My teaching is an outcome of my own research about my postural structure after an accident and my interest in the intersection of freestyle motion and dance. To watch or to do effortless movement, joy, liberated motion, a strong body soft, passion, grounding,…. is one of the most powerful feelings for me and I am dedicated to sharing and expanding our (the movers) exploration.
Researching about liberated and effortless movement made me travel and discover alternative ways of living. I’ve been living in several house projects, community farms and other projects, and I m looking forward to continue that way.
I love nature, mountains, good food, music and the sharing of dance. Add sunshine.

Farina Myr
Farina started dancing as a child, Rock’n Roll, Hip Hop, but mostly with autodidactic training. She studied social work with the medium dance and movement and
afterwards graduated a dance education in Freiburg at TIP (dance, improvisation and performance). There she found her passion for movement exploration, improvisation and real-time performance. Farina puts her focus on performing dance and on emancipatory movements and efforts. She is interested in the intersection between movement and movements, art and politics, body and society. Improvisation is one area of her research to find out more about how
society is inscribed in our bodies and how we can use this source for our expression and at the same time work on breaking repetitive patterns
to get beyond our personal and collective possibilities. Currently, she is situated in Berlin, is working on own dance projects and studies a master degree in dance science. She is looking forward to sharing her questions and research with others preferred in a collective and physically moved way.

Class description

Head of – Awareness on (real-time performance as a tool for contact improvisation)
The workshop wants to give some insight in some phenomena of real-time performance. Where do we get our inspiration from, how do we deal with failure in a productive way. How can we get to the point, to invent every moment, every performance new in engagement with our surroundings (bodies, sound, space and time) Both of us attended a two years dance programme with the focus on Dance, Improvisation and Performance. Leonie puts her focus since then on teaching dance, alignment and improvisation. Farina puts her attention on theoretical questions around dance and on performing in fixed and improvised settings. The aim of our common work is to question patterns, roles and concepts that constitute our thoughts. We want to question them, deconstruct and rearrange what is inscribed in our bodies and our minds. That means: Let go, have fun !!!! We see our bodies as a place where society is inscribed. We see our minds as places that get overloaded every day. Offhand creativity often provides us with cliché and kitsch as the first source of creation. Our concrete effort is to demand the bodies with physical tasks in order to overtax the mind and maybe sometimes even turn it off….and, in the end, get beyond patterns and uncover hidden potential. We will work with physical and mental tasks, we will include working on space, time, focus and expression. We will perform and observe real-time performances in different constellations. All we need is a bunch of people, fun, physical investment, desire to do and the willingness to say F**k it in moments of failure.
Looking forward to dancing with you, Farina and Leo

About Pipaluk

Biography

PIPALUK is a dancer, musician and choreographer, and an independent creator of dance performance, event and site specific production. She is teaching improvisation tools within dance and music, with a focus on creative process and supporting artists in their own path. Pipaluk works within contemporary dance, music and installation art, and teaches internationally. Her background is extensive training and research within movement art. She is currently based in Copenhagen.

www.copenhagendreamhouse.com
www.pipaluk.net

About Christine Borch

Biography

My name is Christine. I was born in the North of Denmark, baptized within the line of Christ. I am a choreographer, singer/songwriter, spiritual midwife and creative healer guided by Spirit. I have been walking with ritual theatre, voice & visual art in Denmark, somatic dance & performance writing in England, Butoh & meditation in Japan and conscious sexuality & massage in Berlin before traveling to Brazil to be baptized in the river Jordão and embarking on a spiritual journey with plant medicines of various indigenous traditions. Now, I weave my Nordic Ways with my World Wisdom, planting seeds while sharing my physical prayers, ceremonies, sessions and medicine songs throughout the world in alignment with the truth of my Nature and the Heart of the Forest Within. I do this flowing with, expressing and praying for the Sacred Waters of life. What I offer is grounded in my own lived embodied experience, drawing from all aspects of my Life Art such as Somatic Movement, Contemporary Dance, Contact Improvisation, Body Rituals, Shibari rope bondage, Tantra, Continuum breath work, Tao Yoga, Massage, Poetry, Permaculture, Indigenous knowledge & various shamanic traditions & plant teachers.
I was singing before I could talk. Dancing before I could walk.
I hold a BA in Choreography from Dartington College of Arts (Dartington, England) including a one year Erasmus exchange at the MA choreography program Ernst Busch (Berlin, Germany) – beside this I have spend 6 months in Japan studying the relationship between Body & Environment at the Butoh Body Weather farm and an extended time studying the relationship between Art & Eros in the environment of Schwelle7 Berlin.
Since 2015 I am the founder & gatekeeper of Drømmesalen, a visionary projects based on Møn island in Denmark, creating sacred space and hosting gatherings with the intention of Dreaming The New Time of human life on Earth into Being.
We host ceremonies across Europe in collaboration with shamans, medicine and wisdom keepers from Brazil, Peru, Colombia, New Zealand & Mexico to re-awaken and weave the ancestral wisdom of the North with the rest of the world family; building bridges, exchanging culture and celebrating life.
www.droemmesalen.dk www.christineborch.com

Intensive description

INFINITE CONTACT
I believe that contact improvisation has the ability to transform people.
Since I began dancing this dance form 15 years ago, I have been on many journeys, flying, falling, resting, rolling, spiraling, standing. However, no matter where I have been moving on this planet, these feet from time to time would walk me into a space where people were gathering with the purpose of meeting in a dance of contact. In that way, dancing contact improvisation has been my mirror in reflecting and sensing my self in relation to the Other and to recognize what type of dance, encounter and quality of contact that felt like “home” in that specific moment of my life.
Since its tools for movement was recognized and its name was given, Contact Improvisation has expanded rapidly across the planet, developing and transforming itself as a “dance form” alongside with the people engaging in it. Like a form of medicine, this dance, I believe, is so popular as it offers us a space to reconnect with each other, with our self and therefore essentially with the Earth.
We live in a time where we as humanity have lost our natural ability to feel in touch with the planet, the forces of nature, the divine flow of life – despite that these forces are constantly creating and moving everything in and around us.
Touch is essential for life. Consciousness in contact is a choice. It is time to re-connect.

What happens when contact becomes ceremony?
This question is going to be guiding us through the week. Starting in silence and solitude we arrive in the soma. From there we start moving guided by a deep form of listening, play, patience, pleasure, curiosity and trust, while taking care of oneself, the other and the environment.
We enter a dance of infinite possibilities, that can, but doesn´t have to be, a prayer towards expanding the individual path and one´s ability to love.
It is a chance to observe the balance in oneself, to become more whole alone, and through this, One with it all as we enter this great dance of life!

Infinite Contact is about the dances that wants to happen, the healing, the heart. There is something essential about this contact. I am called into the space surrendering my Self to the silence, the sensing. Eventually, I meet someone, aware of my inner animal and my ability to choose, let´s call it consciousness. We become together. What we are. Infinite possibilities of spirits encountering each other in space. We dance our way through our flesh, our fears, our fantasies, effortless expressions of Eros. Intelligently we use our instinct and intuition. Keeping the focus while we flow with the forces. Into infinite human and non-human contact. We are the creators. Never out of contact.

About Samuli Lehesaari

Biography

Samuli Lehesaari has practiced contact improvisation for 16 years and studied contemporary dance in Freiburg, Germany. He is currently teaching contact improvisation in local communities in Finland and at international festivals in Europe. He has completed a 1,5 year training in integral psychotherapy in Helsinki and has attended and studied in a participatory integral psychotherapy group for 7 years. He is also a school teacher and at the moment finishing his MA in psychology. He’s deep passion and interest lies in dance, movement, relatedness, pedagogy and the vast avenues of human potential.

Class Description

Handshake with the Shadow (score jam)
Whether one is a veteran or new to CI, one can notice that habits and patterns begin to shape the way we orientate in a jam situation and generally in the way we practice the form. Some habits are in a sense valid and thus support our foundations and development but some are unnecessary and limit our possibilities to expand and discover new avenues.
The intention of this score jam is to create a contained and peer-supported space where we can get playful and curious about those habits through which we limit our possibilities. In this jam we can experientially and willingly engage with our tendencies to avoid different phenomena, potentially shedding some light into the processes behind and the gems we might find within them. We begin by dividing into small groups to talk and share about things we have a tendency to avoid in a jam. Each person will choose a “confrontation score” to carry out during the jam with a predetermined level of confrontational intensity. The confrontational intensity may naturally be altered during the exploration. After the jam, we will again gather and harvest our findings.

About Filip Wencki

Biography

Contact dancer, improviser, physical actor, director and teacher. Co-founder of the physical theatre/dance company The line of Night. Member of an international theatre research group The bridge of Winds led by Odin Teatret. Co-creator and artistic director of multiple dances and video dance projects. In the past occupied with traditional martial arts (Aikido, Wing Tsun) and modern fight systems (Krav Maga, Brasilian Jujitsu). For years now occupied with contact dance and physical movement. Performs and teaches internationally both for dance and physical acting (Columbia, Thailand, Malesia, Mexico, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Czech, Poland). After years of training, still surprised by the endless possibilities in movement and expression.

Class description

Sensual Exploration, Pleasure Exchange
I would like to invite you on a journey into your body. Your skin, muscles, bones, internal organs, liquids, fascia and of course the all-present nervous system. All of these carry reception mechanisms and as such can be a means for communication and pleasure exchange. While brought conscious and waken up they can actually allow the communication that is far more complete and full that what we experience in classical CI dance. It is more like if my body talked with its own, native language to the other body and myself would be merely witnessing it. On this journey, we will use Contact Improvisation as a starting vehicle and then enrich it with elements of massage, sensuality, exploration and mutually agreed pleasure seeking.

About Katya Dikowa

Biography

My journey through researching on movement, body-mind alignment, music and art is inspiring me each day. Discovering connections, creating spaces, moving others and being moved is my main focus right now. In many years of Dance and Contact Impro practice, I am curious to witness and create body qualities and inner processes.
Being deeply involved in techno club culture intensifies my pathways to different states of body-mind through movement and sound. Let´s open our eyes to see the bridges that are already built for us. Let us dig into the questions that frighten us the most to discover what we may find beyond. In trust. Together.

Class description

Show thyself! Radical honest dance encounters
As we get to know more about ourselves through dance we also meet our desires. Sometimes we grasp them as a short snapshot that passes by. Our desires may occur in a space that seems inappropriate to dive deeper into them sometimes. Now is the time!
Do I allow myself to accept what I am desiring right now? Let´s lift the vail to look deeper into our pleasure sources. We are going to explore a space that is an invitation to show ourselves and express our desires verbally and physically. How openly can I share what really moves me in an intimate, emotional or erotic way with my partner, in the dance space at any moment?
We are going to explore the power of saying yes to our authenticity, our courage and the magic that can arise when we are listening to our partner.
Let´s allow the dance to move our mind and heart space to fool around through space-time.

About Nils Alf

Biography

Nils is particularly into playing music for dance: contact improvisation, five rhythms, ecstatic dance but also funk, electro swing, groove jazz. Since I finished my studies in saxophone and clarinet in 2013 I’m living as a freelance musician and contact improv teacher putting emphasis on meditation and self-exploration. I want to consciously use the spaces we open up through contact, dance and music for our inner processes and growth.

About Nils Alf

Biography

Making music is the core of my life as an artist. In music we share, communicate and create. In music we encounter each moment improvising. Through music we create spaces for emotions, connection, dance and trance. I’m particularly into playing music for dance: contact improvisation, five rhythms, ecstatic dance but also funk, electro swing, groove jazz. Since I finished my studies in saxophone and clarinet in 2013 I’m living as a freelance musician and contact improv teacher putting emphasis on meditation and self exploration. I want to consciously use the spaces we open up trough contact, dance and music for our inner processes and growth.

About Rosalind Holgate Smith

Biography

Rosalind is a Dance Artist based between London and Snowdonia. She encountered Contact Improvisation(CI) as a student of Fine Art and Choreography at Dartington College of Arts in 2009. She now teaches CI regularly in the UK and has led workshops at festivals internationally. She holds a Masters Degree in Dance Creative Practice and besides teaching Rosalind also creates performances and installations inspired by her work with improvisation and her studies in Authentic Movement, Body-Mind Centering and Process-Oriented Psychology. When not dancing Rosalind loves to be in water, to swim and adventure outdoors. Her involvement in site-specific performance projects, mark making and work with materials such as soil, feathers and slate allows her to articulate the sensuality of her intimate involvement in nature. Rosalind also teaches swimming with the Alexander technique, Yoga and runs Wild Wales Retreats in stunning Snowdonia.

Websites: www.rosalindholgatesmith.com www.wildwalesretreats.com

Class description

Authentic Movement-Nude!
Authentic Movement is a meditative movement ritual involving a mover and a witness. Held by the supportive gaze of the Witness, Movers close their eyes, taking their attention inwardly to explore being moved by sensation. After moving a dialogue follows, in which movers come to speak the truth of what their body knows. In this session we will explore one round of moving and witnessing, according to the traditional “Discipline of Authentic Movement”, as developed by Janet Adler. For those that dare to be seen we will then take off our clothes and explore a second round, attending to sensation in our barest beauty.

About Andreas Demmel

Biography

Social Worker.Training in classical family constellation work, Nature Constellation Work, Systemic Ritual®, several years of experience with somatic work, body work, meditation and breathwork. Extensive involvement with issues around love, sex, relationships, Tantra, BDSM, Taoism, sexual energy and the healing of sexual trauma. Experiences with the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Encounters with transcending processes, like near-death experience, visionary states, clairvoyance, and kundalini-awakening.

Website: www.systembewegungen.de

Class description

Systemic-Somatic Ritual: Yes and No
Every time we say Yes or No, but actually mean the opposite, we experience an inner conflict. This creates conflictive patterns, which we carry in our body memory. If we become aware of them they can be resolved and the energy can be re-directed. This systemic-somatic constellation ritual helps us to meet this topic with our whole body and is allowing movement in relation to these polarities, finding moment-to-moment expression and reconciliation.

About Clara Pawlytta Tengler

Biography

As a tattoo-artist, sexplorer, magic seeker, creation of nature and lover of the life’s wonder, Clara loves to open realms for deep connection and integration. Thanks to curiosity she started different forms of groups to understand her*self and the dynamics of the collective (sub)consciousness especially in focus of love&eros&sex: women circles, love&sexxitribes, vulvaportal. The wish is to be part of the evolutionary development of unfolding communities, connected to ancient wisdom, upgrading from individual awareness into the intelligence of love and collective consciousness including the sexual energy as the fu*king most juiciest and delicious medicine.

Class description

SEXPANSION – meeting the erotic self
Out of space and time, in a safe container of awareness and presence, we open a ritual to play with the integration as an individual creation in our collective emotional-erotical body, in order to reconnect to the cycle of nature. For meeting our authentic sexual beings within, exploring the impulses and mystery of the pure sensual, natural, wild and erotic self connected to the core of love and life itself through our physical bodies. In touch with the principles of embodiment in a setting of a ritual, we are able to make parts of our inner world tangible by encounter in persona. Lets create a magical journey together. Because s*he loves consensual touch, boundaries, full body yes-maybe-no’s and non-binary gender definitions – you are invited to be here as you are, as you want, as you desire, without expectations, judgments and pressure, welcoming pleasure.

About Queralt Jorba (Lina)

Biography

As a psychotherapist and coach I’m one of three partners in a holistic health practice and manage and facilitate a diverse range of artistic and social projects. My work focuses on promoting relational health promotion using somatics and creativity as main tools. My background is in the fields of Dance, Psychology, Psychotherapy, DMT, Systemic Coaching and Somatics.I feel called to honor our animal nature and include social transformation in our day to day life.
I have my shared nest near Barcelona with my family, where I’m co-creating an Intentional Community. I’m the founder of the Touch&Play Sisterhood project which is an experiential feminist approach that highlights the relationship between women as a key factor to navigate life.

Websites: www.queraltjorba.com www.sisterhood.touchandplay.org

Class description

UN-COUPLED
T&P can be a challenging experience for couples and other fixed partner constellations. Let’s create a climate of trust and curiosity to gather together, share our experiences, pain and desires through dance and somatic practices. We will be invited to work both with our fixed partners and team up with others.

About Heike Pourian

Biography

Heike Pourian is a community artist, teacher, dancer and author based in Nürnberg/Germany. She ist a mother of two adult children. Her main interest in CI is to make it available to many as a practice of awarenes for human interbeing and political transformation. Since 1992 she has been teaching CI to a great variety of people. In 2016 her book „Eine berührbare Welt“ („A Touchable World“) was published – crowdfunded by a supporting network of contact improvisers. She is co-founder of contact bewegen e.V.

Class description

Intimacy
The state of physical as well as emotional closeness we can enter when practicing CI can be very nourishing, but also irritating, even threatening.
I once heard someone play with the word intimacy reading it as into me I see. And yes: being close to someone else can open a door to being close to myself – a condition our society tries to avoid: education and work, even leisure activities are designed to keep us busy and distract us from being in touch with who we are. In my eyes the lack of intimacy with ourselves and others is one of the deepest collective trauma of humankind – causing isolation, aggression, depression.Within the contact community we often pretend this exceptional intimacy to be just normal. Everybody else seems to be perfectly fine with it, I seem to be the only one in the room who sometimes feels awkward with it, I better don‘t show, because I don‘t want to be the odd one out. That‘s how we all contribute to the illusion of apparent self-evidence.This lab offers a space to share with each other how we experience intimacy and what strategies we have developed to deal with it – helpful ones as well as painful ones. If it matches the structure of the event I will share my thoughts and insights on intimacy in a little lecture before the class. I am looking forward to a process of deep sharing and exploring in transparency, openness and respect.

About Daniel Hayes

Biography

Dani Hayes is a Medical Doctor, public health scientist, eco-anarchist and practical idealist. He’s been playing, dancing, meditating and conversing CI for over a decade and actively sharing his curiosity and knowledge and doubts for the past eight years.. He is the founder of the Touch&Play Project, which explores the edges of Contact Improvisation by inviting our (al)chemical bodies into the dance. Through artistic and academic research he hopes to highlight the potential of CI as a tool to create authentic connections with oneself and the other by bringing it into play, communication, BDSM, therapy, education, sexuality, somatic mindfulness and more.

Classes – Group Ritual

*Liquid Love*
The Liquid Love Experience is a collective journey of the senses. It is an exploration of sensuality in its purest form and can invoke a strong feeling of love for oneself, one’s community and for life itself!Through the use of copious amounts of our liquid love potion (e.g. organic olive oil or similar substitutes) we are, for a while, able to eliminate friction from our lives allowing for incredibly smooth flowing encounters with ourselves and others.The concept is simple: we pour warm, fine, neutral oil on to your skin, from where it will spread over your whole body and form a lubricious substance, which allows you to engage in flowing skin to skin contact and float in a sea together with other oily bodies. Everyone is invited to respect their own rhythm and limits to touch and nudity.Allow yourself to be moved without intentions or sexual orientation. Be present with erotic sensations and thoughts but rather than act on them, relax into the energetic flow of the bodies around you. This is a place where you can love and be loved in an impersonal and unbound manner and above all a place to super charge your soul.

*Bound 2 Dance*

A simple exploration of what happens to our dances and connections when we introduce a rope or two or three…
With a beginners mind and through a suggestive regression to our childhood we will start by playing and moving by ourselves with this new ever-bending and never-stretching dance partner. Once we feel curious and comfortable we will pair up with others that might or might not have a rope of their own and explore how these different power dynamics and these bridges can inform our physical dialogues. Finally, if time permits we will create a small rope jam where participants can freely interact with others and the ropes in the space. The work is open to everyone and focuses on the connection aspect of bondage we will however be learning one or two simple knots and going over some general guidelines to keep everyone safe and sound. (If you have your own ropes please bring them along.)

Meet our team

Intensive Teachers

Christine Borch

Dieter Heitkamp

Karlijn Kabira

Daniel Hernandez

Class Teachers

Daniel Hayes

Ulli Wittemann

Katya Dikowa

Heike Pourian

Rosalind Holgate Smith

Irina Trippel

Queralt Lina Jorba

Clara Pawlytta

Andreas Demmel

Samuli Lehesaari

Filip Wencki

Leonie & Farina

Musicians

Nils Alf

Pipaluk

Alex Zampini