2 spots available as of July8
Contact Improv workshop and jam with Karen Nelson, July8-14,2012.
Come for 6 nights of camping and 5 day workshop with Karen Nelson.
The days begin with
Contact Improvisation
First partner is our own body. Breath and heart-beat, blood flowing sensations. Next we feel our environment—earth. Sensing relationship. We are experts already. We investigate what we know. How is it? Sensational experiences inform relationship. Slowing back to the sensation of standing on two feet, balancing: the small dance. Deeply engaging with our dance of small and grand sensation. Practice safety: falling, rolling, softening to the floor. Shall we dance? We begin with another human partner. Our skins are talking without concept. Medium of exchange: weight, mass, movement—like weather on the sea. We create a language unique to the culture of our duet—a learning dialogue of cause and effect. Growing bigger, warmer, closer to the sun, with nervous system firing skeletal information: pelvis, shoulders, fingers, knees, yours, mine, ours. Known skills are left behind; we let our bodies’ teach us how smart we are when we don’t know what’s coming.
Afternoons are filled with
Improvising Scores, Tuning and Ensemble Compositions
Dancing our luscious, present, sensationally aware impulses is like rolling off a log into the moss of naturalness. We will practice developing the habit to “return to our senses” while dancing, and use that knowledge to “tune” dances in space. Tuning Scores, as introduced by Lisa Nelson, illuminate our individual perceptual experience, and use actions and verbal calls to communicate to others and the environment during the improvisation. Sessions will begin with training in sensational awareness and build towards compositional ensemble work. All expressions being equally valid and positive, tuning work allows a natural collaboration amongst the players.
Evenings begin with
Contemplative Dance Practice—sitting meditation, personal movement, group dancing and witnessing. This practice will be an entry into jamming.
Karen Nelson’s 35-year dance and performance practice has been directly influenced by Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and Lisa Nelson and their respective work in Contact Improvisation, Material for the Spine and Tuning Scores, and through collaboration with many others in venues around the world. She co-founded Joint Forces Dance Co, Breitenbush Jam, Dance Ability, Diverse Dance Research Retreat, and the performance group Image Lab among other projects. Video edits such at “Chute”, “Soft Pallet”, and “Peripheral Vision” as well as writings published in Contact Quarterly have inspired her practice of Contact Improvisation. She is returning to the venue of teaching workshops after living and working for 8 years at a meditation retreat facility-under-construction in rural USA
Workshop tuition, camping, gourmet meals, wood-fired sauna and transportation on Lasqueti- $375
