As of July28, there are 49 people registered of a capacity 55 for this festival.
Childcare is available for this event as two young people are coming with their parents with childcare experience.
Lasqueti Improv Dance Festival with Katarina Eriksson, Stu Phillips and Bronwyn Preece. Aug4-10, 2014. Come for this five day event with three master teachers: two of improv dance and Contact Improv and one of ecological improvisation performance. Katarina and Stu have long successful careers and a lifestyle that keeps them working at their edge. Bronwyn works and facilitates internationally, will be offering Action Theater™ and Site Specific work.
Last year we found the festival format very popular. Participants have a choice of which class to participate in and can change classes as their desires evolve. Arrive Monday Aug4(right on the heals of the Seattle Festival of Dance Improv) for orientation and the first jam. Classes begin on Tuesday morning. Evenings will begin with 10 minute performances followed by a jam. The final class is Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon will have a presentation by Allen and Karen Kaeja. Saturday evening is the final performance/jam. The festival ends Sunday, Aug10 after breakfast. $425 includes festival, camping or dormitory, all meals, rides from and to the ferry on Lasqueti.
In Katarina’s class:
Accidental Excellence
Or The Joy of Stumbling into Contact
This class is inspired by a verbal misunderstanding. In a CI event that I was recently part of, an on-looker made a comment that I heard as “accident dances”, when he really said “excellent dances”.
I have noticed that, what can be perceived as mishaps in a dance often become an opening to deeper listening and awareness of the particularities of the dance I’m having right now. So, in this class we will cultivate our capacity of being “accident-prone” – to stop trying to get it right and instead becoming more and more curious about where the principles of contact improvisation can take us moment by moment.
We will study;
Falling (How does my body fall safely? Where is the edge of my comfort zone? What kinds of falls make me laugh?)
Rolling point/Sliding point/ In and out of contact (How can these concepts support my dance towards surprise and discovery? Can I shift from making it happen to watching it happen? Can I find joy in the moments of difficulty? )
Weight exchange (How do I respect my own and my partner’s limitations without letting “politeness” dull the dance? What are all the micro-grades on my scale for giving and receiving weight?)
It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something. ~Ornette Coleman
Katarina Eriksson has been involved with improvisational dance since 1989, collaborating with artists, such as Julyen Hamilton, Ray Chung, Cathie Caraker, and as a member and co-founder of Swedish improvisation ensemble Floke.
She teaches Contact Improvisation and other improvisational forms in Europe and the US, and since 2000 she curates the performance series Moments Notice in Berkeley.
Katarina’s traditional dance background includes graduation from The Ballet Academy, Gothenburg and working at The Gothenburg State Theater and Opera, as well as with numerous choreographers and dance companies in Sweden.
Recent performance endeavors are; Artist in Residency at CounterPULSE, San Francisco, touring in Sweden and Germany with Hoppalappa Postfolki Tanziteatteri, co-creating a site-specific dance piece with Siljeholm/Christophersen in Beirut, and directing multi-disciplinary performances at Earthdance, Massachusetts and Movement Research at Judson Church, New York.
In Stu’s class:
What Am I Doing? Where Am I Going? What Is Happening Now?
What Happens Next? Who Am I Really?
1) Guidance into where we source from.
2) How we influence our choices in the moment, what is our long range focus?
3)How does viewing perspective of the moment inform outcome?
4) How do we choose this particular arrangement? What can we get rid of to stay completely real all the time?
5) How dance informs & defines our experience, our self identity, our self empowerment.
Open to All
Stuart Phillips is & has been Devotionally Performing & Teaching Improvisational Contact Dance for over 26 years throughout the US, Canada & New Zealand, with a European tour late fall 2013 , & been Practicing, Performing & Teaching Improvisational Dance for over 32 years. www.Stulip6.wix.com/Stulips
In Bronwyn’s class
“The Art of Site-Specific Improvisation” earthBODYment and Action Theater™ Intensive
4 days, Tuesday to Friday, Physical Theatre Improvisation Intensive 2 classes per day, totalling 4 hours a day of facilitated work. We will work both indoor and outdoor, using the Art’s centre(20min walk through the woods) and a variety of Lasqueti Island locations, from seaside bays to forested lands.
Mornings will focus on the in-studio exploring the fundamentals of Action Theater™.
Afternoons will take place outdoors, broadening into the eco-somatic improvisational explorations of earthBODYment…a ‘natural’ extension of the indoor improvisational practice.
This multi-dimensional workshop will physically engage participants in a variety of exercises ranging from solo, partner, small and whole group activities throughout the days. Together, we will create a safe zone for creative exploration: witnessing, supporting, inspiring and sharing with each other. The workshop will focus on refining the articulation of our artistic palettes, our sensitivities of engaging with place: refining both improvisational and performance skills. The workshop is open to people of all ages, ability and mobility levels. It is suitable to those with or without previous improvisation/dance/theatre/performance training. This workshop will be of specific interest to Contact Improvisors, as it is an alternative approach to kinaesthetically engaging with our world…
Action Theater™ is a practice of Awareness and Improvisational Expression, through Moment-to-Moment Presence in Movement, Voice and Language. Developed by Ruth Zaporah, it is a body-based, embodied physical theatre form that incorporates sound, movement, and language, where the congruency between mind and body is rooted in the eloquence of the physical action. Action Theater™ is a practice of awareness and in-the-moment experiencing. And given that the present moment is always becoming the past, there must be continuous letting go. Complete commitment and complete letting go, as we track our ever-changing experience. Action Theater™ exercises help the improviser deconstruct habitual patterns and self-judgments, allowing for an expansion of the expressive palette. Awareness is honed as improvisers follow the evolving content of their imaginations, simultaneously investigating the kinesthetic body, the feeling state, and the content/story of each fresh moment as it arises. The components of time, space, shape and dynamics are disassembled, rearranged, and played with, culminating in the creation and delivery of artful expression. Action Theater™ is the improvisation of presence…a contemplative art in motion.
earthBODYment is an extension of the improvisation of presence applying this honed and sensitive awareness to working site-specifically, outdoors: in the improvisation of interconnectedness. The intersection of expression and ecology, movement and mindfulness, the merging of our sensuous experiencing with our surroundings, earthBODYment is the improvisational exploration of our deep connections to our surrounding world, of which our own bodies are inextricably a part of the larger body of earth. We root our explorations in our evolutionary journey: as we each presently carry and embody this journey in each of our bodies…and within this exploration we reawaken to the sharing of a common ancestor: the first cell…making us related to every plant and animal on earth.
“The breathing, sensing body draws its sustenance and its very substance from the soils, plants and elements that surround it; it continually contributes itself, in turn, to the air, to the composting earth, to the nourishment of insects and oak trees and squirrel, ceaselessly spreading out of itself as well as breathing the world into itself, so that it is very difficult to discern, at any moment, precisely where the living body begins and where it ends.” ~ David Abram
Bronwyn Preece is an improvisational performance eARThist and writer. She works site-specifically/sensitively interrogating the dichotomies between culture and ‘nature’, self and ‘environment’, seeking ways to overcome these binary constructs. She is the pioneer of earthBODYment: an eco-somatic exploratory approach to immersion with our surrounding world. She became Canada’s first Certified Teacher of Action Theater™, studying with Master Improvisor Ruth Zaporah for more than 15 years. Bronwyn is a member of the trans-national Plantable Performance Research Collective, performing internationally, developing projects that creatively engage ecological dialogue. Bronwyn holds a MA and BFA in Applied Theatre and is currently pursuing a PhD, which involves performing a series of solo improvisational performances that examine what an ecological self is or can be, and what the overlaps between Ecology and Disability are in this age. Bronwyn is the author of Gulf Islands Alphabet and the forthcoming Off-the-Grid Kid and In the Spirit of Homebirth. She is a modern homesteader-with-panache, and can often be found shovelling the manure from one her daughter’s three horses, fermenting batches of raw sauerkraut, brewing fresh kombucha, or harvesting kale from her garden! Please visit: www.bronwynpreece.com
Please consider registering for the following week as well with Allen and Karen Kaeja for $725 for both.
To register: go to ‘Contact Us’ on the right side of this page and send us an email with Aug4 in the subject
