Ph credits: Mitch Rouse
PROJECT
A STRUCTURED PROGRAM, MADE OF 4 INTENSIVE WEEK THAT HAS THE AIM TO OFFER A VALUABLE AND SUSTAINABLE POSSIBILITY OF STUDY AND RESEARCH IMPROVISATION AND COMPOSITION, WITHIN A GROUP AND INSIDE THE FRAME OF A BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPE IN NATURE.
GROUP
THE INTENT IS TO GATHER A GROUP OF EXPERIENCED MOVERS (SOMEONE WHO ALREADY HAVE A MATURE UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES IMPORTANT FOR IMPROVISING AND MAKING DANCES IN THE MOMENT) THAT PARTICIPATE IN THE ENTIRE PROCESS, CREATING A NOURISHING ENVIRONMENT FOR BOTH THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE GROWTH.
TEACHERS
THIS JOURNEY WILL BE GUIDED BY 4 ARTISTS AND DANCERS THAT HAVE MATURED A PERSONAL RESEARCH INTO DANCE IMPROVISATION PRACTICE. THIS WILL ALLOW RENEWING THE PRACTICE BY INCORPORATING DIFFERENT APPROACHES.
27TH NOVEMBER - 1ST DECEMBER 2023
November 2023 | Kirstie Simson
Dance Improvisation Practices
that offer Resilience and Support in Difficult Times
Ph: Harry Jordon
Kirstie draws from her extensive experience of Contact Improvisation, dance techniques, the Alexander technique, Aikido, meditation, and her broad knowledge of improvisation in performance. She shares her work through facilitated exercises, open time for play and exploration, movement scores, observations, discussion, and humour. Much of the work is experienced through partnering and connection with others, balanced with solo time for processing and reflection. There is deep inspiration and rigor in a practice of improvisation that posits vulnerability at its heart. Developing the skills to be able to care for, engage, respect, and respond to that state of openness in oneself, others and our environment generates creative work that is powerful and transformative. Learning from a place of interconnectedness can give us the resilience and insight to face life's challenges and complexities. In this workshop Kirstie shares the movement practices and underlying philosophies she has developed over forty years of her committed involvement with dance improvisation as a ‘life-practice’ that has helped her negotiate life’s ups and downs, including a life-threatening illness in 2020. Integral with the physical practices she will elucidate how she sees embodied practices as vitally important for developing the resilience to face into and respond to the challenging times we are living through. This workshop will give participants the opportunity to delve deeply into the wisdom embedded within embodied practices, both in the studio space, as well as exploring movement scores in the outstanding natural environment surrounding the space (weather permitting). Kirstie will facilitate the work, guided by her own depth of body-knowledge gleaned over the years in which she has pursued a dedicated practice of listening, inquiry and belief in the importance of life- BIOGRAPHY Kirstie Simson (UK) has been a continuous explosion in the contemporary dance scene, bringing audiences into contact with the vitality of pure creation in moment after moment of virtuoso improvisation. Called "a force of nature" by the New York Times, she is an award-winning performer and teacher who has "immeasurably enriched and expanded the boundaries of New Dance" according to Time Out Magazine, London. Kirstie is internationally renowned today as an excellent teacher, a captivating performer, and a leading light in the field of Dance Improvisation, with a dance practice that spans over four decades. From 2008 – 2020 Kirstie held a position as a tenured professor in the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois. In August 2020 Kirstie returned to her home base in Wales from where she continues to share her work around the globe. She is currently involved with the Black Mountains College in Wales, helping to design an innovative degree course of planet-centric education towards building a better future incorporating the arts & sciences. The BA in Ecological Futures will launch in September 2022. Kirstie is beginning to frame her work now, in the light of our uncertain future, as practices that can help us develop resilience in the face of challenge. She uses her own experience of facing a life-threatening health issue in 2020 as a foundation. https://www.kirstiesimson.com/
15TH -19TH OF JANUARY 2024
January 2024 | Lily Kiara
Skinner Releasing Technique & Instant Composing
Ph: arnaudbeelenphotography at tictacartcentre
In this workshop we’ll start every day with Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT). Throughout the whole workshop we can experience directly how principles and practices in SRT (technique) support improvising and making dances in the moment (composition). Subjects that might arise are for example: How may softening and availability affect timing? How may a sense of being in touch with your inner self affect the way you relate to your environment in the dance? How may presence affect clarity and radiance? How may embodied listening influence relationship? Becoming familiar with these practices in the body brings more choices and possibilities and can enhance, enrich or even transform the dances we (tend to) make. What makes up the landscape of the dance; what is here and what happens when we include what’s beyond the immediate landscape? Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) is a visionary approach to dance and movement training, developed by Joan Skinner (1924-2021); a detailed, refined and expansive technique. It is designed to find greater ease in our dancing and dynamic alignment with our environment and a refined tuning with our bodies and imagination. The teaching strongly draws on guided imagery and hands-on partner studies, supporting an experiential understanding of both the technical and the creative process in movement. There is an ongoing fine tuning in allowing ourselves to consciously fall into unknown creative territories. We allow ourselves to be intimately in touch with our inner body as well as align with something greater than ourselves through embodied listening. As we move with imagery that guides us through different layers of the whole self, the imagery can begin to move us. The poetic imagery can atune to physiological layers and includes the mystery of intangible layers present. Embodied listening, inner spaces, presence, dynamic stillness, softening and allowing are some of the essential areas of practice in Skinner Releasing (other than release), that support action into newness. Softening supports the releasing of strength through efficiency and responsiveness. Allowing encourages listening, to one own dancing first. This way we can become more available. In the technical work and in creating dances, directing and allowing are side by side, as are stillness and action, receptivity and fierceness. Joan Skinner says: “Letting go is a discipline”. It is a continuous practice. Giving in. Not giving up. BIOGRAPHY: Lily Kiara (Amsterdam, NL) | dance artist, facilitator, singer-songwriter “Poetry and stillness are at the heart of my work; poetic embodiment and the depths of stillness, whether working with live musicians or in silence, in group or solo. I’m interested in refinement and layering, in detail of sensation and clarity of action. I love the mystery that’s so clearly part of the dance, while also figuring out how to make some of the intangible tangible in a way that we can actually practise and work through the body with what is beyond the merely physical. I’m interested in revealing what is in the space and stillness being created by the dancer(s) through the dance”. Lily Kiara danced her first improvised solo performance on invitation of her dance teacher at the age of eight. She started her professional training at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (1990-1994), at Bennington College and Movement Research in NYC. Further on, Skinner Releasing Technique (certified teacher since 2001), martial arts and training in instant composition with teachers such as Julyen Hamilton and Lisa Nelson have greatly influenced her work and evolving vision. The work of her late teacher Suprapto Suryodarmo, Joged Amerta Movement with whom she has practiced and performed in Indonesia, continues to inspire her on numerous levels. Since her graduation in London in 2021, she now also works as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist. Lily also is active as a folk singer-songwriter, solo and with her bands The RIVER and The Tall Tales. Lily Kiara has been teaching classes and workshops in Skinner Releasing Technique (certification in 2001) and Creating (Instant) Dances, sometimes together with a musician or lighting designer. She has been teaching at independent studios, companies, festivals, academies and art institutions throughout Europe, USA, Australia and Indonesia and also guides artists in their process of making their own work, tuning into exactly what it is they are making at this moment and what could support them in doing so with their highest potential. www.lilykiara.nl
18TH -22TH OF MARCH 2024
March 2024 | Maya M. Carroll
The Instrument : Dance Composition and Aliveness
A week-intensive; aimed towards performance practices for dancers. Each session devotes time to presence, musicality, responsiveness and the interplay between body and image. Touch and gesture relate through space in many layers we can recognize; physically, visually, sonically, imaginatively...the more aware we are of the richness they offer, our experience of making dances opens up and deepens. We refine and appreciate the materials we make through qualities of interactions, and the choices we take while creating compositions. These works pave a pathway towards performance; allowing precision, playfulness and poetry come to life in our emerging pieces while witnessing the universes they create. BIOGRAPHY Maya Matilda Carroll is a choreographer, dancer and mentor, based in Europe since 2004. For over 18 years she has been creating independent work; from solo to extended group pieces, which she presents all over Europe and worldwide. In 2011 Maya formed The Instrument with her partner, composer / musician Roy Carroll. Since 2013 she has been a member in Allen's Line company directed by Julyen Hamilton. Working independently as well as being commissioned to create pieces for state theaters, independent companies and dance academies, Maya leads master classes and workshops in Europe and abroad, extensively developing her teaching alongside her artistic work; drawn from and towards the limitless expression of the dancing body. In her work Maya expresses human conditions intimately and universally; seeking a deeper connection to the mystery / reality of self, other/s and to nature. www.theinstrument.org
27TH - 31ST OF MAY 2024
Conscious Release Method
May 2024 | Agostina D'Alessandro
During this intensive week we will explore the bases of Conscious Release Method: identification of unnecessary body tension, Cartesian axe, increasing the sensation of body weight (participation into the physics lows of Free Fall and Ballistics) and movement chain analysis. The application of this technique optimizes the body perception by building awareness towards the current state and abilities of the dancer. The body becomes a borderless tool for the dancer’s imagination and its dance patterns. By using the contemplation of inner space and through the release of tension, an effective means to stop habitual patterns and formal movements in the dance arises. Full creativity can than be experienced and form appears only to serve a unique expression: the present moment. BIOGRAPHY Based In Brussels Since 2005, First As A Dancer / Performer She Joined The Holland Company T.R.A.S.H Between 2005-2010 In Several Productions: Pork-In-Loop & Zofia On Tour In Holland, Belgium, Spain, Italy And France. In 2009 She Joined Julyen Hamilton’s Allen’s Line Company For The Pieces Mud Like Gold, Sand & Vision, Local Talk, Le Voyage And The Arrival. Since 2011 She Has Created And Directed More Than 14 Productions At The Royal Conservatory Of Antwerp. In June 2019, She Created The Show “Unifinished” At Sozo-Visions In Motion, Kassel – Germany. In 2020 She Presents “Formless Mirror (She Who Reveals)” In Co-Production With Senghor And Théâtre Marni, Also Performed At D Festival 2022 And As Part Of Brussels Dance. In 2023 She Presents “The Nature Of Intimacy” Co-Produced By Charleroi Danse, Présences Compositrices, Les Brigittines – Playhouse For Mouvement, Le Bamp And Grand Studio. www.agostinadalessandro.com/conscious-release-method/
THE PLACE
THE PROJECT WILL TAKE PLACE IN GAIA TERRA, A BEAUTIFUL ECOVILLAGE IN THE NORTH OF ITALY; A PROJECTS CONTAINER, A FORGE OF EXPERIMENTATION TO CREATE ALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITIES TO INHABIT THE LOW-IMPACT PLANET.
WHAT THE PLACE OFFERS
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WOODEN STUDIO OF 180 SQUARE METERS ENTIRELY BUILT WITH NATURAL MATERIALS
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A BEATIFUL RIVER IMMERSED IN THE WOODS AT 2 MINUTES WALKING DISTANCE FROM THE STUDIO
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BATHROOM AND SHOWER WITH HOT WATER AND BIODEGRADABLE CARE PRODUCTS
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A BIG AND COZY DINING ROOM
GAIA TERRA ASKS A CONTRIBUTION OF 32€ PER DAY FOR:
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ACCOMMODATION
SINGLE BED IN A COMMON SPACE ECO-CAMPING (TENT OR CAMPER) -
FOOD (LOCAL BIOLOGICAL PRODUCTS)
BREAKFAST, LUNCH AND DINNER
RESEARCH PERIODS
4 INTESIVE WEEKS OF 5 DAYS DISTRIBUTED FROM NOVEMBER 2023 TO MAY 2024.
6 HOURS A DAY OF SCHEDULED PRACTICE. STUDIO AND OTHER SPACES ALWAYS AVAILABLES FOR SPONTANEUS ACTIVITIES.
ARRIVAL THE EVENING BEFORE THE FIRST DAY AND DEPARTURE THE FOLLOWING MORNING OF THE LAST DAY.
COSTS
THE COST FOR THE ENTIRE PROGRAM IS 800€ (4 WEEKS 120 HOURS).
FOOD AND ACCOMODATION ARE NOT INCLUDED.
HOW TO PARTECIPATE
APPLICATION WILL OPEN ON THE 12TH OF JUNE VIA A APPLICATION FORM THAT YOU WILL FIND ON THIS PAGE.
IN ORDER TO GUARANTEE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT SUPPORTS LEARNING, THERE ARE ONLY 16 SPOTS AVAILABLE. PRIORITY WILL BE GIVEN TO THOSE WHO CAN ATTEND THE ENTIRE PROGRAM.
TEAM
THE PROJECT HAS BEEN IMMAGINED AND CREATED BY PRISCILLA PIZZIOL AND ORGANIZED WITH THE SUPPORT OF CORPOETICA.