3/8/08CI36 (contact Improv's 36th Birthday celebration this June) has a fantastic website up now with information, registration, photo & video sharing, community chat groups, public blog, and more. Check it out and come to celebrate in Pennsylvania or one of many satellite events around the world.
Also, the CI36 gallery curation team and the reference room curators are looking for submissions:
All painters, photographers, sculptors, and other visual artists:The Gallery curation team is looking for CI related artwork. All ye contactors and artists who have CI related artworks, and would like to donate or lend your work/s for an exhibition during the CI36 Celebration, please submit digital image of work (via email) to
mail@livinglenses.com for consideration. All media works are welcome, even works in progress. The deadline for submission is April 15, 2008. Please include the name of artist/author, title and date of artwork, and a very brief description of the work.
All CI videographers, video archivists, film buffs:The CI36 Reference Room curators are asking for YOUR HELP in gathering videos, films, DVDs of classes, performances, discussions, dance films related to/dealing with/about Contact Improvisation. We are seeking video from the spectrum of Contact
Improvisation from videos of jams, classes, performances from all over the world, in any language. How has the form evolved in different parts of the world? Are there regional styles? How and what are people teaching? How has Contact Improvisation informed and influenced work people are making?
Here’s how you can help:
-send us your videos- DVDs or VHS tapes. Along with your video please include written info on who is dancing, where, when etc.
-send us any links for interesting CI related web pages.
-pass this message along to friends and encourage them to send us their videos
-translate this message into your local language
-post this message to your local list-serve or read it out loud at a jam
-send us recommendations of videos that we should solicit
We will be collecting materials between now and MAY 1, 2008, so please send out your submissions asap. If you are concerned that we may already have some of the items, you can check with us via email (see below.) It is preferable that you send copies of your materials that do not need to be returned, as the materials gathered for the CI36 reference library will eventually be donated to the New York Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center as an archive of CI history. However, if you do want to share something that you
need back, then please include self addressed envelope with postage and handling for the return. Formats to send - DVD and VHS NTSC preferred - DO NOT SEND ORIGINALS. Any questions? Email Andrew Wass at wasswasswass@yahoo.com.
Send your DVDs and VHS tapes to Andrew Wass, 378 Belmont St. #6, Oakland, Ca 94610 USA
THANK YOU for contributing to what we hope will be the most comprehensive archive of CI writings and videos in the world, an incredible resource for generations of dancers to come!
10/25/07
S.E.E.D.S. Festival
Somatic Experiments in Earth, Dance & Science
Invitation and call for proposals
2008 theme: Ecology
July 27–August 17, 2008
Earthdance, Plainfield, Massachusetts
www.earthdance.net/seedsfest
SEEDS Festival invites a diverse group of artists, movement practitioners, architects, scientists, spiritual leaders, and activists to creatively research ecology and experiential arts. At SEEDS, we will explore how physicality, practice, and science-based inquiry inform one another, through collective experimentation. The festival, itself an ecosystem, will provide a rich nexus for dialogue, reflection, and action.
Our hope is that the questions that emerge through this project will cultivate regenerative and innovative practices to steward our environment. SEEDS Festival asks: What does experiential study offer our understanding of ecology? What questions are relevant for the interaction of art, science, and healing? How can new interdisciplinary forms enliven creative research? In working with global concerns, how can we both utilize and honor indigenous practices and gain greater understanding about the movement of lineages? How can we learn through our behaviors, experiments, and art making to cultivate the planet?
The festival will host workshops, collaborative design projects, panel discussions, live performances, films, and interdisciplinary investigations. You can participate in the whole festival, attend a portion, or create a proposal based on the calls that follow our festival mission below. Everyone who comes to SEEDS will offer his/her unique perspective to the collective inquiry, so we hope you chose to attend even if your proposal is not accepted. Please come!
we invite you to propose and facilitate the following projects:
Single Workshop. We welcome a limited number of single two-hour workshops within the container of SEEDS. These will either take place during the weekend of August 8–10, or during a free space throughout the Festival.
Presentation or Panel Discussion. We invite topics that provide understanding on the nature of ecology. Propose an entire panel or an individual presentation. The panels will be curated based on themes that emerge and ideas submitted. Some examples of topics:
- What is ecology? A cross-disciplinary perspective.
- Future leaders: youth envision a sustainable society through poetry & songs.
- Polyculture: interactive growing techniques in Western Massachusetts.
- Tracking techniques: how we trace in nature and in improvisational dance.
* These presentations would take place in the evenings, or during the public weekend events of the festival.
Weeklong Interdisciplinary Project. Apply to lead a collaborative and interdisciplinary project, open to all festival participants. Ideally these projects would include an interdisciplinary collaboration between movement-based research and science. In the final week of the festival, several projects will occur simultaneously, and there will be time at the end of the week to show research findings. There will be scheduled studio time and full access to the expansive outdoors. These projects will take place during the final week of the festival, August 11–17, or could become a workshop in the week proceeding.
Land Project. We are looking for architects and builders to apply their creative research to projects that will support the durability and enhance the beauty of the Earthdance landscape. Selected applicants are invited to work in collaboration with body-based artists and in dialogue with Earthdance's long-term vision to create sustainable, resourceful, and whimsical projects. The time period of this project will be co-determined. Please contact Margit for more details about the land and specifications: margit@earthdance.net; (413) 634-5678, ext 2.
Video. The Festival will host three evenings of video showings, ranging from dance videos that relate to the environment to scientific/ecological/historical materials that will enrich the Festival dialogue on ecology. There will also be a resource space on site where videos may be viewed at any time. Please send us submissions of any length.
Resource Library. Earthdance will host a resource space throughout the SEEDS Festival. The space will grow through the findings of the festival. Please send us materials and references that you think will enrich the space.
Web Links, Community-Based Group Associations. We will be gathering links and connections with local and global organizations up until the start of the festival. These will be posted on our website and also available in our reference library. Please send us any information about groups we can connect with to enrich the festival conversation.
Archival Support. We are looking for people to creatively support the festival through archiving. Particularly, we are looking for people to help with their skills as videographers, video editors, writers, and scribes. If you have experience in these areas, please contact us through the application below
Financial Support. We are seeking financial support for the various projects and the festival as a whole. We welcome donations and are grateful to receive resources. You can sponsor someone from your community or someone beyond your scope to participate in the festival. If you are interested in offering support, please contact Jen Harmon at Earthdance: (413) 634-5678 ext.6, or seeds@earthdance.net.
Proposals Due December 14, 2007:
Single Workshop - Presentation or Panel Discussion - Land Project - Weeklong Interdisciplinary Project
Due May 30, 2008:
Video Samples - Archival Project
www.earthdance.net/seedsfest
7/9/07
7/8/07 Pilobolus: PerformanceVideo
Pilobolus is a dance company that fuses many
CI techniques into their acrobatic choreography.
Check out this video of their piece entitled "Symbiosis"!
Click on any image for the link to the video.
6/19/07Wild Meadows Improvisation Performance Intensive
July 21 - 28, 2007 - Schellsburg, PA
An annual retreat featuring teachers from SPAN, Spontaneous Performing Artists Network, a national group of improvising artists, together with participants in a lab environment to explore improvisation and performance. Pulling from an array of diverse approaches students will explore Contact Improvisation, Viewpoints and spontaneous choreography, as well as somatic practices such as The Feldenkrais Method® and Authentic Movement. At the end of a week of intensive inquiry in the seclusion of Wild Meadows farm tucked in the natural splendor of the Allegheny mountains, participants will emerge and perform with SPAN in Washington D.C.
Facilitators include: Nicole Bindler (Philly), Daniel Burkholder (DC), Cyrus Khambatta (Seattle), Sharon Mansur(MN), Mark Moti Zemelman (MA) ...and more!
General Information: Wild Meadows is surrounded by 200 acres of secluded mountains ranges, and fertile valleys near the Allegheny mountains, an ideal location for reflective thought and investigation into the CI practice and art form. Some previous experience is requested as this will result in the greatest exploration potential as an ensemble. Break periods will be scheduled to enable participants to take in the glorious natural surrounding of the farm and its cultural heritage. The area is home to Amish, Mennonites and Quakers. Also nearby are Architect, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters built with a creek running under it.
COST: $450 includes all food, lodging, workshop and performing costs except travel.
To pay online go to our website at www.phffft.org/wmeadows.htm
DEPOSIT: $75*deposit due by July 1st, remaining amount due July 20.
DISCOUNT: If full amount paid by July 1, lab cost is $425 (a $25 discount)
WORKSTUDY: Two positions available, first-come first serve
5/31/07
5/17/07Transglobal Duets
Can a Contact dance be done from opposite sides of the globe?! Well, here are two dancers who have committed to dancing together each month wherever they happen to be. The photograph documentation of these dances show some amazing coincidence and synchronicities. Here's what the dancers have to say about their project:
"A movement duet each month in the same moment from different sides of the world. Over 30 minutes an improvisation develops in response to each environment as well as images/movements/presences that arise from awareness of each other being (t)here. Each month we choose a different location which will have similarities in atmosphere or form."
Dancers: Miriam Keye & Anne-Marie Culhane
Photos by: James Newitt and Jo Salter
Cremourne, Tasmania & Saltfleet Beach, Lincolnshire, UK
Field Notes from dance on April 24, 2007 (pictured above) :
"...I found it difficult to focus clearly - maybe because its early in the morning! – again, it feels enough that you are there, being there, sharing these full moments, just walk beside me and be my friend reminds me of St.Exupery quote “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction” is this enough for a duet? It brings up some of my thoughts and questions about contact improvisation – what is contact? and my persistent feeling of rebellion at contact jams to explore other forms of contact and 'being with' other than touching skin, just to see.. Is intention and allowing space for each other enough? "
- Anne-Marie Culhane
"Walking in circles.
Joining her in a rock crevice, huddling under together, pushing off the wall of it with my feet.
No edges.
We are opposite each other and as we face each other we each cover as much ground as we can without moving far from the spot, reaching all around from the central point.
Hold her face.
Then….
Anguish when I feel I have nothing left to say, I can’t feel her any longer, I am lost, isolated, abandoned- “where are you? We haven’t finished yet?” torment, just want to be still, so tormented, tension building up, pulling and pushing into and out from my limbs against each other and sliding off each other sending mre reeling, until I am totally empty, still, spent… I stop, leave the space and ahhhhhhh, it’s 25 minutes over time….. had she already gone, is that why I could not feel her…."
- Miriam Keye
Photos by: Bruce Hooke and Jo Salter
Earth Dance, Plainfield, MA, USA & Sihl River, Zurich, Switzerland
Field Notes from dance on December 31, 2006 (pictured above):
"Sun in the South West, it’s a warm day in Winter. Flock of birds and a plane cross paths in a pool of water – a wave of sadness passes through me.
The texture of the bridge wall – the texture of my cracked lip are the same
Perching on a knotted clump of muddied grass stems, a tussock, nest– I look up and see someone looking down over the railings of the bridge. I feel presence behind me, embracing me and then peeling spines together, then hands with mine.
I’m moving my hands, bird like fingers coarse, then claws vibrating. There are people all around me, walking over me, in the park, by the road, I can see a few seconds of their shadows. I’m here. Pebbles and stones. Anna, sits cross legged still to my right, reminding me to stay still, simple. Still you, or Merav being (t)here in from the North West in this backwater of the
Sihl.
Dancing with the rock. Shall I shan’t I?.. I can’t resist, are you ready?
Splash! It’s my ending.
Tiddlers swarm back and forward over their bed of pickled leaves"
- Anne-Marie Culhane
So so beautiful
The birds, the wind, a leaf full of snow
A branch dropping its snowy package onto me
Showering me with purity and strength
Connected with the land
Sometimes feeling the earth turn
Feeling time turn
the spin at the end of the rock
Holding A-M’s face, smiling, sparkling eyes and shining happiness
Running, hopping and jumping through the trees
Across the lake in Zurich
Mum with her hand in water on the sofa
Bev washing up?
Kalyan at the train station
Becky and Jo by the sea
Michelle and Steno in the bath
Rebekah dancing in Ayreshire
The trees are cold
Colder than I thought
The ground is safer… and also less safe
The sun greets me well
I feel complete, loved and with
i hear the rock splash in the water,
and i know this is bruce`s signal for me to end
- Miriam Keye
