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Sabrina Huth

The lived experience of the CI dancer

(interviews; guided warm up lab; presentation)

We are interested in the lived experience of a dancer and the relationship underlying the dance. Furthermore we question: How can we expand our range of experience? How can we invite more and more details? How can we enrich and refresh our lived experience of a CI dance? Methodically we approach these questions with 'micro-analytic explicitation interviews'. An interview technique that focuses on very short interaction sequences to guide interviewees retrospective through their lived experience. The purpose of the method is to uncover experiences which may not have been conscious to the dancer at the time of the dance, thus making the experience more complete. We then wish to synthesize sentences which can be used in a guided warmup to open the dancer's mind to experience their dance in a more complete way as the dance happens.

Contact: kartoffelgemuese@gmail.com; bamapt@gmail.com

David Leahy

The role and function of live music within a Contact Improvisation setting

(lab; lecture demonstration)

Experienced improvising dancer and musician, David Leahy will explore the strengths and pitfalls of working with live music in a brief lecture/demonstration drawing on his experience working within both art forms as well as drawing on his recently completed research into a Music-based Underscore (MbUS). Topics touched on will include; the importance of silence, a comparative look at notions of listening, ways of establishing open dialogues with musicians, and finally, ensuring a constructive balance between the music supporting and giving space to the dance. While this session will focus on the dance/music collaborative process within a pedagogical context, much of what will be addressed will have a relevance to those interested in collaboration in performance also.

* Contact details: dafmusic@gmail.com

* further information regarding the MbUS http://www.dafmusic.com/MbUS.html

Adriana Pegorer

Physic(s)al entanglements

(lab; discussion; presentation)

Could two or more movers keep the frame of an embrace - as in a tango or social dance context - whilst moving spherically and with a give & take of weight - as in Contact Improvisation? How can the arm’s entanglements afford moments of a shift/lift/drag/slide/slither/skid/wiggle/dodge/trick/slip to happen in the most economical way? In particular, I would like to question gender roles (mainly specific to tango / social dances) and delve into stillness/attunement as a precursor/witness of movement. You can view an early improvisational study here: http://youtu.be/PjXh7VL4_vM What sparked my interest in an entangled embrace and –relative- stillness. I came across an interview with an embryologist in which he describes the way the heart develops: “one of the things that happens in development is that the heart tube in the embryo coils up and knot itself up into four chambers, so it has to go from a straight tube and tie itself up into a knot in order to get to this four chambers. The inner surface of the knot …. becomes dynamically still…. The heart does develop around this stillness … and is attracted to stillness” (extract from 26:45 to 27:50. Podcast link: http://www.coreawareness.com/podcasts/embryology-fluidcore). I would be interested in a collaboration with an embryologist or a BMC practitioner or similar. If you would like to know more about how this research is developing please visit: http://tangorelease.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/participanting-in-ecite-2015-4th-11th.html

If you would like to join me in the research please contact me directly: adagioconbrio@hotmail.co.uk

Jasmin Scholle

Moving social order?

(Filming of a jam; group discussion; presentation of results)

Coming from the field of social science we look at CI and its entanglement with ‘the social’ –e.g. through incarnated and enacted social norms and orders of the moving bodies. At the same time CI always had the potential to challenge these fixed embodied concepts of identity, social order and power. In our project we aim to develop a deeper understanding of the moments and circumstances in which these challenges are allowed to arise and the different ways dancers feel and deal with them. To do so, we want to film an 'ordinary' jam at the ECITE and, in connection to that, offer a group discussion where we try to identify some of these moments in the visual material as well as through the felt experience. If there is anybody interested in joining our research group before and/ or during the ECITE please send an email to ecite2015@gmail.com and they will forward it to us.

Jörg Lemmer Schmid

Flowing through Mindfulness

(guided research lab)

In this guided research lab on Mindfulness, Attention and Awareness, these concepts will be briefly introduced and used as special lenses investigating the endless possibilities of how to engage in a CI Jam....

Contact details: post@joerg-lemmer-schmid.de

Colleen Bartley and Dieter Heitkamp

Global Contact Improvisation Archive Project

(research proposal/sharing)

We are going to share a presentation about the Round Robin Project (RRP) and ask for feedback and participation for the next phase of development with the project.

The RRP is being developed to serve the global Contact Improvisation community (practitioners, performers, researchers, teachers, and any other interested people) with all kinds of information on Contact Improvisation.

The first aspect of this project is the Global CI Event Calendar (GCIC). The calendar will be a resource for people who want to find events like weekly classes, jams, workshops, festivals, other events, and teachers. The information about events will be shared by a „community run“, multilingual calendar that resides on a central page. The idea is to connect this calendar with as many national or regional CI-webpages as possible.

The local CI-webpages might use this as their own calendar and can zoom out worldwide. The calendar interface will be multilingual; the event description will be in your home language, plus we will encourage everyone to translate it into English (and more languages if wished). In addition, you will find a Google translation option. The calendar will have multiple search options.

The second aspect of this project is the Global Contact Improvisation Archive (GCIA) for „CI specific“ materials, where you can share and search for CI texts (CI books, chapters, articles, theses, transcripts) in all languages, other CI documents, video and photo materials.The RRP steering committee has been researching the feasibility of such an undertaking and has been researching legal and technical considerations.

We understand this Round Robin Project as a basic democratic and non- hierarchical effort to serve the needs of the CI community. Therefore we wish a wide participation during the development and further on as well for the maintenance and caretaking of this project. We are relying on voluntary participation to develop and maintain this project.

CI is ever evolving. It is useful to have an active, living archive to both look back at material and to document and keep track of current practices. Both of these tools – GCIC and GCIA – make visible the evolution of the form of Contact Improvisation.

The vision of creating a global sharing place on the Internet for CI calendar and archival material emerged from the CI36 anniversary event in 2008. In 2009, this idea of having a global CI calendar to locate CI events worldwide was introduced to teachers at ECITE in Ormskirk, UK. There was an initial team that developed a concept of creating an interactive calendar tool that would be used globally, finding information on regional websites that would all talk to each other and be decentralized. Since then, that vision has changed after discovering that the technicalities of manifesting such a vision wasn’t possible. The new vision—to make a central, shared, cooperative calendar—has emerged and is moving forward.

Prototypes for the calendar and the archive are in progress and most current developments will be shared during the ECITE presentation.

The steering committee would like to present this project at ECITE to update the community about the progress and also to get input and invite people to join.

The steering committee is in place to advise the next phase of the project, which will require more resources. ECITE 2015 is the first public sharing of the project since summer 2013.

The steering committee May 2015