Contact Improv Workshop with Mark Young and Lesley Greco
Join us for this 3 week workshop, May10-30, 2020 at Leviathan Studio, Lasqueti Island, B.C. Arriving on Sunday May 10 in the afternoon. We begin on Monday morning. The final jam is on Friday, May29. Departing on Saturday morning at 11am, May30. $1500Canadian You may do either of the first two weeks if you don’t have the time for a 3week intensive.
In Mark Young’s class: This is the tried, tested and true material that develops your dance. These exercises are for any and all dancers. The feedback has been incredible with many students returning to repeat this workshop. You don’t learn Spiral and Crescent Rolls and how to apply them in a single workshop. You learn some of what they have to offer and then it evolves. For me, it has been 15yrs of practise and my body is still adapting. The class description is the same as the other 12day retreats.
Participants of past workshops have expressed surprise at their development by the third day and are amazed that they continue to improve as CI dancers throughout the 12 days. Some participants have done this workshop 5 times.
We will start with Tai Chi exercises that emphasize the spiral nature of our physiology. Everything from the DNA to the Milky Way is spiralling. All of our muscles are laid on bones that are shaped in spirals. The ancient Taoist masters recognized this and developed movement patterns that harness strength and ease in movement. This video was made during the 2018Residency for Experienced Dancers in Contact Improvisation.
We will bridge from Taoist Tai Chi to Steve Paxton’s ‘Material For the Spine.’ MFS includes spiral rolls, crescent rolls and Aikido rolls. These exercises are done alone on the floor. They inform the body of unnecessary tension. They bring awareness to blind spots. They bring consciousness to our dance.
We will bridge from floor work to partner work using these rolls to find smooth pathways with a partner. Exploring the concept that ‘lifts are organic’ we will let our feet come off the floor on our terms, when we want. Lifts and aerials in Contact Improv are not contrived like other dance forms. They happen because someone made a mistake; someone’s centre of gravity went below their partners’. We will play with this gentle riding up to slide down to roll up.
This workshop is the ‘essential’ Contact Improv. You can take these exercises with y0u and practice them for the rest of your life. They take more than two weeks to really know them, imprint them in your muscle-memory. Come back next year for a refresher.
Mark Young has been doing Contact Improvisation since 1997. What began as fun re-hab after a traumatic accident quickly became a serious study. He also began a serious study of Tai Chi and Vipassana meditation around the same time, these are the foundations of Contact Improvisation. He has studied C.I. with everyone who has come to the studio, many people outside of the studio and attended numerous conferences with the originators of the form at Breitenbush Hot Springs retreat centre. Also, he has attended numerous Contact Improv jams at Earthdance retreat centre in Massachusetts over the past 15 years. In 2000 he committed all of his resources to the creation of Leviathan Studio, a dance studio committed to the study of Contact Improvisation.
Class description for Lesley Greco: The Functional Anatomy of Listening
Morning classes with Mark focus on structured technique designed to build skill, strength and competence in a full range of partnered movement from floorwork to flying.
In the afternoons with Lesley we slow the pace of our inquiries and focus on the subtle qualities, attentional strategies and internal supports that we bring to those structures and techniques.
We begin with ourselves, slowing the pace of our listening, tuning to biological rhythms, and considering ways to cooperate with the dynamic, self-organizing processes of our bodies as a basis for partnering with others.
In this three-week workshop at Leviathan, we will explore the subtleties of CI through various lenses such as; osteopathic philosophy and principles, perspectives on the physiological bases of human interchange and the experience of our developing perceptual systems. We will be drawing upon these and other viewpoints to support nuanced physical listening and dialogue in contact improvisation.
Lesley Greco works in the fields of rehabilitation, performance and movement education as a practitioner, artist, teacher and researcher.
Lesley’s academic and movement research focus is the concept of physical listening.
She was introduced to the discipline of listening as an art practice by pioneering composer Pauline Oliveros (1932 – 2016). Lesley studied and mentored with Oliveros, translating her aural listening strategies into a physical listening focus applying it to movement, voice and bodywork.
Contact Improvisation has been a key part of Lesley’s movement practice since being introduced to it in Toronto, Canada in 2001. Her main interests in CI are the subtleties and the physiologies of physical listening and dialogue.
As a teacher, Lesley translates osteopathic principles into functional strategies aimed at developing respectful, cooperative, listening relationship with our own bodies and in turn with each other.
Lesley began teaching CI in 2009 assisting choreographer/dancer/activist Pam Johnson at Humber College School of Performing Arts teaching CI to physical theatre students from 2009-2011. She has been a guest lecturer for graduate and undergraduate classes at the University of Guelph School of The Arts and has facilitated groups at Humber College, Ryerson University, The National Ballet, York University, Halliburton School of the Arts, Leviathan Studio, as well as teaching privately and in her local communities.
Many teachers have directly and indirectly contributed to her understanding of CI including; Nancy Stark Smith, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Irene Dowd, Margie Gillis, Ruth Zaporah, Fides Krucker, Katherine Duncanson and Kaeja d’Dance among others.
To register go to ‘Contact Us’ on the right side of the screen and send an email. You will be responded to within 24hrs. $1500Can for 3 weeks, $1100 for the first 2 weeks, $600 for either of the first 2 weeks. Includes all meals, lodging, tuition, taxes, transportation on Lasqueti.
