Dear Colleagues,
Please find below a call for research proposals for the next ECITE (European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange) which will be held at the University of Orléans in France between the 4th and 11th of July 2015. We would appreciate it if you could circulate this call amongst people who you think might be interested in contributing including researchers from all disciplines and people directly involved in Contact Improvisation as teachers, dancers and/or researchers.
Contact Improvisation (CI) is an improvisational movement practice that emerged in the beginning of the 1970s through a series of practical experiments led by the American dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton along with a group of athletic dancers and gymnasts. Since then, CI has expanded internationally and has been developed in a non-institutionalised manner through regular festivals, ongoing classes and jam gatherings, teacher meetings and publications such as the journal Contact Quarterly dedicated to documenting the development of CI since 1975. CI is such a multi-faceted, variously applied and open-ended practice that tends to escape definitions. However, it was born and continues to maintain its core identity as an experiential study of the physical laws of movement such as gravity, momentum and inertia through a continuous investigation of reflexes, weight, muscle tone and touch.
ECITE (European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange) is an annual week-long meeting of CI teachers mainly based in Europe, every year hosted by a different European country. It is essentially dedicated to the exchange of knowledge around pedagogical, artistic, ecological, political and other dimensions of teaching CI; it usually comprises ongoing groups working on one subject as well as study labs, discussions, performances and jam sessions.
This year, ECITE 2015 will be held at the University of Orléans in France between the 4th and 11th of July. One of our main wishes as organisers is to provide a wider space for CI-related research projects - led by individuals or groups of people in collaboration. Research has always been part of ECITE through the form of group discussions and studio practice among teachers; this year we wish to widen the dialogue by actually welcoming the live presence of researchers from dance, pedagogy and other disciplines. Our aim is to maintain the traditionally spontaneous emergence of ideas during ECITE but also gather research proposals prior to the event in order to integrate them into our main programme in ways that can prove beneficial, informative and productive for everyone involved.
Acknowledging the core interest of every ECITE meeting, that is, the practice of teaching CI, we welcome interventions that come from relevant research strands including but not limited to:
The outcome of your research can be presented in any format including workshop demonstration, performance, research paper, lecture or performance lecture and any other spontaneous, original or hybrid format you may propose. We are open to any theme and research interest that is related to CI and are excited to hear about your original ideas and creative methods.
As organisers of the ECITE2015, we are very much looking forward to the outcome of this emergence between research and CI. We hope that it will contribute to the growing field of interdisciplinary research initiatives that combine CI (and movement improvisation) with other artforms and scientific disciplines such as neuroscience, developmental psychology, video, music or ecology. This creative exchange aims to challenge the stereotypical divisions between practice and research, and enrich our community in a fruitful and surprising way. We believe that the research orientation that we propose can also provide a valuable space for the dissemination of existing as well as the generation of new knowledge. It will ultimately lead to the creation of a network of people from a variety of disciplines who can support, communicate and collaborate with each other in the future.
If you are interested in submitting a research proposal to ECITE2015, please email us on 2015@ecite.org and we will send you an application form. We aim to review your proposal and reply whether it can be included in the programme of ECITE 2015 within one month from the date of receiving it. Our selection process will take into account a combination of factors such as the level of experience in delivering and participating in research, your experience and interest in CI as well as the originality and the practical feasibility of your project. We strongly encourage people who wish to lead a research project to submit your applications before the end of 2014 so that you have plenty of time to apply for funding, conduct your research and also allow us enough time to schedule and accommodate the research presentations.
If your proposal is accepted, we will post a short research outline online (including any links to your work) so that other researchers and teachers can communicate with you and learn about the other projects that will be presented. If needed, we can put you in contact with other individuals who may be interested in collaboration. Also, once your proposal is accepted, you will be automatically guaranteed a place in ECITE2015.
Application form ( pdf or doc )
We look forward to hearing from you,