Itay Yatuv (ISR), Ezster Gal (H) and Charlie Morrissey (GB) will be our intensive teachers.
Pénélope Laurent-Noye (FR), Lea Kieffer (FR), Geneviève Cron (FR), Céline Auclair (FR) and Otto Akkanen (FIN) will be guiding us in the laboratory effort to research, for each group, specific milieux of exploration within the dance: air, water, sound, gaze and the city. And lastly, two of our jams will be introduced by experts in the way of movement: Boris Nordman, who will offer a « corporeal fiction » as a point of entry to the dance, and Myriam Lefkowitz.
Our teachers
Eszter Gál
is a dancer, teacher, working at the University of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest, co-directs the program of the Kontakt Budapest Studio and has been organizing the annual International Improvisation Festival in Budapest since 2002 (www.kontaktbudapest.hu).
She is a certified Skinner Releasing Technique teacher at the Introductory and Ongoing level and has been practicing, studying and teaching releasing work and improvisation including Contact Improvisation for over 20 years. She is a member of Co. Tánceánia, a Hungarian mixed ability Company, setting up performances, creating dance works and organizing events for the company. She has finished her studies at the Doctoral School of Sport Sciences in 2015.
Since 2011, she has been part of EU funded International projects on documentation of Contemporary Dance Education (www.idocde.net), she is a co-founder of IDOCDE (2011 – 2013), project coordinator of LEAP (2013 -2015) and REFLEX EUROPE (2015 – 2018) projects, researching documentation, developing a website for sharing, discussing and archiving the process and practice of teaching with international experts.
As a dance teacher and improvisation performer she is grateful to have met and studied with many unique artists / teachers and thankful for being able to study the moving self and be inspired by: Gyula Berger, Eva Karczag, Lisa Kraus, Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Danny Lepkoff, Mark Tompkins, Lisa Nelson, Stephanie Skura, Joan Skinner, Keith Hennessy, Martin Keogh, Peter Pleyer, Nina Martin, Nita Little.
Charlie Morrissey
Itay Yatuv
is the Artistic Director of the Hakvutza Dance School, and has been practising and teaching contact improvisation (CI) worldwide for over a decade. Itay trained as a contemporary dancer in New York, U.S; Italy, and Israel; then went on to independently choreograph in the last ten years, leading several international projects of improvisational performances. Itay has been training in Aikido for the past six years, a practice he integrates into his CI research.
Most recently, he has been conducting CI workshops for little children and their parents in developing the ContaKids method. As a dance researcher and explorer of CI, Itay has been investigating the various possibilities—and experimenting with different forms—of movement that two human bodies can have together in space, much of which have been incorporated into the practice of Contakids in the four years he has worked on it.
What is a lab?
– a structure in small groups (10 people) so that the research can be mutual
– a space-time of co-creation and co-emergence, of responsability and liberty
– a non-hierarchical principle (anyone should be able to speak from his/her own language, according to his/her point of view), accepting temporary divisions of power
– a container for going back and forth between language and non-verbal expression, a space of attentive listening
– a place where you start from scratch
Working in a lab is an opportunity for researching as a collective – by definition, this implies that we don’t know what we are going to find (because if we did, we wouldn’t have looked for it). It is an usual practice, because we tend to know why we are somewhere for. But we consider this inventivity as one of the cores of Contact Improvisation as art of not knowing, dehierarchizing, and co-creation.
How the labs will take place? In the beginning of the week, each lab will be introduced by a « guardian » who will give hints and tricks to help the participants into this mode of collaboration (speaking structures, roles, ways of reseaching…): after that, it’s up to each of us to attune ourselves to each other throughout the week.
As to the what is researched, we propose a joint exploration of a specific « milieu » for each lab group through out the lab moment of the festival. Upon registration, we’ll offer you the opportunity to choose one of those themes, that you will explore together with 10 other dancers during the week.
* being part of a whole, taking part in a dynamic structure of which we are constitutive (systemy, tensegrity)
* being aware of what is emerging in the encounter and that doesn’t belong to one or the other
* letting ourselves being touched, here, now
* changing points of view, frames, referentials, fonctions (not identifying to some role)
* finding flexibility, elasticity
* considering mishaps, tensions, in-betweens as potentials and not as needing correction
* speaking as an experience in itself, andnot only as a transcription of a past experience or the preparation of future one
* experiment with scales and relations: activity/passivity, porosity/boundaries, intertia/momentum, inhibition/letting go, …
Les laborantins
Pénélope Laurent-Noye
From here
Towards
LABBING
( )
offering a space of shared responsability
letting things come, welcoming, harvesting what is emerging
among other things
among each other
auth( )orize each other to generate travels of qualiti(es)
bringing tools in common that each and everyone can carry
inventing together the containers that will facilitate our immersions in our milieux
taking advantage of this space to distinguish and mix at will our gazes on/with our moving experiences
openning, closing, creating quantities of windows without buildings, ad libitum,
divingflying
meeting
( )
TRAVELS
I’ve been travelling through improvisational worlds for about 15 years. I explore and learn the work of interpret-author in the living arts since 2008 et endeavor to generate containers for explorations in improvisation (Fouilles poétiques 2008-2013 ; Maab Lab (la marche absorbante), 2016).
Lea Kieffer
Lea Kieffer (France/Berlin ) is a performer/ dancemaker whose work focuses on improvisation,the power of imagination, wilderness and contact improvisation. She combines a deep interest in physical challenges and bodywork somatic practices. She’s interested in what’s behind the shape, in the raw intentions that creates the architecture of a dance.
Since 2012 she collaborates with her partner of crimes Rocio Marano, they act under “Los Ninjas” identity (could also be named as “ Bruce Lee’s daughters are doing contact”).Together, they create movies, performances,workshops and events.
She’s a nomad artist performing and teaching in Europe and overseas.
Geneviève Cron
Jam is for me a space for exprimenting the infinity of movement qualities and kinesthesic interactions. In this regard it is a laboratory, a playground, a stage and chaos. My research & practice interests include choices, limits, instable balances, play, attention to self (and others).
I learned from CI diverse lessons, including that making any new experience valuable, without any aim of success, while being constantly here and now. »
Genevieve begins CI in 2003 with Jess Curtis after years of observing it. From then till 2012 she travels a lot to learn more about this UFO practice, being fascinated by the spectrum of pedagogies and practices. She is mainly influenced by Nina Martin, Malcolm Manning & Edwine Fournier. External influences include therapeutic practices and martial arts. She taught in France & abroad.
She is active in the tango-contact community (Association Tangible), and founded Association Movide, dedicated to teaching and organizing CI events (french-speaking teacher peeting 2013, PIL, ECITE2015, PIB2016).
Céline Auclair
(english version to come)
Dancing the Quadrangle
One of the places that hosts the festival (the Carreau du Temple) proposes, in their magnificent and giant hall, a public event spanning on several days and baptized « Second square » (that is: « Another Quadrangle », referring to the Quadrangle Park in close vicinity). We will have the pleasure to be part of the closing events of their 7th edition!
We proposed to them that the participants to the RiCI would share with the passers-by the new pathways they’ve encountered during their week. Each of us, gathering what they’ve gone through, will be able to invite dancers and the general audience to melt into the dance.
What’s a Off-the-wall jam?
A tasty invitation to perceive the world differently…. for a jam time!
Talk and jammers
Boris Nordman :
As an artist and a researcher, Boris Nordmann’s work goes back and forth between science and art.
He is the artistic and scientific coordinator of the Old School, a school for inter-species relationships, an accidental teacher of human echolocation, a biologist by training, and a 2004 graduate of the Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporain. He has been conducting research on cetacean societies within the Social Sciences department at the Centre Norbert Elias (UMR 8562, CNRS-EHESS).
As an artist, he has developed projects alongside biologist entrepreneurs (Inasmet); researchers in the fields of psychology of seeing/eyesight psychology researchers (Laboratoire de la Vision Montréal), image analysis (LIRMM, Montpellier), the semantic processing of language, (Institut des Sciences Cognitives à Lyon), marine bioacoustics (pretty much everywhere), and animal biology (MNHN, Paris); a stage director (Mirabelle Rousseau); an acoustician (Kerwin Rolland); developer/programmer-artists (Alexis Chazard, Gaël Cobert); a poet (Dorothée Volut); sailors; an archeologist architect (Yves Ubelmann); and a 3D cinematographer (Alain Derobe).
To circumvent the various efforts of making material work, he engages in a type of “prescription sculpture”: first by creating a non-localized audio-guide (Spoken Vision), which gives the listener instructions in seeing; then, by developing Body Fictions, which are literally methods for feeling other: feeling spider-like, feeling Marseilles-like, feeling sperm whale-like…
Upon becoming a father, his interest for the potential relationships with marine mammals has intensified: How can humans put themselves in a position to learn from dolphins, belugas, sperm whales and other odontocetes? To this end, he has been pursuing a number of trainings: human echolocation, with blind teachers (Daniel Kish and Tom de Witte), vocal technique (with the performance artist Natacha Musléra), free diving, kayaking, Contact Improvisation and Spontaneous Composition (workshops with Mathilde Monfreux and Robin Decourcy), Vipassana meditation, and Intuitive Communication®.
In the Caribbean, he encountered an insane con-artist sailor. Upon returning home, safe and sound, he has taken his research into the academic field of social sciences in order to apply the tools of human anthropology to cetacean societies.
Myriam Lefkowitz
photo credit (c) jean philippe derail
Born in 1980, Myriam Lefkowitz is a performance artist, based in Paris. Since 2010, her research is focused on questions of attention and perception. Research which she has been developping through different immersive devices involving one spectator and one performer. Her work has been presented at The Venice Biennal, at Pompidou (Paris), at Le Mouvement (Biel), for Situations (Bristol), The Center for Contemporary Art (Vilnius), for MED15 (Medellin) among others.
She took part in the master of experimentation in Art and Politics (SPEAP, Science Po Paris) founded by Bruno Latour, which main purpose is to shift the representation and definition of current public issues. In 2013, she becomes part of SPEAP teaching comitee. She is regularly invited for work shops and talks by the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Open School East (London), la HEAD (Genève), the Royal Institute of Art (Artistic Research and Development,(Stockholm), by the Samdami Art Foundation (Dacca), The school of architecture (Versailles).
She currently is developping a collaborative project, La Piscine: a gathering of different artistic practices activated in a public space.
« Working through games of gaze and touch, I’ll propose an exploration of the possible relationships between the activities of perceiving and imagining. »
Japy Gymnasium
- 2 Rue Japy, 75011 Paris
Carreau du temple
- gymnase de la Forêt Noire : 2 rue Perrée 75003, Paris
Cours des Lions Gymnasium and swimming pool
- 9 Rue Alphonse Baudin, 75011 Paris: salle polyvalente (1. floor on the right), salle de danse (2. floor on the right)
We recommend that you print out these information as well as your schedule, which will depend on the lab you’re in.
Gymnase Japy
2 Rue Japy, 75011 Paris
The closest subway station is Charonne (M9).
Carreau du temple (gymnase de la Forêt Noire)
2 rue Perrée 75003, Paris
The closest subway stations are Temple (M3), Filles du Calvaire (M8) and République (M5, M9, M3, M8, M11).
Take the stairs down and follow the signs « gymnase de la Forêt Noire »
Gymnase de la cours des lions
9 Rue Alphonse Baudin, 75011 Paris
The closest subway stations are Saint-Ambroise (M9), Richard Lenoir (M5) and St Sébastien Froissart (M8)
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Les labos
– You should have received an email indicating which lab you’re in, if not, call or write to us.
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Music-makers
Bring your instruments for jams and labs, there will be time/spaces for you to mingle your sound energies in our common improvisations.
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Clothing and washing
CI is mainly practiced in « pyjamas » (« casual » comfy clothing to roll on the floor or onto each other / you may want to avoid having metal buttons on your pants for instance). At least twice, we’re going to explore some dancing in the city : we recomend that you take suitable clothing to do that (especially having comfy sneakers, and maybe some sort of windbraker – you never know with Parisian weather…) It will, though, probably be quite hot, so we recommend that you take at least two t-shirts per day.
There will be locker rooms with showers at Japy Gymnasium: you’re most welcome to use them, but you will need to bring your own towel and soap. Also, it’s good to have clean clothes when you rub yourself on partners: good for us, there is a laundrymat right in front of the Japy Gym,
Lux Lavomatique, 154 Boulevard Voltaire 75011 Paris
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Transportation
Trajectories can be long in Paris, please look up the distance between where you are to be hosted and the various dance spaces. We recommend that you buy at least a ten-ticket from the RATP to cover those distances.
There is also the bike solution. Paris has a fairly efficient rent a bike system, you can look it up here: http://www.velib.paris/
How much money can I give ?
- 280 euros / fair price for those who can support those who can’t afford
- 260 euros / full price
- 240 euros / reduced price : students, unemployed, artists…
300 after the 31st may
L’oeil et la main [Eye and Hand] was created to support the practice of Contact Improvisation in Paris. The festival, in its second year now, was built with the hope of offering the Parisians some taste of what is done abroad, and to the visitors an idea of our desires and styles of practices.
We envisage CI as a mode of research in movement, a dynamic questionning of the possibilities offerred by touch and weight sharing. We have the desire for each participant to our activities (festivals, workshops, jams) to acquire tools fostering autonomy and understanding of the gestual norms we work with. We are looking for a suspension of movement, where we can question the ways we learn and move and witness movement.
He has intensively been exploring Contact Improvisation since 2012, throughout the US and Europe, but mostly in Paris where he co-founded L’oeil et la main. He is also part of me-lieu, an all-male improvisational and site-specific dance collective based in Paris. Lisa Nelson, Nancy Stark Smith, Matthieu Gaudeau, Joerg Hassman were and are his main influences, along with Steve Paxton whom he had the chance to spend talking time with while researching the archives of CI in the US. He also teaches philosophy classes to dancers at the National Conservatory of Dance and has developed a quarterly contact & philosophy workshops series in collaboration with Matthieu Gaudeau.