Impro & Shells 2022 – Brittany – france

A week of dance improvisation and research by the sea!

(French version is here)

With Sarah Konner, Emma Bigé, Defne Erdur, Céline Robineau, Catherine Kych & Bradley T Ellis
From August 20 to 26, 2022 in Trévou Tréguignec

There will be early days to enjoy the joys of Brittany in the summer (beach, walking, visiting, lazing around, picnicking …), early afternoons to unfold and weave together our curiosities, afternoons to meet the universes of the invited teachers and evenings to jam happily!

It will be again this year on the commune of Trévou-Tréguignec, on the seaside. We will be welcomed in the multi-purpose hall, 10 minutes walk from the beach of Trestel and Port Le Goff and 5-10 minutes walk from various camping, motorhome area and supermarket. In short, everything will be within walking distance, if you stay in this area!…

Here is what our days will look like:

Mornings and lunches : program to be invented, but out of the studio in any case

– 1pm-3pm: This space will be dedicated to immersive, facilitated and/or self-managed labs and formats (if there is any momentum in this direction). We will question the experiences we will have gone through the day before during the workshops and jams, unfold them, articulate them with each other. We will give them time to bear fruit and to become part of our personal and collective inner landscapes. The facilitators will create a comfortable, stimulating and creative space for co-research. Everyone will be able to make their own path, follow the path of another, invent a new one together or take the time to contemplate the landscape of the moment…
– 3pm – 6pm: Workshop. Each day a pair of teachers will propose a subject to explore, in connection with the theme of the week (see below)
– 6-6:30 pm: Dyads (2x15min). Practice of listening and sharing orally and in rotating pairs, to deposit and elaborate an experience in the presence of someone else.
– 6:30 – 7:30 pm: Meal
– 7:30 – 10:30 pm: Jams
On August 20th, to give you time to arrive quietly from your distant lands, we will meet from 4:30 pm (for an opening circle at 5:30 pm) which will be followed by a time of shared meal and a jam until 10:30 pm!

THE TEAM:

Bradley T Ellis [USA] is a Brooklyn-based improviser. He has practiced Contact Improvisation for 20 years, and frequently collaborates in process and performance with other artists. In addition to Movement Research he teaches as adjunct faculty at NYU/Tisch – Experimental Theatre Wing, NYU – Tisch Dance & the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College.

Catherine Kych [FR] has been dancing for over thirty years. Classical dance is her common thread, but in search of spaces of freedom, play and sharing, she plunged into contact improvisation in 2007. She became enthusiastic about this non-normative practice that offered the possibility of meeting, first through touch and movement – and then through words – « others », and to build and deconstruct the world with them.

Along the way, she acquired different tools to deepen her dance and accompaniment practices: a training in « Dance and Movement Therapy » (with, in particular, the tools of NVC and the perceptive pedagogy of Danis Bois), the D.U. « Dance and Somatic Education » of Paris VIII, and a training in Explanatory Interviewing which proved to be the tool she lacked to accompany the putting into words of the dancers’ experience. Since then she has been an active member of GREX (www.grex2.com), a research group on explicitation founded by Pierre Vermersch. The D.U. « Medicine, Meditation and Neuroscience » in Strasbourg has more recently completed her practical and theoretical knowledge of attention – especially in meditative practices. And finally, Catherine has trained in Ericksonian hypnosis to better understand the links between imagination, perception, language and relationships, and how they influence the mechanisms of creation, learning and change.

Trained in Life Art Process in California with Anna Halprin, Céline Robineau [FR], dancer and teacher, likes to use dance movement, poetry, painting and drawing as reflections of each other. She is part of a permanent learning and research process through Contact Improvisation which she practices and teaches with joy, curiosity, fervor and rebound. She co-founded « L’Oeil et la Main », an association dedicated to the development of contact improvisation and related practices and knowledge, and organizes, among others, Contact Improvisation Meetings. Water fascinates her, she likes to lose her bearings, find new supports and relationships to the world that she transmits in workshops. She shares her dances with other beings, humans or non-humans and is particularly fond of nature as a place of resourcing and dance, alone or in workshops with others. She researches and creates forms within pluridisciplinary artist collectives on themes such as gentrification, the gesture of love in public space, inter-species communication… Currently, 2 pieces are being created, one on neoliberalism, the other, in solo, on the woman’s body.

Defne Erdur (TR / FR) is trained in contemporary dance (PhD), sociology (MA), expressive intermodel art therapy, body therapies (deep tissue release, trigger point and movement, integrative craniosacral therapy), meditation and trauma healing (Somatic Experiencing, Integral Somatic Psychology). She is the co-founder and editor of idocde.net.

In 2016, she completed her doctoral dissertation in Turkey (« Teaching dance on the transitive line between life and art: contributions of contact improvisation technique, methodology, and pedagogy to the physical, artistic, and psychosocial development of amateur dancers »). In 2017, she co-published mindthedance.com: A Guide / Movement to Document Contemporary Dance / Movement Teaching, as a result of the REFLEX Europe project.

In addition to her private practice, she regularly teaches at ImPulsTanz ( International Dance Festival in Vienna), MSGSU State Conservatory in Istanbul, CI-Turkey, ElimSende and ÇATI associations. She also gives her workshops (Hunting Gathering Cultivating, Every Body Knows, Mind the Body, and Incodying Consent) around the world (Tanzhaus Zurich, Konservatorium Wien, Mandala İstanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Vienna, Berlin and Freiburg CI Festivals…), in collaboration with different populations (professional and amateur movers, therapists, women and children and migrant youth).

Her movement teaching practice is mainly informed by her intensive trainings with Simone Forti, Julyen Hamilton, John Britton, Nancy Stark Smith, Daniel Lepkoff, Kirstie Simson, Nita Little, Frey Faust, Keith Hennessy, Aydın Teker, Marcia Plevin and Julia Buckroyd.

Emma Bigé [FR] teaches, translates, writes and improvises with experimental contemporary dance and queer& trans*feminist philosophies. She fell in love with experimental dance practices in Europe and the US with Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Nancy Stark Smith, Matthieu Gaudeau and many others, which led her to become a curator, and to develop installations aiming to rename the knowledges of feeling and thinking that come from performance and improvised dances. Her current obsession is to find, in dance and elsewhere, the somatopolitical resources to mobilize our sensibilities to other and more-than-human creatures. Agrégée and Doctor of Philosophy, she has notably published Gestes du Contact Improvisation (Musée de la danse, 2018) and edited a monograph dedicated to Steve Paxton, Steve Paxton: Drafting Interior Techniques (Culturgest, 2019). She is currently a professor of epistemology at the École supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence. The rest of the time, she’s working on preparing the revolution, and while waiting for the big night, she’s rolling on the floor.

Sarah Konner is a dancer, improviser and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Sarah is interested in dance as a process of evolution, as a way to understand our relationships, and as a tool for storytelling. Sarah teaches, practices and performs improvisation in New York City and across the United States. She has been teaching Contact Improvisation for twelve years, co-organized the « Contact Improvisation Ground Research » from 2012-2019, teaches and performs with the collective SetGO Ensemble, and leads an annual CI Lab retreat in chosen mixity. Sarah also creates dance theater works with her collaborator Austin Selden, and others, which have been presented in theaters, museums, and universities across the country. Outside of her own work, Sarah has had the pleasure of collaborating with Jeanine Durning, ChavasseDance&Performance, Alex Davis, Shura Baryshnikov, Alex Springer and Xan Burley, and Headlong Dance Theater. Sarah studied dance and environmental science at Smith College and the University of Michigan, and is certified in yoga, Pilates and Body-Mind Centering®. www.SarahandAustinDance.com

Facebook page: https://fb.me/e/1IMHp5qUu

Registration form: https://forms.gle/hYS3KDkrsFk7oNMP7

Rates: 230€ regular rate / 210€ reduced rate / 250€ support rate (to support the reduced rates)

Cancellation conditions: In case of cancellation by you until July 20, 2022, half of the amount paid will be refunded. In case of cancellation after July 20, 2022, no refund will be given.

An exception: in case of cancellation by you or by us for reasons related to the covid pandemic, the entire amount of the course will be returned to you, except for the 20€ registration fee, which will remain with the association.

Locations (marked with a heart on the map)

Salle des sports, rue du stade, 22660 Trévou-Tréguignec (Saturday, Sunday and Friday)

GPS coordinates 48.810763, -3.355124 – https://goo.gl/maps/xsbnLACfsvesKy9e7

Salle polyvalente, 36 bis rue de la Mairie, 22660 Trévou Tréguignec (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday)

To get organized, a closed FB group: Once registered, you will be able to look for other participants before the event to share an accommodation or a means of transportation. And during the event, it will be the place to propose to share your program (dance at the beach, hike on the customs paths, lunch at the creperie, etc.) ….