There is 1 last minute cancellation available as of July21. Come Monday July23 if you can.

Contact improvisation, Skinner Releasing Technique™, Material for the Spine, Alexander Technique

• July 22 to 28
• 5 days of classes and evening jams
• Camping, gourmet meals, sauna and transportation on the island
• All included for: $375

Eryn Dace Trudell (Montreal) and Yves Candau (Toronto / France) have cultivated a unique dancing relationship over more than twelve years. Together they bring a long time commitment to the practice and teaching of Contact Improvisation; and a shared dedication to in-depth study of somatic practices to support their dancing, with their respective certifications in Skinner Releasing Technique™ and Alexander Technique.

These techniques provide solid structures to unleash creativity and unravel patterns of tension and blockages (physically, psychologically and emotionally); leading to exciting dances with an abundance of physical dimension, dynamic range and mindfulness. We will strive for depth in height, meeting with compassion; and ultimately, all the factors contributing to the effortless dance that carries truth, making it fuller and more meaningful.

Morning classes with Eryn Dace Trudell

The morning classes will begin with studies from the SRT introductory series and move into CI explorations.

Skinner Releasing Technique™ (SRT) is the pioneering approach to dancing that works from the simple principle that when our bodies are releasing tension and habitual holding patterns we can move more freely and articulately. A considerable influence on leading artists across the world, it is widely regarded as the technique that informs the dancing body as it appears today. In Releasing, spontaneous movement evoked by guided poetic imagery, music and sound enables a creative exploration of technical principles such as multi-direction alignment, suppleness, suspension, economy and autonomy. In the practice of Releasing, engaging the imagination and involving the whole self integrates technical growth and creative process.

Uniquely, experienced dancers study alongside beginners, each working at their own rate. Skinner Releasing is a dance class for professionals as well as all those interested in simply exploring their creativity through moving. Skinner Releasing classes, workshops and intensives are regularly taught across many continents at both the Introductory and Ongoing levels, whilst the technique has become part of the core training at a number of major dance institutions around the world.

Links: Skinner Releasing Technique™

Afternoon classes with Yves Candau

Yves‘ teaching has been nourished by a number of past and present practices: Aikido, Vipassana meditation, and most importantly Steve Paxton‘s Material for the Spine and the Alexander Technique.

As dancers we are privileged to experiences that are both holistic and multi-layered. One could say that our dances take place simultaneously in the mind, in the body and in the world. We will use these complementary and interconnected points of view to explore and articulate the reality of our living moving beings in Contact Improvisation.

Internally, we will develop our awareness, clarity of intention, and refine our use of the foundations of movement in the body: such as the structural support provided by the skeletal system or the flow of muscular tone that creates movement. Externally, we will explore and strengthen specific movement patterns, such as the helixes manifested in walking, that can be expanded to take us in and out of the floor, and through space. We will aim to expand our perception and physical possibilities towards a spherical appreciation of space, where movement can take place in any direction.

These points of view will integrate as we practice working both internally and externally, through overlapping cycles of attention, intention and action, creating a rich place from which to meet one another. There is for me a deepening of experience to be gained here, which supports my exhilaration of exploring movement and the joy of dancing with a partner, as a conscious as well as physical being.

Links: Material for the Spine, Alexander Technique

Bios

Eryn Dace Trudell is a dance artist: producer, choreographer, dancer and teacher originally from Toronto, now living in Montreal. Experienced in all aspects of dance creation from the idea to the stage, her versatile career includes choreography, commissions and collaborations of many varieties.

Honouring the body conscious, Trudell teaches kinaesthetic awareness through dancing as an ingredient to boosting self-confidence, motivating energy and maintaining good health? physically, emotionally and psychologically. Her classes speak to the body itself, suggesting ways that movement can free us from unconscious patterns, to enhance our thinking and creativity, animal grace, social availability, cultural empathy, and genuine pleasure in being: a state of innate wisdom and freedom.

Trudell’s students include professional and non-professional adult dancers, educators, children, and parents and children. She particularly enjoys inclusive dance practices, which ignite community spirit through artistic physical exploration. Since the birth of her first child, and the founding of *Mama dances!* in 2006 she has been exploring and illuminating the
physical relationship and the spontaneous events that transpire between mother and child in the dance studio, inspiring a post natal activity boom in Montreal.

Trudell holds a BFA from Juilliard and Teachers’ Certification in Skinner Releasing Technique. She is a an active member of ACI (Association of Contact Improvisation of Montréal), RQD, CAEA, CDA. She is deeply dedicated to the development of Contact Improvisation. Her teachers include Andrew de Lotbiniére Harwood, Peter Bingham, Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, Daniel Lepkoff, Nancy Stark Smith, Benno Vorham and Martin Keogh along with many years of jamming. She is presently living the dance everyday.

Yves Candau has a background in science and was doing a PhD in Cognitive Sciences when he discovered dance. Gradually his interest shifted from the abstract to a more embodied research, which he has been passionately pursuing ever since. He trained with several teachers in Paris, went to Pina Bausch’s Folkwang Hochshule in Essen Germany, and deepened his practice of Contact Improvisation and Improvisation studying in Europe and North America, in particular with Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson and Daniel Lepkoff. As a movement artist he is fascinated by how internal dynamics of mind and body give rise to manifested external movement; and aims to share his fascination with others through performance and teaching. Yves has taught Contact Improvisation since 2001, giving classes and workshops in France, Italy, Germany, Canada and the USA. He is also an overtone singer and a teacher of the Alexander Technique.