ContactFestival: Program structure 2011

As you can see on the schedule, this festival offers various frames to learn, practice and to share the dance...

Intensives

The intensives will give a sense of continuation. They happen every day with the same teacher and the same group, mainly in the morning. Each teacher will give a certain personal mixture of CI and Contemporary Technique with a main emphasize on one side. All three intensives will focus on fundamental principles, in a way that is accessable for people with basic skills but at the same time provides opportunity for the more advanced dancers to deepen their knowledge. 

Other Classes

The other classes are single classes with one specific focus. They will take place in the afternoon. Each time there will be one class focussing on fundamentals in CI and also Contemporary technique. The teachers will share what they found to be essential and still inspiring. The other two classes will be more specific or advanced. A focus on Improvisation and the desire to give tools and inspirations to be tried out in the Jam Session will be the link between all classes.

One2ones

The original idea is that each participant will get a 20 minutes private lesson with a teacher. This time two afternoons will be dedicated to this wonderful and efficent way of individual learning in a big group. But we want to mainly use this structure as a starting point for different ways to learn together and from eachother and maybe develope new variations to learn in various spontanieous constellations.

Jam session

We imagine a space, where CI can be practiced and contemporary dance can be actually danced (instead of being only a preparation for the dance on the stage). We are curios how the classes. labs performative frames and interludes will inform the jams sessions.

Performances

We imagine smaller low pressure frames to explore improvisation while being watched. We'll also have one performance night, where we want to create space to share things, connections or physical questiones that arose on this festival. We'd very much love to keep ego issues out of this space if possible.

Open labbing

There will be 30 minutes for open labbing and dancing after the morning classes/ intensives. Talking, writing-corners, repetition of class material or explorative dancing can happen in a self organized way. In the afternoons there will also be space available for open labbing.

One hour interludes

... will include one2ones, as they are our special focus this year, but also dance structures, maybe bodywork, discussions, lectures, explorative performances …

Do what you need

After the first year we added another day to the festival without adding more content. So the schedule has several open slots to encourage a sense of doing less and sometimes nothing – a reminder to follow your own needs in an easily overstimulating athmosphere of a festival. Evening Sauna and swim, a little pool outside and open studios may help this purpose, too.

Experience level

We designed this festival for people who have at least a good basic knowledge in CI and/or contemporary technique with a sense for improvisational work. Our experience is that complete beginners get easily overwhelmed by the amount of new information and the mass of people.