Exploring the contact with the air among others by moving your body with the help of low flying trapezes. Especially the skin can touch or move the air, but also the body can be extended by other materials (e.g. strips of linen, cloth, material, robes, floggers, etcetera). Also from the outside the moving can be influenced by interruptions of the flow (can be done by hands but also by tools such as a flogger)

Comparing the movement and sensibility of the skin, bones, muscles, nerves when the body as a whole is moving already because of the trapeze and you are free to experiment and to move in and out of this movement while being moved anyway (or not!), comparing all that with the senses that are awakened when working on the floor.

Low flying trapezes can be used alone or together with others to move on and to play with. The trapeze is your partner, so you will always make a duet (or, if another person appears on the trapeze, a trio).

The floor will be starting point, resting point, contact and meeting point; on and off you can go. The movement continues.

www.skinneraerial.com (movie 4 and 5 for a very sweet vanilla version of what’s in my mind)

Read Wim Franken’s biography

My own interest and engagement in this experiment is to have the opportunity to share that which calls me to the jam. My questions include:

What is happening energetically when we are in a state of physical consensual communion with another/others? Where do the barriers naturally come in and where they dissipate? What defines awake: immediate, constant, surrender, compassion, powerful, vulnerable, aggressive, undetectable, undeniable, integral and paradoxical?

Research Proposal – Ki Dialogue

Just as contact improvisation can be perceived as a series of dance moves, tricks and learnt acrobatics, Aikido can also be seen as a sequence of martial techniques likened when performed well, to a dance. The reality for me however, is that the essence of these two art forms could not be further from this understandable misconception. It lies somewhere in the intimacy of a graceful oblivion which, when I try to think through, conceptualise or anticipate often becomes mechanical, uninspirational and cumbersome instead of vital, frank and breathtaking.

In this class/lab we will explore:

• unilateral/multi-directional Ki extension
• directional awareness/clarification
• a touch based sense of bodily articulation
• injury prevention
• awareness of muscle tension/relaxation and its clear links with mental tension and or projection
• principles of traditional Ki Aikido in order that we might then bring them with us to the jam
• surrender to the naturally occurring oscillations of contrasting forces that arise from the act of two bodies moving together

As well as Koichi Tohei’s principals of non-hierarchy and universal love, in my experience trickery, disappearance, play and seduction are all woven into the art of peace.

This class/lab will be held similar to a traditional Aikido dojo class, consisting of the formal exploration of martial techniques including immobilization.

Read Richard Sarco-Thomas’ biography

PROPOSAL: one or more sessions of therapeutic bodypainting

Looking for ways for individuals to draw on the large canvas of their body with their own emotions and momentary states: breaking through barriers of fear and introversion.

As we already know, there are a lot of associations with each color and how we react emotionally to each one, they influence us so much and we hardly realize. The experiment is a personal and group therapy for and with others establishing the reality of your time and your time of healing. The color works entirely by direct contact with the body: bringing to light the canvas in places where we need to heal.

METODOLOLOGÍA OF THE EXPERIMENT

An introduction connecting with your colours inside and outside the Rainbow that creates color, meditation and breathing.

Each choose two colors one clear and one dark.

Choose a part of your body from top to bottom, and paint two colors: one in one area and one in another.

All this is is guided with k jachadur music. As the music changes, connect with another person. This new person continues to paint the canvas of your body with their dark and clear colour. Creating in each stroke a ying yang of color.

Continuing into the next change, choose an area of your body without paint and connect with another person…

Dance…

PROPOSAL OF A SECOND JAM: ”RAINBOW HEALING”

This would be a jam of improvisation with painting.

Leaving colors in different parts of the game space.

From here a more free-form structure but also guided by music.

Community paint job  to achieve a group canvas, they are all the colors, and all propositions…

Throughout the game with free movement.

Read Maya Gonzales Nieves biography

This research is about delving into the sensory-motor cycle, that is the relationship between perception and action, as constructing an understanding of the world. The focus goes to the relationships of the body in nature - recognizing that everything is interconnected and every body-microcosm is indeed a component of other body-macrocosm (and vice versa, to the immeasurable).

Using information such as anatomy, physiology, ecology, to give directions to follow through in the research, experiencing concepts with embodiment, creating an inventory of affinities and metaphors inherent to the cyclical patterns that can be observed in the micro and the macrocosm.

Fostering the intention of listening, it is quite essential to this work to maintain a direct relationship with nature (and having the least possible urban interference). The search for a state of perception out of the ordinary, where the boundaries of perception and action, expression, become diffuse and questionable, input and output melt into one another, accepting the vulnerability of the state of “not knowing”, “non-doing”, and perhaps to ”non-being.” BEING THE MOMENT.

The demand for different qualities of presence is a central idea in Improvisation. Experimenting with different focuses and parameters to react to the present moment, we establish the scores that make space for the freedom of new perceptions and behaviors.

Read Beu Tornaghi’s biography

Based on the upper text, I want to explore touch as a communication tool, a language of touch to connect. Why are there so many highly developped methods of giving professional feedback, on communication skills via coaching, intervision and mentoring – based on verbal language only? How can you read and listen body language in order to fulfill the need of the person on a physical level?

I work with children and old people. Why do we touch them easily: why is it hard with the ages inbetween? We know physical contact in four socio-economically “permitted” areas: in a partnership, in dealing with children, old people and animals. We know it is because of sexual issues. Still we need affection, tenderness and cuddles. There are so many grey zones in between intimacy, sexuality, love and friendship. And all definitions change from contact to contact, from situation to situation. Especially for people who have no access to or knowlegde of body work or contact dance whatsoever. How can one cross these barriers – the habit of talking somebody out of sadness/anger and crying? Wouldn’t it be better just to hold the person close in your arms until it just feels better? What can value feelings better than touch? Our longing for it never stops.

I personally would like to combine all facettes of my work: touch, sex, intimacy, love, relationship issues, questions around polyamory and bisexuality. I’ve visited cuddle parties. What is the appropiate answer from the contact dance scene? How to create a safe space where you feel protected enough to be vulnerable using CI? At the moment I organize the touch based experimental movement BodyLounge, I work via touch with demented people, my interest in BDSM and feminist porn conflicts with the longing for a primary relationship and a family.

Bodylounge – extracts from a review by Dara Colwell

A journey of physical movement, BodyLounge was created by performer Ina Stockem to blur the line between real life and theatre.  Like many performances, BodyLounge begins in the dark – except that here the entire audience is literally left in the dark. They are blindfolded. “By taking your sight away, you are immediately thrown back on your other senses”, says Ute Pliestermann, who organized the production and also performs. “It takes censorship away. It‟s like covering your eyes when you are a child – because you think you won‟t be seen, you are allowed to do anything. So you express yourself in complete freedom.”

At BodyLounge, the performance both moves around and through its audience, but what I found the most exhilarating was how much everything depended on trust. As an interactive participant, I had to trust my interaction with unseen strangers, which allowed me to play. Having hands coming at me from all directions certainly helped unlock boundaries. “Touch is really becoming a taboo, it‟s experienced as being either scary or dangerous”, says Pliestermann. “People need to be touched, not only in a physical way, but in a deeper, ideological way. This is what we‟re trying to achieve with BodyLounge.” Or, as one guest put it so well on their website: “BodyLounge is the closest you can come to the first good sex in your life. It can also be like being a baby again, blind and clumsy and loving your nine armed, seven legged mother whatever she does to you, even if she spanks”

Check out the website: www.bodylounge.eu

Read Ina Stockem’s biography

a) The boundary between sexuality and sensuality is drawn differently by different people. This is rarely a conscious choice but mostly a question of people’s sexual and body socialization, which often differs systematically according to gender and sexuality. One major factor determining people’s strategies of desire, their personal constructions of sexuality/sensuality is the overwhelming patriarchal and heterosexist structuring of sexuality. In very very broad strokes, a structuring that posits men as hunters, women as prey, that defines desire itself as an active, symbolically male energy, where men have bodies and women are bodies, that encourages men to convert all kinds of affective energies into aggression and/or sexual excitement, while encouraging women to convert all kinds of affective energies into caring, tenderness and tears.

I am interested in the question of how and why people sort their feelings into “sexual”, “sensual” or other, specifically in the context of contact improvisation and in how they feel about the potential of contact improvisation to contribute to an emancipatory transgression of how mainstream society orders sexuality/sensuality.

b) Doing a lot of contact improvisation can change sexual desire. It can diminish, possibly because some of what usually gets channeled into sexuality (needs for nourishing touch, spontaneous movement expression, being held, etc) are satisfied through contact improvisation. Sometimes it gets more, presumably because the practice wakes up and circulates vital energy and sexual desire is one expression of that. It can also change quality, feeling deeper and fuller, sometimes more rooted in physicality and less hotwired to images and thoughts.

How:

A session of this lab could start with a sensory/physical warmup, move into contact improvisation, followed by a discussion of specific questions in small groups, then a mix of moving and talking, followed by a round for exchanging impressions.

Read Daniel Mang’s biography

Physical contact and sexual intercourse play a major role in Bonobo society, being used as what some scientists perceive as a greeting, a means of conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconciliation. Bonobos are the only non-human animal to have been observed engaging in all of the following sexual activities: face-to-face, genital sex, tongue kissing and oral sex.

Bonobos do not form permanent relationships with individual partners. They also do not seem to discriminate in their sexual behaviour by sex or age, with the possible exception of abstaining from sexual intercourse between mothers and their adult sons; some observers believe these pairings are taboo within Bonobo society.

When Bonobos come upon a new food source or feeding ground, the increased excitement will usually lead to communal sexual activity, presumably decreasing tension and allowing for peaceful feeding.

The Bonobo Garden is an experimental lab where you can explore yourself by playing. Survey your impulses and behavioural patterns in an open but safe space of encounters!

Saskia will go into aspects of apish as well as human communications. During the process we will activate our senses and look at the resulting emotions. We will primarily focuses on these four interrelated factors:

Smelling – explore the human chemistry bond
Seeing – activate your heart through eye contact
Onomatopoetics – free your self by using your voice
Actions – gestures, food sharing and sexuality – Get what your inner ape wants!

With an introductive learning experience, we will amplify our sensory perception. After that you will accompany to a journey back into your inner native being and the space will be opened for all forms of apish interaction. Ambient jungle sounds and a selection of typical Bonobo food will be provided. The rest will be left to the participants’ imagination. You should have a good mind for playing and exploring and have no problem with nudity and contact. Clothing as well as the use of tools are optional, communication is reduced to onomatopoetics.

Read Saskia Mieszalski’s Biography

The tango is a dance which the emotion defines the possibilities of moving.

In this workshop we will explore the couple as a source of creativity for the movement.

Establish an intimate relationship through the embrace.

Accept the emotions as a dynamic.

Create a commun listening to move together with the music.

Develop a partner’s dance with / without conflict.

Open the dance from the couple to a shared space.

Read David Firmin’s biography

My name is Jocasta. I practise Tantra, both couples, singles and solo work. So far a large part of my journey has been about sexual healing. So now I also offer that to others. To me Tantra is a way of living life as well as a meditative practise. My experience of it is that it includes everything, every feeling, thought, emotion or state can be a doorway into Tantra.

It is all life energy – When you welcome what is there and go with it, you release that energy and can use it to dance through a door. Tantra includes sexuality and harnesses it’s energy, because sexual energy is base life energy.

I feel Contact Improvisation and Tantra are often dancing hand in hand inside of me. I would like to offer a space to go deep into meditative practises using breath, opening the senses, working with the energy that is generated by the male/female polarity, moving energy through the body centers of the Chakras. All these will be our doorways to open our dance, alone or together.

The space will be intimate, experiential, in movement and in stillness. It will be held as ritual sacred space. A balance of men and women would be ideal.

My relevant experience:

Tantra

• 1 year couples training with Sky Dancing Uk.
• Lots of singles work with Geho, Sarita and Margo Anand.
• Many hours of homeplay with my beloved, other people and by myself.
• Tantric healing massage sessions – 4 hand or solo sessions.

Contact Improvisation

• Dancing it since 1996 – 3 years in Outokumpu dance school, Finland.
• Many visits to Earthdance
• Teachers worked with: Nancy Stark Smith, Martin keogh, Ray Chung, Charley Morrissey and more…
• Attending festivals:Freiburg, Earthdance, Nim, Gottingen, Ibiza, London, Burning man
• Organising: Bristol regional jams

Read Jocasta Crofts biography

This workshop is an enquiry into what we are actively not thinking, actively not feeling and actively not sensing. How we can bring this sensory landscape into our dancing and relationship with another with the possibility of sharing more of who we are. Imagine the freedom we can create when we can trust ourselves. When we can trust ourself an active commitment to what we are dancing can follow

Read Jamus and Lee’s biographies