Classes in Cape Town 2022-23

Contact Improvisation is a dance form based on communicating through touch and exploring the physical principles of sharing weight and momentum. My classes focus on refining the basic fundamentals, extending skills and attuning to different states of awareness that nuance dancing experience. I’m interested in approaches that encourage softening and releasing, while developing clarity of communication and listening. We will attend to what it means to yield, balance, flow, dynamically align and attune to the structure of other dancing bodies. Each class will end with a focused jam. 

This class is for whoever is interested in exploring movement.

We will activate the deeper muscles closer to the bones and the spine to help soften the body, gaining more freedom and range in movement access. We will practice different ways to relate to the ground, rising and falling in an effortless yet dynamic way. We will work with spirals, subtle and unpredictable weight shifts and sequentiality.

Given movement pathways will be alternated with open form research tasks. In the pathways one movement is called organically by the next, In the class a lot of attention is directed to the relation of spine to limbs: spine and torso as main generator of movement to allow the limbs to be free, articulate, precise and expressive in space. We will also focus on refining the relationship between movement and musicality, while warming up the body and gaining availability for a wide range of movement possibilities. 

I share movement research and scores drawn from my practice of making performance. 

I consider improvisation techniques as a way of stimulating the imagination to create dances in real-time. We will soften the body into availability and listening. We will focus on presence, perception and musicality. I think of movement in terms of what it would sound like if it were music, and how the dance can be ‘listened to’. This focus on musicality brings a nuanced articulation to individual movement and a deepened listening in group compositions. 

The aim is to create dances together, and be aware of everyone in the room. 

We will work together as a group. We will share musicality and imagination to create dances together, allowing the material to emerge from a sense of urgency, a need and a passion to give form to the ever fleeting moment.  In each class we will create short dance improvisation pieces together.  

Contact Improvisation is a dance form based on communicating through touch and exploring the physical principles of sharing weight and momentum. My classes focus on refining the basic fundamentals, extending skills and attuning to different states of awareness that nuance dancing experience. I’m interested in approaches that encourage softening and releasing, while developing clarity of communication and listening. We will attend to what it means to yield, balance, flow, dynamically align and attune to the structure of other dancing bodies. Each class will end with a focused jam.