Developmental Patterns into Solo and Contact Improvisation

For a contact dancer these classes will create a new imagination and skills for partner work and show how everything starts within a solo body and how a clarity of intention of what it is we bring to others, inspires a freedom to move together or by oneself at any time.

For those new to contact work, you will have the opportunity to investigate how our own functional and creative movement not only co-exists alongside others but that by coming into contact, one's movement is given a new range of purpose, input, connection, direction and affirmation.

Developmental patterns as defined by Laban/ Bartentieff and Body Mind Centering, inform solo and CI dances. While we develop these patterns as we grow up, we also loose them because we move little and we are unaware of the impact.

Training and application means we integrate a wholesome body connectivity and therefore functioning which in turn broadens a movement vocabulary that supports ourselves and the way we make contact with what is around us including other people.

In solo and contact improvisation the focus of weight distribution and sharing, multidirectional coordination and attentions, reach, drops and catches are an expression and application of these patterns. Their training diversifies pathways, supporting the finding and shaping of new physical connections.

Besides solo and partnering scores, we will spend time on group scores for a perception to emerge that spans the wider fabric of the space and people.

In many ways it is about understanding that when we dance contact we also dance solo and when dance solo, we dance contact - the patterns may change expression but they support all dances equally.

Leviathan Studio, Canada